LANDSCAPE painting

In the first of a three-part series on composing paintings, AL GURY begins by introducing a more responsive approach to landscapes with his 15-step guide to success

- AL GURY

A “composition” is an arrangement of the formal and informal visual elements of art within a pictorial frame. The formal elements include shape, line, form, value, colour, texture, geometry and movement. The informal (or subjective) elements refer to emotion, expression, content, creative improvisation and response.

The long, and varied tradition of landscape painting in Western art is framed by two large approaches to composition. One is the idea of the land “perfected”. Arguably the oldest aesthetic tradition in landscape painting, this form of composition re-envisioned the chaos of the earth into a rational and managed visual form. These compositional strategies were taught in the studios and academies from the Renaissance until the 19th century as the rules that made art and, in particular, beautiful and harmonious landscapes.

The idea of painting nature as it actually appeared was shunned. Landscape studies done en plein air were thought of merely as preparatory works to be discarded. Composition in this ancient tradition incorporated the rules of ideal geometric and aerial perspectives, as well as a repeated set of visual balances within the pictorial frame – for example, a grove of trees might be balanced by a hill on the opposite side of the image. The viewer’s eye might be led through the image and into the distance by a winding road or a picturesque stream. Visual focus would be created by a patch of intense light on the horizon or the bright red spot of a shepherd’s cap tending his flock of sheep. These compositional devices, influenced by nature but not controlled by it, have aided some of the finest classical painters of images of the land such as Titian, Rembrandt van Rijn and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot.