Teachers’ Resource EXPERIENCING LANDSCAPE INTRODUCTION The Courtauld Gallery’s world-renowned collections The Courtauld Institute of Art runs an extensive include Old Masters, Impressionist and Post- programme of learning activities for young people, Impressionist paintings, an outstanding prints and schools, colleges and teachers. From gallery tours and drawings collection and significant holdings of medieval, workshops to teachers’ events there are many ways for Renaissance and modern arts. The gallery is at the heart schools and students to engage with our collection, of the Courtauld institute of Art, a specialist college exhibitions and the Institute’s expertise. of the University of London and is housed in Somerset House. The Experiencing the Landscape resource is for teachers to learn about the history of Western Our teachers’ resources are based on The Courtauld’s Landscape painting looking at different historical art collection, exhibitions and displays. We are able to and social contexts across time. The resource is use the expertise of our students and scholars in our divided into chapters covering a range of themes. The learning resources to contribute to the understanding, accompanying CD can be used in class or shared with knowledge and enjoyment of art history. The your students and we hope the resource will help bring resources are intended as a way to share research and the subject of Landscape Art, and the artists’ experience understanding about art, architecture and art history. We of landscape, alive for you and your students. The hope that the articles and images will serve as a source resource ends with a glossary of art historical terms to of ideas and inspiration which can enrich lesson content aid your understanding. in whatever way you, as experienced educators see fit. Stephanie Christodoulou Henrietta Hine PROGRAMME MANAGER HEAD OF PUBLIC PROGRAMMES GALLERY LEARNING EXPERIENCING LANDSCAPE Edited, compiled and produced by Helen Higgins and Stephanie Christodoulou To book a visit to the gallery or to discuss any of the education projects at The Courtauld Gallery please contact: email: [email protected] telephone: 0207 848 1058 Unless otherwise stated, all images © The Samuel Courtauld Trust, Typeset by JWD The Courtauld Gallery, London 1 CONTENTS 1: SOARING FLIGHT: PETER LANYON’S GLIDING PAINTINGS 2: BRIDGET RILEY: LEARNING FROM SEURAT 3: PANORAMA 4: FRANK AUERBACH: LONDON BUILDING SITES 1952-62 5: CONSTABLE CLOUDS 6: TURNER PAINTING IN THE RAIN 7: MONET AND HIS STUDIO BOAT REGARDE! - French translation: Monet et son atelier bateau 8: CÉZANNE’S LANDSCAPES: ‘A HARMONY PARALLEL TO NATURE’ 9: EARLY LANDSCAPES (1550-1650) BRUEGEL AND RUBENS 10: GLOSSARY - Terms referred to in the glossaries are marked in GREEN 11: IMAGE CD COVER IMAGE: Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) Tall Trees at the Jas de Bouffan (detail) circa 1883 Oil on canvas 93.7 x 108.4 cm 2 1: SOARING FLIGHT: PETER LANYON’S GLIDING PAINTINGS Helen Higgins in conversation with Dr Barnaby Wright Curator of 20th Century Art, The Courtauld Gallery Exhibition in Focus: 15 October 2015 – 17 January 2016 A painter’s business is to understand space…. I don’t mean the old approach to landscape – sitting in one place and taking in the view, as you get in traditional painting. What I’m concerned with is moving around in this space and trying to describe it. That’s one reason I go in for fast motor-racing, cliff-climbing and gliding – gliding particularly: I like using actual air current; I feel as if I’m getting to the root of the matter. Peter Lanyon WHY DID YOU CHOOSE TO FOCUS ON PETER LANYON’S GLIDING PAINTINGS? Peter Lanyon is one of the most important post-war artists in the United Kingdom. We wanted to look closely at the remarkable gliding paintings he produced in the late 1950s and early 1960s because they are extraordinary; no artist has taken to the skies and started painting from the experience of gliding as Lanyon did. Lanyon’s work was always rooted in landscape; his gliding paintings are an extension of what he had been doing previously as a landscape painter who crossed over between landscape and abstraction (a term Lanyon never liked). WHAT SPARKED LANYON’S INTEREST IN FLIGHT, AND HOW DID GLIDING INFORM HIS WORK? Lanyon was probably interested in flying as early as the 1930s. Severe migraines had prevented him from becoming a pilot during the Second World War and so he worked as a member of the Royal Air Force ground crew. His decision to take up gliding in the late 1950s was driven by his desire to find new ways of immersing himself in the landscape. He had spent a long time trying to put himself into extreme locations in Cornwall by peering off cliff tops, and encounter extreme moments in the landscape, such