Tall, billowing, lavender-purple and shell-pink clouds line the distant horizon over a vast plain of flat grassy land in this horizontal landscape painting. Closest to us to the lower left, a tree with a gnarled trunk and round, sage-green canopy sits mostly in shadow. A river curves from near the tree to cut across most of the landscape in a tight S-shape. One plump haystack, shaped like a giant teardrop, sits near a curve of the river in the vivid, lemon-lime field, to our left of center. One brown and one white cow graze across the river, to our right. Above tawny-brown hills lining the horizon, sunlight from our left turns the tops of the band of clouds pale pink, and the undersides are grayish-purple. The sky above is turquoise. The artist signed the lower right corner, “M J Heade.”
Martin Johnson Heade, Sunlight and Shadow: The Newbury Marshes, c. 1871/1875, oil on canvas, John Wilmerding Collection, 2010.74.1

Environment

Artists are keen observers of the natural world. The landscapes they create capture the progression of seasons, the changing climate, and conservation concerns.

  • We look across a wide, low clearing at a mountain rising beyond rocky hills, which are mostly covered in pines and blazing red and orange autumn trees, in this horizontal landscape painting. The green grass of the clearing is littered with dead trees and stumps. Beyond a narrow opening between the hills, almost at the center of the composition, a massive mountain towers against the powder-blue sky, nearly reaching the top edge of the painting. The mountain’s jagged face is mottled with warm tones of cinnamon, rust, and caramel brown. The scene is bathed in warm light coming from our right but pewter-gray storm clouds move in from the upper left to encircle the mountain peak. Closest to us, a line of broken tree trunks spans the width of the painting, mixed with scarlet-red, marigold-orange, and green vegetation and reeds. A silvery pond lies just beyond them to our left. Tiny in scale within the landscape, a horse and rider gallop along a wide dirt road emerging from the lower right toward a white house nestled at the foot of the hill to our left. The rider wears a knee-length, denim-blue tunic and red leggings. Upon closer inspection, two children and a white dog become visible, walking toward the rider. A straw-yellow structure sits against the hill to our right. A horse-drawn carriage moves away from the house in the far distance, where the road curves toward the notch. The artist signed and dated the painting as if he wrote directly onto a broken trunk in the lower left corner of the painting: “T. Cole 1839.”
  • A tall, rocky, pyramid-shaped mountain rising sharply from flat field of snow and silhouetted against bands of steel-gray clouds nearly fills this horizontal landscape painting. Narrow bands of snow rest in the crevices of the dark brown mountain, especially on the cliff-like face to our right. A much lower, flat-topped butte in the distance to our right has cobalt-blue shadows. Near the foot of the mountain and at the bottom center of the composition, one person, tiny in scale, rides in a sled pulled by several dogs while another person pushes at the back. The horizon comes less than a quarter of the way up the composition and the sky above and around the mountain is a blanket of gray clouds shaded indigo blue on their undersides. The artist signed the work with dark paint against the white snow in the lower right corner: “Rockwell Kent.”
  • Two cows stand side-by-side to our right with a path leading to a row of buildings in the distance to our left in this dreamlike, stylized landscape painting. The forms are simplified, angular, and blocky, and seem to be overlapping, though most of the shapes painted with blended strokes. To our right, a black cow stands beyond a brown cow, both facing our left in profile. The heads are triangular and come to exaggerated points under curving horns, and the ribs of the cow closer to us are painted with curving black lines down the body. Their legs also taper to exaggeratedly pointed, tiny hooves. A milk jug sits to our right, behind them. The row of five buildings to our left are created with blocks of white, golden yellow, brick red, and black. A sprig of leaves and a lacy white flower grow to our left on the row of oatmeal-brown rocks jutting up along the bottom edge of the composition. An abstracted shirt-like form floats to our left against the background of teal green that covers the bottom two-thirds of the painting. The area above the buildings is painted with a field of silvery charcoal gray. The artist signed and dated the painting with tiny letters under the brown cow: "Y. Kuniyoshi 23."
  • A buoy and a sailboat with three men and a woman tip at an angle on rolling aquamarine and azure-blue waves in this horizontal painting. The white wooden boat sails away from us toward the right side of the composition. Its unfurled sail is tinged with taupe and pale blue and attached to a pale wooden mast. The boat has a low cabin with round portholes on the side we can see. Two of the men are shirtless, tanned, and have their backs to us. One sits in the cockpit wearing a white hat with a short brim as he holds the tiller. The other man stands on the deck with his arms crossed. Beyond the standing man, the woman lies along the roof of the cabin, her head at about the height of the man’s chest. She is barefoot and lies on her stomach wearing long, blue pants and a watermelon-pink halter top and matching kerchief covering her hair. The third man stands to her right, his slender body angled toward us while holding onto the mast with one hand and rigging with the other. The woman and third man have noticeably pale skin. A buoy near the boat is battleship-gray with streaks of rust along its base and a copper-green bell inside. It floats just to the left of and tips toward the boat on a rising swell. The scene is lit by bright sunlight coming from the left side of the baby-blue sky with bands of feathery clouds, which takes up the top two-thirds of the composition. The artist signed the lower right, “EDWARD HOPPER.”
