Three men on horseback wearing elaborate military uniforms in cream white, crimson red, and gold almost fill this vertical painting. Lit dramatically from the upper left, the men all have peachy, tanned skin. Their red and white uniforms are trimmed liberally with gold. Each man wears a red sash across his chest, cream-white gloves that reach back to mid-forearm, and a tall hat topped with a single, stiff, white feather. At the center of the composition, the man closest to us rides a horse dappled with silver, steel gray, and black, which raises a front hoof as if in mid-stride. The horse and rider’s bodies are angled to our right, but the horse looks back to our left as the man looks directly at us with small brown eyes. His slender nose slopes to a brown handlebar moustache that curves over his pale peach mouth. He leans slightly back in the saddle, which is draped with a scarlet-red blanket with gold trim. The leg we see, to our left, is extended straight in the stirrup, and the man braces a brass trumpet adorned with gold tassels against that thigh. His helmet has a high, square, white crown that comes to points to each side and in front. The boxy shape is outlined in red and has the stiff, bushy feather at the top front and a red tassel hanging along one side. An arched brass plaque with a capital N is affixed to the front of the helmet over a narrow brim. Though held in place with a chin strap, the helmet is slightly askew. To our left and behind the central man, a white horse and rider face away from us. This rider’s upper body is turned back slightly to our right so we see him in profile as he holds a brass horn to his lips. To our right and set father back, the third rider and his gray horse are very loosely painted so features of his face and costume are not clear. All three stand on a ground painted with swipes of caramel brown, mustard yellow, and pine green. The background is slightly darker, in smoky tones of brown, gray, and black with flicks of red. A dark mass, perhaps a deep shadow, rises to the right, behind the third horseman.
Théodore Gericault, Mounted Trumpeters of Napoleon's Imperial Guard, 1813/1814, oil on canvas, Chester Dale Fund, 1972.25.1

Romanticism

Romanticists, who placed emotion and intuition before reason, caused a re-evaluation of the role of art and the artist. They believed in the importance of the individual, the personal, and the subjective. This late-18th and early-19th century movement was a backlash to the ideals of rationality that had remained central since the Renaissance.

