Roman Landscapes: 2 Development

Between about 1782-85, the great French landscape painter Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes (1750–1819) built his personal library of oil sketches of the countryside around the city of Rome. He then returned to France, where he assembled them into finished paintings in his studio.

Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes (1750–1819), A Capriccio of Rome with the Finish of a Marathon (1788), oil on canvas, dimensions not known, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA. Wikimedia Commons.

A Capriccio of Rome with the Finish of a Marathon from 1788 is a direct descendant from the pioneering landscapes of Nicolas Poussin of more than a century earlier. Groups of figures at the left and right are watching athletes run in to the finish of their race. Behind them is a town based on passages of Roman architecture, but isn’t recognisably a depiction of Rome. This is an intermediate between the completely idealised landscapes of Poussin, and later topographically accurate views.

Valenciennes then wrote up this technique of sketching in oils in front of the motif in his influential manual on landscape painting published in 1800. This remained the standard work well into the twentieth century, and was used by Impressionists including Paul Cézanne. Most budding landscape artists travelled across Europe to train in the Campagna during their formative years.

Achille Etna Michallon (1796–1822), Goatherd Opposite the Falls of Tivoli (c 1817-19), oil on canvas, dimensions not known, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, MN. Wikimedia Commons.

Achille Etna Michallon was one of the earlier visitors in about 1817-19, when he painted the spectacular scenery of Tivoli, shown here with a Goatherd Opposite the Falls of Tivoli. These waterfalls are more painterly than his early realism.

Achille Etna Michallon (1796–1822), View of Santa Scolastica in Subiaco (1818), oil, dimensions not known, Fondation Custodia, Paris. Wikimedia Commons.

Michallon’s unusual View of Santa Scolastica in Subiaco from 1818 shows this famous Benedictine monastery in Subiaco, Lazio, dedicated to the sister of Saint Benedict of Nursia.

Carl Eduard Ferdinand Blechen (1798–1840), (Stormy Weather over the Roman Campagna) (1823), oil on board, 28 x 45 cm, Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin. Wikimedia Commons.

Carl Blechen studied at the Berlin Academy from 1822, then travelled to Dresden and Switzerland. After he was dismissed as a stage painter at the Royal Theatre in Berlin in 1827, he travelled first to the Baltic coast then south to Italy, where he too painted plein air in the Roman Campagna. His copious oil studies were in a similar style to those being painted in the early nineteenth century by others in the area, but back in Berlin were seen as being radically different.

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796-1875), View of the Convent of S. Onofrio on the Janiculum, Rome (1826), oil on paper mounted on canvas, 22 x 33 cm, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, England. WikiArt.

Camille Corot was perhaps the first major landscape painter both to follow Valenciennes’ teaching and to show his sketches in public. During his first stay in Italy between 1825-28, he developed his skills painting outdoors in the Campagna, producing classics such as his View of the Convent of S. Onofrio on the Janiculum, Rome above, and The Bridge at Narni below.

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796-1875), The Bridge at Narni (1826), oil on paper, 34 x 48 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris. WikiArt.
Heinrich Bürkel (1802–1869), Shepherds in the Roman Campagna (1837), oil on canvas, 48.3 x 67.7 cm, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Munich, Germany. Wikimedia Commons.

Heinrich Bürkel’s Shepherds in the Roman Campagna from 1837 has an almost documentary quality, in the rough and dusty peasants slumped on their horses and donkeys. In the foreground a couple of ewes are looking up at their lambs being carried in a pannier, and a dog is challenging a snake by the roadside.

In 1850, the twenty-two year-old Swiss artist Arnold Böcklin moved to Rome, where he too started painting in the Campagna.

Arnold Böcklin (1827–1901), In the Alban Hills (1851), oil on canvas, 57 x 77 cm, Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, Karlsruhe, Germany. Wikimedia Commons.

In the Alban Hills from 1851 is a fine depiction of these hills about 20 km (12 miles) south-east of the city of Rome. Unlike many artists working in the Campagna at the time, Böcklin must have painted this work in the studio from extensive sketches and studies made in front of the motif. Look closely, though, and there’s a dark figure standing beside a small smoking fire, to the left of the central mass of trees, and further to the left might be the entrance to a dark cavern.

Arnold Böcklin (1827–1901), Roman Landscape (1852), oil on canvas, 74.5 × 72.4 cm, Brooklyn Museum, New York, NY. Wikimedia Commons.

Böcklin uses more dramatic lighting in this Roman Landscape from 1852. Its dark wood is very dark indeed, not the sort of place to enter alone. At the foot of the prominent tree at the right is what appears to be a woman undressing, as if going to bathe in the stygian gloom.

Nils Jakob Blommér (1816-1853), Landscape from Italy (study) (date not known), oil, 21.5 x 33.5 cm, Kansallisgalleria, Ateneum, Helsinki, Finland. Wikimedia Commons.

Nils Jakob Blommér’s undated Landscape from Italy is another plein air oil sketch of the Roman Campagna in the tradition of Valenciennes.

In the middle of the nineteenth century, the young French Impressionists broke new ground by applying Valenciennes’ teaching to plein air sketches they made in the countryside around Paris, and on the north coast of France. They then exhibited those sketches as finished works, the working method of Impressionism.