The Influence of Italian Landscape Across Time and Culture

An Avid traveler, J. M. W. Turner, was impatient to visit the Italy described by Lord Byron in the travels of Childe Harold. Turner’s quest for inspiration, light, art history, and subjects brought him to Rome, Venice and places in between. Turner didn’t just bring Byron’s book with him, he brought along an art historical tradition with his personal affection for the works of Claude  and Rembrandt. Jan Lievens, an early competitor of Rembrandt’s provides an example of 17th century Rembrandtesque landscape design and illumination here.
Like Rembrandt, Lievens surrounds his illuminated central motif with darkness which amplifies its brightness. The
dark foreground gives way in repeating stages of dark to light  from the
bottom to the horizon and, from the top to the horizon. To see this more clearly,
here are two detail examples from this painting.  
In these details you can see how freely the chiaroscuro effects are evinced and, you
see how a light stage is set against a dark stage as we move into the painting.  In the 1830s and 40s J.M.W. Turner would borrow this recipe for evoking space and drawing attention to the organizing motif. Here is his view of Rome from 1839.
Notice the dark foreground and then, the staggered  motifs,
interrupted by gauzy bands of blurred light. In Turner’s later work from 1843,
” The Opening of Walhalla” his  approach is similar but, the paint ( edges of
motifs)  is less defined, more ambiguous and more expressive of space and motion.    Turner’s  blurred edges and his palette choices influenced me when I painted this soft focus view of the Roman Compagna.  The diffused  yellow(  desaturating as it moves into the distance) offers a unifying light for the work.  When Turner visits Venice, he returns to London to experiment in watercolor with his pencil sketches as memory aide.  In these two watercolors observe  how Turner invites us into the picture.    First, we travel down a canal with flickers of  light as our goal.  In the Second, we enter under an arch with light as our distant beckoning force. The framing areas are blurred and simply suggest architectural forms. I borrowed his notion of an indistinct architectural framework supporting a migration toward a diffused off-center light as I developed this small oil on anodized aluminum. I show you this work in its two stages, before and after applying atmospheric perspective.    1st stage and then,  this 2nd stage. I  often work out ideas in this size, 12×12, oil on anodized aluminum before proceeding to a larger work as Turner did with his
watercolors. The image here combines layers of the interior of the Pantheon in Rome
with a street in Florence. This last painting is larger and on aluminum.  I reach back to Lievens and Turner as I layer light against dark areas and unite them with a serpentine design. I want to show you my photo  which triggered my later painting. (first, the photo and next, the painting)     My imposition of the serpentine design, the dark foreground and the changed palette show you how I recomposed and
experimented with the image.  If you are interested in working and painting with me on the influence of  the Italian landscape, I invite you to join me at Jerry’s Artarama’s  “Art of
The Carolina’s” in Raleigh Durham, N.C. on Sunday November 13, 2011. See my website or Jerry’s Artarama for details.