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chequered shades continued

7/31/2015

The Redgrave in my last post isn't the best example of what I was trying to say - since Redgrave's boy is actually resting in the sun. But in other paintings, such as this one by Edmund George Warren, 1862, the figures are clearly enjoying the shade - usually in beech woods.

Conditions in 19th-century London (no air-conditioning, crowded urban spaces, unhealthy summers) and the restrictions imposed by conventions (clothing that covered every inch of the body, and moreover had lots of layers even on hot days) made woods appealing in a way they perhaps aren't today. And the Victorians were not sun-worshippers intent on getting a suntan.

Result: paintings focusing on sunlight coming through trees and dappled shade beneath them.

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the pleasures of the shade

7/30/2015

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When I saw the title of Alain Corbin's recent book, La Douceur de L'Ombre, I thought that it was relevant to a Mediterranean country - where trees are planted for shade, where people go to great lengths to avoid the heat of the midday sun - but not to Britain, where we are constantly trying to make the most of wherever sun and warmth is available. However, reading Victorian texts, and looking at paintings by artist such as Richard Redgrave (this is his watercolour of Parkhurst Woods, 1865) I am not so sure.

Nineteenth-century art critics, and writers on trees and woodland, constantly refer to the delicious coolness of the woods. Titles of paintings - A Cool Spot on a Summer's Day, Rest in the Cool and Shady Wood - stress the relief such scenes provide from the claustrophobic crowds and heat of a London summer. Artists, poets and picnickers evidently liked to find shady glades, nooks, glens (all rather old-fashioned words) - whereas today, I would suggest, we are more likely to go to open spaces on sunny days, to the Ridgeway or the South Downs or a beach.

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From c. 2010-2017, I was engaged in research for a book on trees in British art, asking questions, such as: how does the interest in trees develop, how do ideas change over the 18th and 19th centuries? I looked at drawing manuals, illustrated books on trees, oil paintings, watercolours and prints, landscape gardening, poetry, artists' writings. The artists I found most important and/or interesting included the following: Paul Sandby, Thomas Hearne, John Constable, Samuel Palmer, James Ward, John Martin, Edward Lear, Francis Danby, Jacob George Strutt and Henry William Burgess.

The book has now been published by Sansom and Company and its title is "Silent Witnesses: Trees in British Art, 1760-1870". You can read a review of it here.

My next research project is taking a look across the Atlantic and at the role of trees in American painting of c. 1800-1870. I'm getting to know new trees - hemlocks, red oaks, white pines - and new artists - Thomas Cole, Asher Brown Durand, Frederic Church, Worthington Whittredge, William Trost Richards.

Trees IN 19th-century British AND AMERICAN art

chequered shades continued

the pleasures of the shade

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