Strange ridges and shadowy craters

In 1973 Gerhard Richter made a series of paintings based on close-up photographs of oil paintings.  According to Mark Godfrey in 'Damaged Landscapes' (an essay I've referred to before) Richter 'chose images where the swirls of paint seemed to recede from the plane of the painting.  These Details therefore appear like fictitious landscapes with strange ridges and shadowy craters.'  Leonardo da Vinci famously suggested in his Notebooks that 'when you look at a wall spotted with stains, or with a mixture of stones, if you have to devise some scene, you may discover a resemblance to various landscapes, beautified with mountains, rivers, rocks, trees, plains, wide valleys and hills in varied arrangement.'  In an earlier post I wondered whether Thomas Jones' A Wall in Naples could be considered a landscape painting, but perhaps I wasn't looking closely enough.  As you can see from the detail below (another sketch made from the roof terrace above the rooms he rented in Naples), the crumbling masonry painted by Jones starts to assume the semblance of a landscape.  But Richter's Details provoke the thought that landscapes might be discerned at some level of magnification in the folds of a velvet dress, the shadow beneath a bowl of fruit or an angel's wing. And I can almost imagine a kind of fractal landscape painting that would depict a view simultaneously at the level of the canvas, the brush stroke and the pigment (which would then need to be exhibited outside, in front of the landscape itself).

Thomas Jones, Rooftops in Naples (detail), 1782

Thomas Girtin, The White House at Chelsea (raking light detail), 1800

The terrain of the paper underneath Thomas Girtin's The White House at Chelsea becomes visible at close range, in raking light (see Peter Bower's essay 'Tone, Texture and Strength: Girtin's Use of Paper' in the Tate's 2002 Girtin retrospective catalogue).  Curators often show us explanatory photographs that resemble geological sections through the paint layers of old masterpieces.  Microscopic images of pigment return us to the basic stuff of landscape - ochre, sienna, umber. Of course this 'thingly substructure', as Heidegger called it in 'The Origin of the Work of Art', should not be confused with the the actuality of the art work.  The quality of the paper in Girtin's painting need not especially interest us (although it is less easy to argue that appreciation of an actual landscape requires no interest in its natural history, an issue I've discussed here before).  Nevertheless, the scrutiny of both detail and overall effect has always been one of the pleasures of landscape art.  In the paintings of Girtin's friend, Turner, the image always seems to be both abstract and naturalistic, however you crop it.  His View of the Arsenal (below) is a vivid reminder of how artists release colour from pigment, so that it comes, in Heidegger's phrase, to shine forth. It is through this process that an art work 'lets the earth be the earth.'
 

J. M. W. Turner, View of the Arsenal (detail), c1840

A Wall in Naples

A Wall in Naples (1782) is, according to Lawrence Gowing, 'one of the great microcosms of painting, less than five inches by hardly more than six, yet built grandly out of the very stuff of illusion, that stuff of quite finite, yet endless potential.’

I don't think I was conscious of the painting when the National Gallery bought it 1993, but a few years later I was captivated by James Fenton's essay 'Who Was Thomas Jones?' (1997) which reproduced the painting and discussed its inclusion in the 1981 MOMA exhibition Before Photography (where it could be seen as a forerunner of later semi-abstract cropped photographs of walls). Like a photograph, this sketch is a complete image. As Peter Galassi has written in his book Corot in Italy, 'the open air artist undertakes to treat form and space, colour and light simultaneously, as interdependent aspects of an indivisible problem.'

Can this tiny sketch even be called a landscape painting? Tom Lubbock has written, 'this outdoor scene refuses to become a view. The building is seen directly across from a high vantage point. There is no sight of land, no ground level, no base or stage to the scene. The world just drops away out of the bottom of the picture. So there's no sense of place, and there's no proper vista, nothing for the viewer's eye to travel over into a distance, which is traditionally one of the main pleasures of landscape.'

A Wall in Naples and the other sketches Thomas Jones made in and around Naples in the early 1780s are quite unlike his studio paintings. Galassi noted a similar rift in the work of Jones's contemporary Pierre Henri de Valenciennes (whose sketches are equally striking). Bridging this gap would be the task for nineteenth century landscape art.

Land of Darkness

Thomas Jones is renowned for his Italian oil sketches, but should be just as well known for his memoirs, which are often cited by historians of eighteenth century landscape painting, but, bafflingly, remain out of print. They can be read in Volume 32 of the proceedings of the Walpole Society (for 1946-48). In this extract Thomas Jones and Francis Towne find that Nature can occasionally be just too Picturesque...

June 2^nd 1781 This day crossing the Mola piccola I saw a large crowd of People assembled round two circular vacant Spots about ten or twelve pases asunder - in each of these lay a man extended on his back with a knife in his hand - dead - It seems two of the Sbirri or guard of the Place had a quarrel, stabbed each other, and both fell - getting through the multitude as well as I could I proceeded to meet Pars, according to appointment at an Osteria in the road to S'a M'a de Monti - In this hollow Way is a most beautiful Series of picturesque Objects, which I discovered by Accident in one of my perambulations - Here may be visibly traced the scenery that Salvator Rosa formed himself upon - Only taking away the Pinetrees, which were, perhaps, a planted since his time, and which indicate a State of Cultivation not suited to his gloomy mind, with the addition of Water & a few Banditti - And every hundred yards presents you with a new and perfect Composition of that Master - When Towne was in Naples, I took him with me to this romantick place, with which he seemed much delighted - but the following whimsical Incident put a stop to further explorations at that time and which I forgot to mention in its proper place - Proceeding up the valley whose boundaries contracted more and more as we advanced, increasing in proportion the Gloominess of the Scene; We arrived at a Spot, which might very properly have been termed the Land of Darkness and the Shadow of Death - This sequestered place was environed on all Sides, with hanging Rocks here and there protruding themselves from behind dark masses of a variety of Wild Shrubs, and overshadowed by branching Trees - Here, says I, Mr Towne, is Salvator Rosa in perfection we only want Banditti to compleat the Picture - I had scarcely uttered these words, when turning round a Projection of Rocks, we all-at once pop'd upon three ugly-looking fellows dressed in the fantastic garb of the Sbirri di Campagna, with long knives, cutting up a dead jackAss… Towne started back as if struck by an electric Shock… "I'll go no further" says he, with a most solemn face, adding with a forced smile, that however he might admire Scenes in a Picture - he did not relish them in Nature, - So we wheeled about and returned to the more cultivated environs of the City.