  • Painted in golden tones of butter and harvest yellow, tawny brown, and olive green, this horizontal landscape painting has a low wall stretching diagonally from the lower right corner off to our left, dividing a river to our right from a grassy lawn to our left. The waist-high wall is lined with tall trees with high canopies, which fill most of the composition. Close to us, at the lower center of the painting, a hoop rests against the end of a second, low wall. A short ladder with four rungs leans against a tree trunk in the lower left corner. Only a sliver of the ivy-covered trunk rises along the left edge of the painting. A short distance away, two chairs near a small, square-topped wooden table sit on the grass under the long shadows of the tall trees. Two or three people, seeming to wear long skirts, stand or sit on the long wall that spans the width of the painting, behind a nearby tree trunk. A navy-blue garment lies over the wall to our right, and a black dog walks on the wall near the center of the painting, beyond the people. Barely visible, a small white dog stands with its front paws on the wall next to the black dog. A pathway alongside the trees and wall leads to a covered structure with a triangular pediment roof held up by fluted columns in the distance. Several long, low barges filled with people float in the river to our right. Red and white flags flutter in the breeze and the full, rectangular sails of a couple of the boats are raised. The placid surface of the river is thickly painted, especially where the small disk of the pale yellow sun reflects on the golden surface of the water below. The horizon comes about a third of the way up the composition and is lined in the deep distance with a band of loosely painted, muted, mauve-pink buildings and trees.
  • This nearly abstract painting is created with flowing bands and triangular forms of mostly single colors in caramel brown, pine and spring green, apricot orange, plum purple, or fuchsia, with some bands of unpainted canvas in this horizontal painting. A wide, tan-colored band rises from the lower left corner toward the upper right. There are triangular forms in pumpkin orange to our left and another near the lower right. With the brown band, they recall hills along a valley. Pink, orange, deep purple, and fuchsia are painted in bands in the lower right corner and across the bottom. Above the tan band, a wide swath of spring and dark green may suggest hills beyond, with swirling yellow, black, pink, and blue under a patch of lavender purple that spans the top edge of the canvas, which could be the sky. The painting is signed and dated at the lower right corner, “Frankenthaler ’73.”
  • A woman wrapped in silver and gold robes lifts fabric to reveal her head and face in this freestanding cast bronze sculpture. The woman’s skin and a garment held in place with a belt are polished gold. The fabric that drapes over her head and wraps around her garment is silver, and her hair is dark brown. In this photograph, her body faces us, and she tips her head to look down and slightly to our left. She has a long nose, high cheekbones, a pointed chin, and her lips are closed. The belt has an oval green stone at the front, and it wraps tightly around her ribcage just under her bare breasts. The gold garment puddles around her bare feet, and a bit spills off the front edge of the brown, bronze square platform, which sits on a slightly wider marble base swirled with white and russet brown.
  • We look across a profusion of vivid red, blush-pink, and white flowers lining a stony shoreline in this almost square landscape painting. The scene is loosely painted so some details are indistinct, especially the blossoms of the flowers, which are dabs of pink and red. The flowers have long, sage-green stems shaded with flicks of navy blue. The field of flowers covers the bottom third of the composition, and a vibrant green and blue bush peeks in from the right edge of the painting. Beyond the field of flowers is a powder-blue body of water with low, rocky formations, like giant, shallow boulders rolling across the surface of the water. The rocks are painted in shades of white tinged with pink, blue, and green with daubs of rust orange along their edges. An outcropping farther in the distance to our left is carpeted with patches of pea green and canary yellow. One rock formation in the middle of the composition almost spans the width of the painting. Beyond it is a small boat with white sails drifting on the water. In the deep distance is another long finger of oyster-white land stretching across the left half of the horizon, which comes two-thirds of the way up the composition. A lone bird flies through the milk-white sky that fills the top third of the scene. Some patches along the bottom edge of the painting are beige, where the canvas on which this is painted is visible. The artist signed and dated the lower left, “Childe Hassam 1891.”
  • Tall, billowing, lavender-purple and shell-pink clouds line the distant horizon over a vast plain of flat grassy land in this horizontal landscape painting. Closest to us to the lower left, a tree with a gnarled trunk and round, sage-green canopy sits mostly in shadow. A river curves from near the tree to cut across most of the landscape in a tight S-shape. One plump haystack, shaped like a giant teardrop, sits near a curve of the river in the vivid, lemon-lime field, to our left of center. One brown and one white cow graze across the river, to our right. Above tawny-brown hills lining the horizon, sunlight from our left turns the tops of the band of clouds pale pink, and the undersides are grayish-purple. The sky above is turquoise. The artist signed the lower right corner, “M J Heade.”
  • Vertical bands of vibrant, saturated color are created with upright dashes of paint in this abstract, square painting. The colors range widely from primary colors to intense jewel tones, and there is no repeating pattern. The dashes are also varying widths, and bands occasionally repeat so there could be two or more of a single color before another shade marches up the canvas.