  • A young woman reclines and reads a book near a stream that winds through a wooded landscape in this horizontal painting. Painted with rich pine green, trees tower along the riverbanks and fill most of the painting. The olive-colored water seems to have cut straight down over time, creating high banks painted with tones of caramel and honey brown. Steel and slate-gray boulders are scattered in intervals near the river. Deep in the hazy blue distance, mountains line the horizon, which comes halfway up the composition. In the lower left corner of the painting, close to the river, the woman lies on her stomach as she props herself up on her elbows to read. She has pale white skin and her long, dark hair falls over her shoulders. Her white shirt hangs low over her shoulders, and her rose-pink skirt falls just short of her bare feet.
  • We hover over a flax-yellow body of water lined with ships to our left and right, which are silhouetted against a moonlit, cloud-veiled sky in this horizontal landscape painting. The horizon comes about a third of the way up the composition. The moon hangs to our left of center in the sky, its light reflecting on the clouds in a bright, hourglass shape to create a tunnel-like effect. The sea below turns from a gold color close to us to pale blue along the horizon. To our left, one ship with gray sails is cut off by the edge of the canvas and another, also with gray sails, is situated farther from us. A small, dark rowboat with two passengers moves between them. Light from the windows in buildings along the distant horizon to our left reflect in the water, and another building, a factory, spouts white flame from its chimney. More dark ships line the waterway to our right, their spiky masts black against the sky. Three flames, one orange between two pale yellow fires, flare in the darkness in front of the ship closest to us. The forms of men shoveling coal, crates, and barges are dark silhouettes against the firelight and smoke. More rowboats float among the boats in the distance. Near the lower right corner of the canvas, a broad, flat fragment of wood floats close to us. The hot orange and black on the right side of the painting contrasts with the silvery gray, light blue, and white that fills much of the rest of the composition. The painting was created with thick, blended brushstrokes throughout, giving the scene a hazy look. The texture of some of the brushstrokes is especially noticeable, as where the moon casts white light onto the water and in the clouds. The artist signed a buoy floating to our left with his initials, “JMWT.”
  • 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.
  • Three men on horseback wearing elaborate military uniforms in cream white, crimson red, and gold almost fill this vertical painting. Lit dramatically from the upper left, the men all have peachy, tanned skin. Their red and white uniforms are trimmed liberally with gold. Each man wears a red sash across his chest, cream-white gloves that reach back to mid-forearm, and a tall hat topped with a single, stiff, white feather. At the center of the composition, the man closest to us rides a horse dappled with silver, steel gray, and black, which raises a front hoof as if in mid-stride. The horse and rider’s bodies are angled to our right, but the horse looks back to our left as the man looks directly at us with small brown eyes. His slender nose slopes to a brown handlebar moustache that curves over his pale peach mouth. He leans slightly back in the saddle, which is draped with a scarlet-red blanket with gold trim. The leg we see, to our left, is extended straight in the stirrup, and the man braces a brass trumpet adorned with gold tassels against that thigh. His helmet has a high, square, white crown that comes to points to each side and in front. The boxy shape is outlined in red and has the stiff, bushy feather at the top front and a red tassel hanging along one side. An arched brass plaque with a capital N is affixed to the front of the helmet over a narrow brim. Though held in place with a chin strap, the helmet is slightly askew. To our left and behind the central man, a white horse and rider face away from us. This rider’s upper body is turned back slightly to our right so we see him in profile as he holds a brass horn to his lips. To our right and set father back, the third rider and his gray horse are very loosely painted so features of his face and costume are not clear. All three stand on a ground painted with swipes of caramel brown, mustard yellow, and pine green. The background is slightly darker, in smoky tones of brown, gray, and black with flicks of red. A dark mass, perhaps a deep shadow, rises to the right, behind the third horseman.
  • Two minuscule people stand in the center of an expansive, rugged landscape dusted with snow in this horizontal painting. Snow nestles in among the tawny-brown ridges that roll like waves back to the horizon, which comes almost halfway up the composition. The people are painted with a few dabs of fawn brown, and they stand on a spit of land to our right of center. Mountainous ridges along the horizon are shaded in slate blue under a steely-blue sky.
  • We look across an expanse of a flat, grassy lawn at the towering spire of a stone church outlined against billowing clouds in this horizontal landscape painting. The lawn is dappled with light filtering through a line of trees with thick, green canopies to our left. The trees take up almost the left half of the composition, and they line a dirt path where three people walk. Tiny in scale, the people are painted with strokes of slate blue, red, white, and black. A few animals, perhaps cows, graze on the lawn near more trees on the far side of the green. Beyond the trees, the church sits on the horizon, which comes about a quarter of the way up the composition. Minuscule touches of yellow, black, and red may suggest more people in the deep distance. The pale blue sky is nearly filled with puffy parchment-white and mauve-tinged clouds.
