Landscape Painting Favorites

You told me you liked landscape art, so I put together a selection of my favorite landscape paintings, listed from older to newer by date. Have a look. It's not the same as seeing them in person, but you'll see many different styles represented here. A key to doing a good landscape, or any kind of painting for that matter, is working to ensure that there is a good composition. By composition I mean arranging all the parts of the painting so that they work together to create unity of the whole. Here are several quotes on the importance of composition:

- And after drawing comes composition. A well-composed painting is half done. (Pierre Bonnard)
- Does it feel like the elements in the painting's composition belong together, or are they separate bits that just happen to be in the same painting? (Marion Boddy-Evans)
- Even in front of nature one must compose. (Edgar Degas)
- Composition is the art of arranging in a decorative manner the various elements which the painter uses to express his sentiments. In a picture every separate part will be visible and... everything which has no utility in the picture is for that reason harmful. (Henri Matisse)
- Each work of art is a collection of signs invented during the picture's execution to suit the needs of their position. Taken out of the composition for which they were created, these signs have no further use. (Henri Matisse)

Note that the Leonardo da Vinci and the Titian paintings are included here because of the importance of the landscape that surrounds the figures(s).

In a future post I'll put forward a project for you to paint your own landscape. For now these are here for you to study and enjoy.

* Click on images for a larger view

Oriental:

Zhan Ziqian, Strolling About in Spring, a very early Chinese landscape, c. 600

Pine Trees, Hasegawa Tohaku, Japan 1593



Four from a set of sixteen sliding room partitions made for a 16th century Japanese abbot



Tao Chi, late 17th century China



Leonardo da Vinci (1452 – 1519) Italian

Arno Landscape

Mona Lisa



Titian (1488/1490 – 1576) Italian

Madonna and Child with Saint Catherine and a Rabbit

 

Hercules Seghers or Segers (c. 1589 – c. 1638) Dutch

Mountainous Landscape

Rembrandt (1606 – 1669) Dutch

The Rest of the Flight into Egypt

John Constable (1776 – 1837) English

Weymouth Bay

Ploughing Scene in Suffolk (A Summerland)

Joseph William Turner  (1775–1851) English

Rain Steam and Speed

Landscape with a River and Bay in Background

Sun Setting Over a Lake

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796 – 1875) French

Ville-d' avray

Souvenir-of-the-Lake-Nemi-Region

Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) French

Beach in Normandy

Vincent van Gogh (1853 – 1890) Dutch

Wheat Field with Crows

George Inness (1825 -1894) American

Sunrise

Indian Summer

The Lone Farm

Eugène Boudin (1824 – 1898) French

Beach near Trouville

Shore at Low Tide, Rainy Weather, near Trouville

Sky

Camille Pissarro (1830 – 1903) French

The Red Roofs

Paul Gauguin (1848 – 1903) French 

Matamoe (Landscape with Peacocks)

Tahitian Landscape

Paul Cézanne (1839 – 1906) French

St Victiore 1885

Claude Monet ((1840 – 1926) French

Grainstack in Sunshine

Landscape with Rain

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880 – 1938) German

Naked Playing People

Alexej von Jawlensky (1864 – 1941) Russian

Black Tree

Wassily Kandinsky (1866 – 1944)  Russian

Landscape with Rain

Henri Matisse (1869 – 1954) French

Landscape at Collioure

Maurice de Vlaminck (1876 – 1958) French

House in a Landscape

Autumn Landscape

Georges Braque (1882 – 1963) French

Beached Sailboat

Milton Avery (1885 – 1965) American

Autumn

After the Rain

Vermont Landscape

Ben Nicholson (1894 – 1982) English

Foothills, Cumberland

Cornish Landscape

Porthmeor Window

Window in Cornwall

Simon Pooley (1955 - ) English

Beach Houses

Jane's New Garden