Corot Visits Sun Valley or, Leaves From A Touch

Corot was a student of  composition, atmosphere, and tonal accuracy.  His influence runs through modern landscape painting. Long  before Corot determined to evoke leafy foliage the subject occupied the artists from ancient China to  mediaeval Paris. We thought of  leaves and flowers as symbols of  verdure, antique paradise, and health. Place a subject among leaves  and it becomes elevated by its adjacency to nature’s leafy symbols whether it is a capital on a Corinthian Column or, on a laurel wreath or the symbol for France, the Fleur de Lis.

If we travel back in time to 1500 we would find weavers applies leaves and flowers. They created a feeling of Eden’s verdure around the adored unicorn by simply providing a dark background then applying leaves or other symbols of floribunda.  A few carefully placed leaf shapes can offer a feeling of abundant ideal natural splendor (example 1).  Our mind works this way.  We need only a few symbolically formed patches and we conjure a forest. Corot knew this and used it. In example 2 notice how Corot uses a misty blurred area as a backdrop to specific small shapes to suggest leaves in both the foreground and background.  Later, Gustave Klimt uses a neo-impressionist approach by flattening the picture plane and still convincingly suggests a forest floor congested with leaves. His leaves are no more botanically accurate than Corot’s but their congestion and their lateral  arrangement against the vertical trees make them persuasive.

example. 1. Millefleur tapestry.

example. 2. detail from Corot painting.

example  3. Gustave Klimt forest.

Another neo-Impressionist to use flower and leaf shapes scattered in autonomously across the surface of a painting was Vincent Van Gogh.  His approach finds roots in the Millefleur tapestry. His shapes are as much symbol as they are illusion. He just gives his iconic leaf shapes more gestural freedom. (example 4)

example 4. Van Gogh, 1890.

Corot painted in Italy and France and was associated with the Barbizon tonalist painters. He also painted in their Fontainebleau forest. Among his peers was Narcisse De La Pena who painted the forest path you see in example 5. I followed in the tradition of the Fontainebleau forest painters when I found a path through the woods alongside Sun Valley’s Big Wood River. Example 6  is a watercolor demonstration of a similar composition.

example 5. De la Pena’s forest.

example 6. Big Wood River Valley watercolor.

Corot’s influence on Impressionists and later artists like George Inness can be seen in paintings like  example 7.  I found myself chasing Corot’s compositions and tonal palette as my wife (Rebecca) and I hiked through Adam’s Gulch above Sun Valley ( see example 8).

example 7. Corot landscape.

example 8. my photo after Corot.

The next examples demonstrate revealing leaf shapes to suggest motion, space (near vs. far), color and value contrasts. My leaf shapes derive from the ideas expressed by the previous examples. Example 9 presents  flora in congestion in a meadow. The space is compressed (like Klimt) with the viewer tucked into the immediate flora.

Example 10 offers an example of the photo I used to create the next painting. Example 11 demonstrates how I altered the photo in Photoshop. Example 12 presents step one.  Prior to example 12 I laid bright and pale yellows and pinks down on the surface with acrylics.  Step one is the first overlay in oil paint over the brighter acrylic substrate. Example 13 shows you step two  where I made lots of squeegee deletions to reveal the substrate’s lights.  Example 14 shows the present state of the painting. Keep in mind that when I begin painting  I release myself from any obligation to the photo. Notice that I have amplified the size of the forward leaves to create more dramatic space. I follow opportunities as they arise in the paint and refer to the photo  when ideas falter.

example  9. Painting of  Flora in Meadow.

example 10.  original photo.

example 11.  altered photo.

example 12. step one, the oil lay-in over the acrylics.

example 13. step two, squeegee deletions begin.

example 14. painting in current state after brushwork.