P.A.Nisbet / The Masters
		Artists have long been studying one another to gain inspiration and technical proficiency for centuries. With this in mind, I would like to share some examples of paintings that have been a source of personal and professional inspiration. The Romantics Romanticism is an idea that grew out of the European intellectual and creative life of the mid nineteenth century. It was a movement fueled by protest against the encroachments of materialism and the exploitation of nature; a rejection of totalitarianism (i.e. Napoleon); and the rise of the Individual out of the collective. It found expression in poetry, painting, sculpture, and ultimately in politics. The Romantics showed brilliance through expressions of great love and passion, yet Romanticism also harbored strains of darkness through a fascination with the occult and with the destructive forces of nature. Romantic painters such as J.M.W. Turner played out powerful emotional themes in paint. Turner is my favorite artist. He was so far ahead of his time that, in painting style alone, he predated Impressionism by seventy years. He encompassed the twin themes of Romanticism, the Beautiful and the Sublime (fantastic; overpowering; terror). I have a lot more to say about Turner later on in this essay. German romantic Caspar David Friedrich brought forth a vision that was deeply spiritual yet channeled through a highly refined intelligence. In The Watzmann(1824)) the mountains appear as a pristine, angular reconstruction of clear mind. While Friedrich's intelligence is omnipresent in every piece he does, it is his overriding soulfulness that captures me. In the quietly violent Polar Sea(1823-24) the chaos is entirely organized and suggests that the Mastermind who presided over the disaster was as much concerned with beauty and design as with the omnipotence of nature. In Friedrich, Nature and God are interchangeable. William Blake was the opposite of Friedrich in expression. His treatment of subject matter was always torrid, bordering on the fantastic. He saw no limit to the expression of pain or passion, finding completion in words and images of pure rebellion. Finally, there is the apocalyptic visionary John Martin, whose sheer imaginative powers in ink and paint captured the terrible rage of an angry God bringing down this world. Enter the Light If the Romantics offered to dissolve the real world into fantasies of passion and power, there were also those painters who loved the Light either as a vehicle for beauty or as an expression of religious or intellectual awe. Artists of the landscape are intimately involved in the workings of light. We see how light shapes the world we live in; we wonder how it works its magic, and more importantly, how it can be made to work magically on canvas. It is no easy task to translate the ephemeral through the clumsy vehicle that is pigment and canvas. Painting the light is indeed a magic act. Let us look at a few of the best magicians of paint that ever lived. I'll begin with the seventeenth century French painter, Claude Lorrain. We also know him as just "Claude", a kind of homage reserved for this pioneer of atmospheric light in the landscape. In Port Scene with the Embarkation of St Ursula the world of everyday life is subordained to the physics of vapor and brilliance. Claude is saying to us "Pay attention! The world is phenomenal!" The effects of light also fascinated Joseph Wright of Derby(English 1734-1797). His dramatic contrasts of light and shade were as much the subject of his paintings as his love of science. We see the heavy influence of light painters Rembrandt van Rijn and Carravagio in Wright's work. History tells us that J.M.W.Turner received primary inspiration from Claude Lorrain. Here is Turner in The Decline of the Carthaginian Empire, an unapologetic reference to the influence of Claude. Turner's light progressed from the literal early in his life to the phenomenal later on, as the Romantic urge took an ever stronger hold upon his imagination. In The Golden Bough, even the trees begin to yield to the light, a surrealistic effect that charges the scene with the suggestion of a dream. View here Rain, Steam and Speed where the industrial age and romantic light merge as one. Finally, in scenes such as The Falls of Clyde 1844-1846, the land is completely dissolved in light. This painting is a tour de force in the study of optics and vapor viewed through the mystical imagination of one of the greatest painters that ever lived. If you love the Light, then Turner is your man. Most people think of the French Impressionists as painters of light. I really don't care much for their fragmention of light into bits of oppositional color, all based upon the contemporary optical theories of the day. However, I truly appreciate the great predecessor of Impressionism, Corot, and many of his associates from the "Barbizon" school. Corot's late work is composed of fleeting dreams of the countryside bathed in Dutch light, and like Turner, suggestive of the dream that resides beneath the surface of the real world. You will see his influence rise again in the American painter George Inness twenty years later. Another 19th century French master of light is Jean-Francois Millet, who romanticized the noble French peasantry working in highly spiritual light-soaked landscapes. In The Sower the light plays the foil for a curiously dark painting, yet its treatment helps to establish the farmer as a mythical figure engaging in a cosmic act, much larger than life. Another artist from the French Rural tradition was Jules Breton, who found similar comfort in themes of people laboring in the light of nature. Before moving out of European painting I would like to take a brief look at a group of artists who manifested a similar love for light but may also be considered cohesive as a national school of painters. I am referring to Dutch artists of the 17th century, craftsmen of the first rank who reflected Holland's dominance of the seas and world trade for about 100 years. The list of painters is long and impressive, including Jacob van Ruisdael, Jan van Goyen, Aert van der Neer, Ludolf Bakhuysan and many