Contextual Art - Essay - Seascapes - Part 2

How artists have painted the sea

Monet painted the sea in many moods and this led to the sea becoming a standard subject for painters who lived by the sea or holidayed there, painters such as Georges Seurat (1859-1891). Seurat was a neo-impressionist who followed the way of thinking that small dots of more primary colours would merge in the viewers’ eyes to produce a whole range of colours which would create a livelier effect than if the paint was already mixed on the palette. As the Divisionists (Seurat didn’t like the word Pointillists) often met at St Tropez, they did many paintings of the harbour and the nearby coast. Seurat here has established a solid fairly classical composition however the whole effect lacks the spontaneity of a Monet.

 If we look more closely at Monet’s The Rocks of Belle Isle 1886, we can see he depicted the cliffs and rocks as fairly solid masses using densely laid strokes of deeply shadowed tones. With that he contrasted the sea which he executed in short broken strokes of lighter hues, blues fading to whites. This strategy has made his sea look lively. This described a sea that is moving.  Monet produced some fifty paintings of these rocks in many moods and they were a successful subject for him commercially.

                                                 The Rocks of Belle Isle - Claude Monet 1886

                                          Seascape at Port-en-Bessin, Normandy - Georges Seurat 1982 

                                         Snowstorm - Joseph Turner, 1842

Some of Turner’s seas are more than lively, they are wild. He painted more than a thousand seascapes and he manages to depict the sea’s ever changing moods in his paintings. One characteristic feature of Turner’s paintings was his use of whirling, vortex-like compositions to provide a sense of energy and movement. The most spectacular example of this is in his Snowstorm where the sea is ferocious. Turner was apparently on the boat during the storm he was depicting and it is said he had himself tied to the mast so he could really observe it and feel it. 

  Vortex image

 
You can see he used the vortex strategy on his painting “Rockets and Blue Lights” 1840. Here Turner shows a windswept beach, lit by yellow flares and blue lights which were a warning to a passing steamship to steer clear of the sandbanks. It is a very dramatic and energetic painting. Turner lived through the great age of sail but he also lived through the start of steam. A lot of Turner’s work is quite abstract and his seas are an abstraction of motion, colour and light.

                                           Rockets and Blue Lights - Turner 1840

                                          Scenes from Iona - Cadell

The Scottish Colourists  - a group of four post impressionist painters – painted seascapes. A feature of the colourists was their shared preference for vivid colour and fluid handling of the paint. Francis Cadell (1883 -1937) painted on Iona which he first visited in 1912, then he visited almost annually. He went in 1919 to recuperate from the war. Peploe also understood the invigorating effects of the Scottish Islands on their art. In one of his letters to Cadell when he was invalided in France he wrote “when the war is over I shall go to the Hebrides and recover some vision I have lost. There is something marvellous about the western seas”.  

                                            Breezy Day, Iona - Cadell

Cadell's seas are very energetic with lots of movement depicted by the white of the waves. His brush strokes are fairly big and his tones are cool. He uses additional things to suggest the movement, splashes on the rocks and boats leaning in the wind.

                                            Sailing Boats - Cadell

Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) was captivated by the changing ocean. Unlike other seascape painters of the romantic era his seascapes are not essentially dramatic, but more contemplative in nature. Of his work today’s viewers find themselves most intrigued with The Monk by the Sea (1808-10). The earth, water and sky are stacked in three bands and are very abstract. But the horizontals are counteracted by the small upright figure of the monk. The black ocean is ominous and the painting is quite despairing. The flashes of white waves give the sea energy and movement.

The Monk by the Sea - Friedrich - 1808-10

Conclusion

A significant commonality of many of the artists I selected in the second part of this essay was their connection, both physically and emotionally to the sea. It meant something to them and as such they were expressing the feeling as well as trying to visually represent the sea in their way.

Turner used his swirling vortex to depict a storm, Monet used short broken strokes. Friedrich had a very dark sea with contrasting flashes of white to express the power of the sea. Cadell added splashes and boats and in a picture not shown here, he painted two people getting blown out of the picture.

Each of the artists seemed to be presenting a snapshot of the scene, and as such there is nothing static about their paintings. This is in contrast to the painting by Constable of Trafalgar and the earlier Dutch painting of the fall of Icarus where the subject matter seemed posed, hence lacking in life.





Bibliography

The Art of Seascapes – Edmund Swinglehurst, Bridgeman Art Library, 1995

The Great Artists, a Marshall and Cavendish Weekly Collection, Turner – 1985

The Scottish Colourists 1900- 1930, Philip Long with Elizabeth Cumming, National Galleries of Scotland

Howstuffworks – website, Claude Monet Paintings 1879-1886

Theguardian.com – the 10 best sea pictures

Luckycompiler.com – Ocean painting: Artists paint the changing moods of the Sea

Wikipedia