Asher B. Durand’s “Letters on Landscape Painting” from the mid-1800 publication The Crayon are today considered an invaluable source of information for landscape painters, offering advice that is as evergreen as it is enlightening. Here we present an excerpt of a letter from 1855, in which Durand advises artists to spend considerable time studying and drawing from nature before painting it.
Jeffrey Morseburg—the owner of Morseburg Galleries, in Los Angeles—has become an expert on the late landscape painter Robert Wood, having learned of the artist through his father’s personal and professional relationship with Wood, as well as having organized two retrospectives and a website devoted to him. Here Morseburg shares an article he wrote on the life and work of this great American landscape painter.
Nicolas Poussin was one of the first painters to legitimize landscape painting as a classical genre and was also one of the first to paint directly from nature. In the May 2008 issue of American Artist, John Parks gives us a look at the life, inspiration, and output of this influential artist, who is also the subject of the “Poussin and Nature: Arcadian Visions” exhibition currently on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
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Starting in Rome in the 17th century and eventually making its way around the world, the plein air movement began as a call for artists to reconnect with nature and develop an appreciation for the astounding beauty found therein. More than four centuries later, many of the values and beliefs that birthed the plein air movement are still alive among practitioners of the genre today.
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