others. They were all specialists in painting light and atmosphere, and were highly influential on all other European painting traditions. By way of comparison, view here a painting by Turner, Dort Packet-Boat from Rotterdam becalmed and Albert Cuyp (Dutch 1620-1691) View of Dordrecht to show just how great an influence Dutch painting had on Turner. American painters also turned to the Dutch for inspiration. Here is the American Luminist painter Fitz Hugh Lane compared with the Dutch master William van de Velde the Younger. The similarity in the treatment of light is no accident. Standing above all Dutch painters is the towering presence of Rembrandt van Rijn. I think of Rembrandt as the master of personal or inner light. In his Self-Portrait 1629 he uses radiance to illuminate more than just physical appearance. Light for Rembrandt is intimate and appears to glow from within the painting itself. He achieved these effects through the very careful manipulation of tones. He is lesser known for his landscapes yet, there also, the viewer is invited to bask in moments where light becomes the true subject of the painting. These are lessons for all landscapists to heed: If you wish to speak about matters of spirit, then the light must be treated as your subject, not the objects being illuminated. Nature's Nation American painting is, like America itself, an amalgam of many influences from other countries. The mythos of conquering nature and westward expansion will not be restated here; what I am interested in understanding is what we as a people have to say about our experience with nature. We have a painting tradition that was born during our post colonial years, built primarily of European values and insights. This tradition, mixed for a hundred or so years with a national experience of struggle in raw wilderness, gave way to a full blown romantic expression all our own: the Hudson River School. There are many painters here that I admire, but I would call attention to Frederick Church, student of Thomas Cole and inheritor of the Hudson River tradition. Church saw America as a conflicted(Civil War) yet emerging great nation. He said so by painting Nature (our special provenance) as a visual smorgasbord of cosmic grandiosity Church was the Spielberg of his day; people by the thousands lined up to see his enormous canvases, stepping up close with a magnifying glass to observe a plethora of minute details. Those of us who have played with detail know only too well how easily it can distract the eye. Church pulled it off, and so did Albert Bierstadt, his primary competitor. I love both of these artists. They are romantics and astute observers of the grand scene; they are unapologetic in exaggeration; and finally they are the ultimate advocates of a Big Nature perspective, one that mythologizes all our westward yearnings and the complex and opposing forces that collided in the America of the 19th century. These artists are not subtle, but neither was the nation they portrayed on canvas. There was, however, another strain of American expression evolving out of the Hudson River School at the same moment in history, a quieter and more contemplative ideal that we now call "Luminism". Luminist paintings reveal a deeply rooted American connection to the spiritual in nature. They are distilled and tranquil, recalling the clear visions of Friedrich, bathed in Claudian vapor. Perhaps they reflect an understandable reaction to war, which solidifies their romantic credentials. I love them all: Lane, Gifford, Heade and most of all John Frederick Kensett. I am no art scholar, but I sincerely believe that Kensett reached the apogee of a true American expression in painting. He achieved visions in paint that forever enshrine a deep reverence for Nature. These paintings are somehow religious, scientific, and mystical, even moral, all within the same frame. Such oppositional notions are almost impossible to reconcile in visual language, but I believe that Kensett, had he lived longer (died at age 56), would have redefined the direction of American modernism away from the Europeans of the 1919 armory show and toward a different vision of America. Before leaving the 19th century behind there are several other American artists who stand apart from the Hudson River tradition and can equally claim a significant place in our painting history. George Inness fused Barbizon sensibility and Turnerian light with pastoral American farmlands and woods. He began with very tight, almost Claudian canvases and moved into paintings that dream of an idealized Nature. Inness celebrates our deepest connections to the mysteries of nature. I must also mention Winslow Homer, a modern painter who nevertheless remained a romantic. It is his re-assertion, over and over in canvases of the sea, that reaffirm my own origins on the Atlantic coast. Last and perhaps most important of all has to be Thomas Moran. I have often quipped that he was my "spiritual grandfather"...we share so many common passions, from the Grand Canyon to Yellowstone, from Turner to the ocean and the art of exploration. I would give anything in the world to have had the chance to sit with Moran on the rim of the Grand Canyon. He was lucky to live when he did, and he had the courage to travel vast distances and the genius to bring home fantastic and original American vistas to his countrymen. In this day and age our farthest journies seem to pale by comparison. I have often thought that that the art we celebrate is who we actually are or wish to become. I don't believe that we as a people widely embrace most 20th century expressions, particularly the sad displays we call "art" from the past half century. If the coarse, ironic and politically charged contemporary scene is a true mirror of our psyche, then we as a people are in deep trouble. I am encouraged that 19th century American painters continue to draw huge crowds at the museums. Perhaps what we secretly are saying is that no matter what the art experts endorse, we know what is deeply held in our soul: We love Beauty, We love Light, and We love Nature. It is our true American heritage, and indeed, the heritage of all humanity.