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Weather

From the serenity of a snowy scene to the gloom of a rainy day, artists capture the emotional effects of weather.

We look across rolling, bright green pastures and honey-brown farmland to a cluster of buildings nestled beyond a copse of trees, along the horizon in this horizontal, stylized landscape painting. The scene is painted with mostly flat areas of color. Closest to us, low, vibrant green pastures are bisected by a narrow, gingerbread-brown path. The path meanders from the lower left corner of the composition to a metal gate, near the right edge of the painting. A short distance from us to our left, a man wearing navy-blue pants, shirt, and hat walks along the top of a hill, hands in pockets. Two black and white cows and one brown and white cow graze nearby. In the distance, the copse of trees is painted with pockets of pumpkin orange, lavender purple, sky blue, and spring and muted sage green. Beyond the trees, a white, square, two-story house with a spruce-blue roof sits within the grouping of buildings. Another white building with a blue roof stands a bit to our right. Wisps of white clouds dot a vivid blue sky, which is tinted with pale pink and lilac purple near the horizon. The artist signed and dated the work in harvest yellow against a mound of dark brown rocks in the lower right corner: “P. Gauguin 90.”

Landscapes

The beauty of the natural world has beguiled artists for centuries, and they have taken a wide variety of approaches to depicting it. Impressionists studied light and color, the artists of the Hudson Valley School created monumental views of the American sublime. And abstract artists have capture how landscapes feel rather than how they appear.