as watching the sea 1 crashing against the cliffs in all weathers. It was whilst Lanyon was out walking one day, as he did very often along a high cliff top, that he saw three gliders circling scanning the sky. It’s essential to read and understand overhead and realised that gliding was the next step he the sky in order to know where a thermal is, or how far needed to take in order to see the landscape from the away from a potential landing spot you are. air and be freed from a land-based perspective. HAS GLIDING CHANGED YOUR CAN YOU DESCRIBE YOUR OWN EXPERIENCE OF UNDERSTANDING OF LANYON’S WORK? GLIDING IN PREPARATION FOR THIS EXHIBITION? Knowledge or experience of gliding really enriches I was persuaded by co-curator Toby Treves to go gliding your understanding of the paintings. What looks like in order to understand Lanyon’s work better. I was gestural marks or a spontaneous bit of painting actually slightly sceptical at the time, but I now understand how relates to certain characteristics of gliding experience, important it is. You immediately realise how different be that a thermal or patch of calm air. The titles of many gliding is from powered flight. In a glider you’re sensitive of these paintings are also drawn directly from gliding to a remarkable range of different qualities of air. You’re terminology, for example major works such as Thermal not just looking out of your window with your airline (image 1), Soaring Flight (image 2), or Cross Country meal on your lap; you’re looking all around, constantly (image 3). These terms come to life once you know a 3 2 little bit about gliding. It has been a very important part CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT LANYON’S of this exhibition and the catalogue and explains why RELATIONSHIP TO LANDSCAPE AND HIS an aerial view is not all that interesting from a glider, PARTICULAR CONNECTION TO THE CORNISH but just one part of a very exciting range of different LANDSCAPE? experiences that you have whilst gliding. Peter Lanyon was the only major avant-garde artist associated with St Ives who was native to West ARE THERE OTHER PAINTER-PILOTS IN THE HISTORY Cornwall. Other artists such as Ben Nicholson, Barbara OF BRITISH LANDSCAPE PAINTING? Hepworth and Patrick Heron had been drawn to the Lanyon is unique in being a glider pilot who puts that St Ives landscape from elsewhere in the country but for experience of gliding so directly into his art. There are Lanyon it was where he grew up. It was a landscape he other artists who have flown and used their experience knew intimately and had a deep connection with. For of flying, such as the Futurists, as well as artists who most of his mature career as an artist Lanyon immersed had been involved in flying during each of the wars; for himself as deeply as possible in the rough and rugged example C.R.W. Nevinson who painted the experience coastal landscape of the Penwith Peninsular, searching of flight in World War One. These artists tend to be for a language of painting to express that experience. more interested in aerial views or of images of an When Lanyon started gliding at the end of the 1950s aeroplane in the sky. his paintings had become quite close to abstraction, yet they remained rooted in experience of a specific landscape; for example the mining town of St Just, which he knew very well and whose history and people were imbedded in his work in various ways; or in terms of his experience of the weather in that area. Lanyon’s 4 3 work is always very closely rooted in a specific landscape Abstract Expressionism, but rather than just being an and therefore never fully abstract. expression of one’s inner feelings or psychological state, or just through chance and action painting, for Lanyon HOW DID GLIDING CHANGE LANYON’S they are inextricably linked to particular experiences of UNDERSTANDING OF SPACE AND THE the landscape. In his later paintings Lanyon was a more RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LAND, SEA AND AIR? experienced glider pilot and no longer felt the novelty Lanyon became aware that depicting the landscape and rawness of the bang of flying into a thermal, or the from a single fixed-point perspective didn’t provide an anxiety that comes with landing in a farmer’s field. The authentic human experience of the landscape. During paintings therefore became slightly calmer and the the 1950s he sought to find new ways to express the mark-making he employs to convey those experiences landscape that weren’t rooted on the spot. Gliding are much less hectic or full of attack. Lanyon develops extended that very radically because his experience a different language of painting to reflect a more through gliding (and the way he painted it) wasn’t developed experience of gliding.