  • From a grassy riverbank, we look across the placid surface of a river lined along the far bank with trees and farm animals in this horizontal landscape painting. The scene is painted loosely with brushstrokes visible throughout, so some details are difficult to make out. For the surface of the river, russet-brown and steel-gray paint skims lightly across the canvas and leaves some unpainted areas visible, creating the effect of light shimmering on the still water. On our left, a shallow wooden barge is propelled along the stream by two men in red caps with long poles. The boat carries a white horse wearing blinders and a harness. The riverbank beyond is lined with pale, sage-green grass tinged with gold, growing in front of a tangle of darker green trees and bushes. Across the water from us near the middle of the picture, a small rowboat sits in the shallows at the foot of a steep riverbank. Above, a white cottage with a reddish roof and chimney is tucked behind the trees, with a wooden rack full of hay next to it. Nearby, a plow and wheeled cart, highlighted with strokes of white, sit near more mounds of hay. Rocky fields reach into the distance. The vista is blocked to our right by another clump of trees and a rocky outcropping, rising from the stream, to our right of center. The steep, dark roof of a farmhouse is barely visible among the trees. Along the riverside to our right, a small group of cinnamon-brown and cream-white cows stand at water's edge. A rolling pasture stretches behind them to meet blue hills in the distance. Above, in the upper third of the painting, mottled white, pale rose, and gray clouds rolling across a steel-gray sky are reflected in the water below.
  • A crouching tiger to our left bares its fangs at a hissing snake wound around a tree to our right in this nearly square painting. Yellow eyes gleaming, the tiger stretches its front paws forward with ears pinned back, teeth bared, rump in the air, and its tail curling down near its back legs. The white fur of the tiger’s underbelly near the front legs glows in the sunlight. Light glints off the skin of the snake, which coils around the tree twice and flicks its forked tongue between gaping jaws. The grassy area around the tiger is painted in shades of gold, green, and mustard yellow. Behind the tiger, a sage-green plain stretches back on our left to rocky hills in the distance, with hints of blue sky and clouds beyond. The tree frames the scene on our right, its gnarled, split trunk extending off the top edge of the canvas and its roots reaching beyond the bottom edge, where the artist signed and dated the work: “Eug. Delacroix 1862.”
  • We look across a glittering waterway lined with long, low boats and sailboats at an ivory-white church in the distance to our right in this horizontal landscape painting. The horizon line comes about a third of the way up the composition, and wispy white clouds sweep across the brilliant azure-blue sky above. A row of buildings comes into view lining the canal to our right, with a terracotta-orange building followed by a cream-white building beyond, both angled toward the church. The church has a high dome rising over the temple-like front, which has columns supporting a triangular pediment. A tall bell tower rises to the left of the church. The low boats, gondolas, to our left are packed with people while a few gondolas floating in the center of the canal appear occupied only by their gondoliers who stand holding their poles. Painted in tones of ivory and peach, the sails of boats behind the gondolas to our left billow in the breeze while the sails of vessels docked to our right are furled. The structures, boats, and people cast shimmering reflections on the gently rippling surface of the water in the canal. Rows of boats and buildings lining the canal extend into the deep, hazy distance to our left.
  • We look out onto a landscape with low, grassy hills to the left, a lake to the right, and a brick building in the center distance below a sky filled with towering white clouds in this horizontal painting. A wooden fence closer to us crosses the landscape from the lower left corner and disappears where the land slopes down to meet the water at the center of the painting. Several black and white cows graze in the field beyond the fence to our left. Two men in a wooden boat pull in nets on the lake to our right near a pair of swans. The lake crosses the composition in the near distance, disappearing into a culvert farther back. A donkey pulls a small carriage with two people near a bridge that crosses the lake in the distance to our left. The brick manor house is visible through a break in the full, deep green trees that line the horizon, which comes halfway up the composition. The clouds cast noticeable shadows in the brightly sunlit scene.

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This square portrait shows the head and shoulders of a young woman in front of a spiky bush that fills much of the background except for a landscape view that extends into the deep distance to our right. The woman's body is angled to our right but her face turns to us. She has chalk-white, smooth skin with heavily lidded, light brown eyes, and her pale pink lips are closed. Pale blush highlights her cheeks, and she looks either at us or very slightly away from our eyes. Her brown hair is parted down the middle and pulled back, but tight, lively curls frame her face. Her hair turns gold where the light shines on it. She wears a brown dress, trimmed along the square neckline with gold. The front of the bodice is tied with a blue ribbon, and the lacing holes are also edged with gold. A sheer white veil covers her chest and is pinned at the center with a small gold ball. The bush fills the space around her head with copper-brown, spiky leaves. A river winds between trees and rolling hills in the distance to our right. Trees and a town along the horizon, which comes about halfway up the painting, is pale blue under an ice-blue sky.

Painting

Since ancient times, artists have made paintings to tell stories or capture beauty. They’ve used egg tempera, oil, and more recently acrylic to create compositions of all shapes and sizes. The results include radiant altarpieces, striking portraits, luminous landscapes, and abstract expressions.

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.