I have been thinking much on figures in paintings recently. We are mostly only allowed them if they are incidental or stock still filling the frame nowadays it would seem. I quite like to vary them rather like adding more or less salt to a stew. Too much and they dominate the whole thing, which can be either god or bad. Or they can be mere props no different to post boxes or potted plants. To this end many landscape painters use Seago type figures that derive I suspect from architectural drawing where the figure is just a set of simple forms that float in the composition. This has become almost a tradition with Rowland Hilder, Alvaro Castagnet and Joseph Zbukvik using these feetless mannequins to often very good effect. A few examples seems a good idea…
Here’s Seago note the way the figures fade out before the feet!
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Here is Zbukvic using the same trick 50 years later. As this tradition has developed the figures become ever more squat and angular. They are very often
paired with shadows as above, which can be very effective in well populated scenes. An important result is that we cannot relate to the figures as people.
This allows us to appreciate the abstract qualities of light etc without being sidetracked. But how did the landscape get there for our figures to inhabit?
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In the beginning of painting there was no landscape at all. The hunters and hunted cavort on the cave walls without any sign of hills or trees. It is the same story thousands of years later in Egyptian times. It is not until 220BC in China and around 100BC in Rome that landscapes appear, before that we get the odd tree or shrub but no real landscape. Again a few examples culled from here and there.
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Here we are in the earliest of times, we have examples going back 20,000 years. I did find a solitary tree in a rock engraving from about 6000BC but that
seems to be it for early shrubbery! If anyone finds earlier examples I’d be most interested.
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Here we are in Sumeria in 2500BC still just people and possessions 18000 odd years on! There is no sense of place. Perhaps because it is so ubiquitous
that it can be assumed and does not therefore require delineation.
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Trees at last! This is from the tomb of Sennedjem from about 12oo BC. In this period we get foreground scenes such as marshes and reed beds often with
water, but never hills.
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This is the first example I can find with all the elements arranged into a coherent whole. We have buildings, trees, animals and people. It is
a rubbing from a pictorial stone from the Han dynasty from about 220BC. Again if anyone knows of earlier examples drop me a line.
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This is the Nile Mosaic from Ptolemaic Egypt. It dates from 100BC. Again we have all the elements scattered about. Trees and the very first
hills at the very top. Interestingly sky has yet to put in a convincing appearance.
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Here is a painting from Pompeii with figures, rocks etc. We can easily relate this to early Christian landscapes behind Saints. It comes from
around 60 BC
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This is Roman from the house of Livia. In the murals of Pompeii and Rome we get our first really coherent landscapes. From about 20BC.
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Scampering quickly on, here we are in about 600Ad. We have trees, we have animals, we have hills and we have people…but our sky is once again missing
in action! This is from The Ashburn Penatucht Folio and tells the story of Cain and Abel.
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Here we are at last. This is by the astonishing Albrecht Durer and is a view of Trento from about 1500AD. The first believable topographical painting of
a particular place I can find. Durer painted and drew everything from Hares to clumps of grass. Though by now the Chinese are doing pure landscapes
they are stylised arrangements of stock items. More like poems made of symbols than any specific depiction of place.
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From almost the same time this is Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The accent here is still on the activity in the place more than the place itself though the place
is still important. We have a new kid on the block though… we have weather.
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So who was to pull the whole thing together, well Rembrandt of course, who founded the first real school of landscape painting. What can you say?
He has weather, fleeting light, supporting characters. All the elements we play with today. This is from 1638. It is worth looking at his reed pen sketches
of landscape which are a wonder of brevity and observation. Onward from Rembrandt we get Jacob van Ruisdael and so forth. A very quick review this
just came out of wondering just when we started to record out surroundings, it is very much not a rigorously researched post! If any body knows or finds
more on the subject comment below and I’ll incorporate any new information to improve the page.
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That’s our quick sprint through landscape history done with. We start with people with no context and end with context with no people. You could argue that abstraction removes the context in turn… leaving what I wonder? I personally enjoy all the variations and different balances of sky and land, time and place, inhabitant and setting, light and atmosphere. They are all elements that can be set against each other with dynamic and expressive results. The danger you need to watch for is if you start to use any of these elements as standard. I see many paintings where the artist only has a few stock trees and figure that are rolled out again and again. It may work for others but I want mine to be based on the tree that is in front of me and not one that I have painted a hundred times before.