Most of the paintings of LS Lowry – in the Salford/Manchester area, personify the northern English industrial townscape. In fact Manchester is known as "the town of tall chimneys". It certainly was in Lowry’s day anyhow!
As a rent collector in the 1920s and 30s he would travel all over the city. The subjects for his paintings were on his doorstep and that is when he started to become fascinated by the industrial scenes all around him. As these townscapes were affected later by the blitz, slum clearance and new housing they changed very noticeably during his lifetime.
As far as I can make out from reading about some of his techniques on the Lowry Gallery website, it seems that he would use sketches rather than a camera to help record the scenes. With a pencil he used smudging and erasing to work the surface of his drawings and rubbing the lines to build the atmosphere. With paper he had in his pockets he would do quick on the spot sketches. His paintings were composed in a room at his home often on a white surface using firmly drawn backgrounds and buildings. Some of these paintings were semi-imaginary.
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| Industrial river scene |
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| Peel Park |
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| Peel Park |
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Peel Park |
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Peel Park I almost prefer these 4 spontaneous looking sketches (above) of scenes in Peel Park, Salford, to the paintings. |
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| View from window looking towards Broughton |
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| Dewer's Lane |
Albrecht Durer (1471 – 1528) was born in Nuremberg,Germany. Aswell as being a painter, printmaker he was also a mathematician, engraver, and theorist. He was very successful in spreading his work across EuropeItalyVeniceAlps he made watercolour sketches. These are regarded as the first pure landscapes ever produced in Western Art. , on his way there, in 1494. As he traveled over the and The Netherlands and he made his first trip to through printmaking. The variety and innovative nature of his work made him a true leading light in the art world of his day. Living in Nuremburg, he was well situated to make excursions to Italy and The Netherlands and he made his first trip to Venice in 1494. As he traveled over the Alps, on his way there, he made watercolour sketches. These are regarded as the first pure landscapes ever produced in Western Art.
In the spring of 1495 he returned to Nuremberg but continued to paint landscapes – although he is far better known for other subjects. Landscape as a category of painting, only began to emerge during the Renaissance and was usually populated by figures.
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| Watercolour 1494-95 |
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| Alpine landscape 1495 |
Below is an extract from the British Museum Nuremberg , Germany
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Wooded landscape with distant buildings 1640-50
On the left we see the broken trunks of pine trees rising on a grassy bank. To the right are more pine trees, their deep green tops filling the paper. In between is deep blue water which disappears into the darkening distant horizon. As the sun sets, the clouds turn a deep blue which is mirrored in the blue of the lake. Similarly, the green branches of the pine trees are balanced by the green banks around the water. Dürer's fluid brush and deep colours make it a very beautiful and harmonious depiction of restful nature.The scene may be outside Nuremberg Italy
The drawing is unfinished at lower right where the white of the paper is clearly visible. Dürer's monogram in the upper centre was added later in another hand.
The following is a link to the website http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/pd/a/albrecht_d%25C3%25BCrer,_landscape_wi-1.aspx
It is generally agreed that this landscape drawing is one of the most sensitive of Dürer's portrayals of nature. It is painted with a brush in water and bodycolour. Dürer was the first artist to recognize the potential of watercolour. Indeed, his work as a landscape artist in watercolour raised the status of this medium.Claude Lorrain (1600-1682) – better known by the French
So as to follow the classical order of the times and because of commercial pressures, he included figures and gave narrative (usually mythological), as landscape in its own right was not considered important around this time. He was more interested in uninhabited natural scenes, as his many drawings and sketchbooks show. Much of his popularity was also based on his use of subtle gradations of tones. Many artists used a
Claude glass to view scenes. This was meant to help them produce works of art similar to Claude’s.
John Constable – a Romantic artist held Claude’s landscapes in high regard and described Claude as "the most perfect landscape painter the world ever saw". He declared that in Claude’s landscape "all is lovely – all amiable – all is amenity and repose; the calm sunshine of the heart".
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| Claude glass |
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| Wooded landscape with distant buildings 1640-50 |
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| View of the campagna |
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| Landscape with latium with farm labourers - pen, brown indian ink wash and black chalk (1660-63) |
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| Study of oak tree c.1638 black chalk, pen &ink; brown ink with gray-brown wash on white paper |
