Painting Landscapes: Science, Poetry, or Both?

The Boston Harbor Islands Project: Prince Head, Peddocks Island, Joseph McGurl (b. 1958). 2020, oil on panel, 18 x 24 inches. Cavalier Galleries.

PAINTING LANDSCAPES:

Science, Poetry, or Both?

by JOSEPH MCGURL Award-winning landscape painter based in Cataumet, Massachusetts. McGurl is currently painting scenes of each of the thirty-four islands in Boston Harbor.

The 1820s and 1830s witnessed the birth of the first truly American approach to painting, the Hudson River School, whose leaders—including Thomas Cole (1801-1848) and Asher B. Durand (1796-1886)—prioritized the landscape. Until then, landscape art had ranked low in the hierarchy of subject matter because it did not illustrate stories or convey moral lessons. Around this time, however, a flood of scientific discoveries began competing with religion, tradition, and myth to offer insights on how the universe works. Soon landscapists were moving toward a new realism in which nature no longer functioned merely as a stylized backdrop.

The Hudson River School epitomizes this bridging of painting, science, philosophy, and religion. Its adherents drew inspiration from such New England Transcendentalists as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Margaret Fuller, who found spirituality in nature and

a basis for philosophical meaning underpinned by scientific facts. In his influential book Cosmos: A Sketch of a Physical Description of the Universe (published in five volumes between 1845 and 1862) German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt used his scientific expeditions of the Americas to help explain how the universe works based on scientific knowledge. He believed that artists should study their subject with the intensity of a scientist and translate it with a poet’s sensitivity. Arguably the key American expression of this approach is Heart of the Andes (1859) by Frederic E. Church (18261900), who based his South American excursion on Humboldt’s experiences there. For Church, an artist’s scientific curiosity and desire to understand the scene were just as important as the painting method.

Many American artists followed Church’s lead, spending more time sketching from nature to obtain first-hand knowledge of their subject matter. Often painted on cardboard or paper, their sketches were not seen as artworks but as ways to gather information about a location’s meteorology, geology, botany, and topography. Back in the studio they were transformed with sensitivity into an inspired melding of science and art. It was seen as critical to include abundant details in order to glorify nature’s beauty and to demonstrate the artist’s understanding of the scene.

A subset of the Hudson River School were the luminists, who did not represent a clearly defined philosophy or style. Like the Transcendentalists, they believed that immersing oneself in nature was the best way to experience God’s presence. This required solitude, and light was particularly significant. Emerson states in his 1849 essay “Nature” that “There I feel that nothing can befall me in life,—no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes) which nature cannot repair. Standing on bare ground,—my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space,—all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.”

While meditating in nature, Emerson disappeared; in luminist painting, the artist’s hand disappeared as the surface became smooth and perfectly blended. As luminism’s name suggests, light became the dominant feature, clear and sharp. Luminist paintings are distinguishable by their stillness, sparse and open compositions, receding spaces, and the sense of well-being they impart to viewers. We also rarely see human figures in them.

It is helpful to consider this exhibition’s painting of Mount Chocorua (in the Sandwich Range of New Hampshire’s White Mountains) by Benjamin Champney (1817–1907), who was closely associated with two prominent luminists, Fitz Henry Lane (1804-1865) and John F. Kensett (1816–1872). In this scene—most likely painted in the studio from sketches made on location—several markers of luminism are apparent. The weather is clear, the light crisp, the sky a gentle shade of blue, and the water calm and reflective. The composition features deep recession, and a peaceful stillness is imparted to the viewer, who senses that something sublime is occurring. The tree at the left is painted with Humboldtian accuracy, as one sees in other Hudson River and luminist scenes.

A telling juxtaposition can be made with Woman Reading Under a Tree by Edward M. Bannister on page 13. Bannister, who is generally associated with tonalism, an outgrowth of the Hudson River School influenced partly by the Barbizon school in France, where several practitioners (though

left Mount Chocorua, Benjamin Champney. Boston or New Hampshire, 1860, oil on canvas, 283/16 x 38f inches. Gift of the estate of Jane N. Grew.

page 19 Harbor at Sunrise, unknown artist. France, 1860–1880, oil on panel, 138 x 11 inches. Gift of Dorothy S. F. M. Codman.

not Bannister) had studied. I see tonalism as a reaction against the precise brushwork and scientific accuracy of the Hudson River and luminist movements. Its adherents were equally concerned with light, but its more aesthetic, sensory effects. Tonalist paintings often emphasize brown and gray tones rarely found in nature, making them more of an aesthetic statement based on harmonies of color than a literal representation. In order to “get away” with their deviations from nature’s actual coloring, tonalists bypassed detailed rendering of features in favor of suggestiveness. Had they not, viewers would have perceived only strangeness—as if the artist’s vision was obscured by a colored ether. In paintings like Bannister’s, viewers instead realize that the objects and colors are not exact representations, but poetic interpretations.

Another work in the Artful Stories exhibition that particularly appeals to me is Harbor at Sunrise, made by an unknown artist. For several years I have been interested in trying to replicate the sensation of bright sunlight reflected on water. It was probably made on location: it looks like it was painted “wet on wet”—in one session, before the paint had a chance to dry for subsequent layers or reworking. The composition is sparse and the subject is simply light on water. The fascinating thing about painting this effect is its elusiveness. You cannot touch reflected light, as it has no weight. If you change position, it disappears. As a shape it’s fairly stable, but its details are in constant motion. It is composed of photon particles, which are incredibly small and elusive. The challenge for the landscapist is to alter the adjacent values, colors, and proportions in such a way as to make white paint appear to dance and glow with the intensity of sunlight.

There is yet another challenge that I, as a contemporary plein air landscape painter, must confront. Broadly speaking, my career is dedicated to depicting the earth. But this consists of just a tiny section of the universe that I myself can experience, understand, and interpret in paint. This interaction is subject to the limitations of my senses, and I regret, for example, that a grain of sand has many layers I cannot observe. String theory asserts that sand— indeed everything in the universe—is composed of vibrating strings of energy, and the way they vibrate dictates what kind of particle they are. The Big Bang theory states that at the beginning of the universe, everything—including that grain of sand, you, me, and a distant galaxy—was compacted into an ultra-dense mass of energy. This means that ultimately, every part of the universe is connected. The particles of which we are composed exploded from this singularity alongside particles that now compose a supernova a billion light years away.

Alas, I can paint only the small part of this reality, what I experience with my senses. This is one of the aspects that makes us human—our unique set of senses. It also gives significance to the minor and anecdotal elements in a landscape painting. That grain of sand is as valid as any other feature in the universe. The result is that I regard all aspects of my landscape paintings as having equal importance. I attempt to subvert my ego and let the painting be about my observations. This is accomplished by recreating the scene with a fidelity to actual appearance, rather than imposing my personal style. I also attempt to recreate the tactile and multidimensional characteristics of the elements. Different features are rendered with varying techniques, textures, or glazes to more fully describe those elements’ individuality.

I let nature, with all its complexities, come forth as I become Emerson’s “transparent eye-ball.”