Painting Buildings in Oils

James Willis

• Publisher: The Crowood Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781785008412
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Art Techniques

Painting buildings is an exciting and versatile genre - it allows you to enjoy the lines of architecture but also to add feeling and context to a picture. This practical book explains the full depth of the subject, from first sketches to final presentation. Using a range of examples, it is packed with advice and information, and follows the riches of painting the built landscape. Not just a handy reference, this is a beautiful and inspirational guide for every artist who wants to capture and interpret a scene. Topics covered include: Drawing - practise observation and sketching to identify the principal lines of view. Perspective - understand three-dimensional structures and their position to each other and in space. Oils - use the versatility of the paint to express and experiment with your ideas. Location - develop your paintings outdoors and in the studio. Style - add figures, weather and atmosphere to your work to give it character and mood. Finally, Inspiration - learn new ideas and themes from finished examples by a number of leading artists.

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

‘An architect must have a knowledge of drawing so that he can readily make sketches to show the appearance of the work he proposes.’ So wrote the architect Marcus Vitruvius Pollio in the first century BC. In his ten books on architecture he writes about the training required for an architect in the Roman world. The idea that a budding architect needed the ability to make sketches reveals that drawing underlines the understanding of structures. His knowledge of geometry is also mentioned, and is no doubt, by implication, the method for understanding perspective – or at least a Roman version of it.

For the artist about to paint buildings in oil paint, the same is true: a good understanding of drawing and perspective is essential. Buildings are, after all, three-dimensional structures, and their position in relation to each other and in space is the aspect of painting architecture that defines it as a genre. The principle of optical perspective as well as mathematical perspective theory both contribute to painting the illusion of architectural space.

Afternoon Light in the City (detail); James Willis, oil on canvas.

A basic understanding of the theories first invented by the Renaissance artist and architect Fillipo Brunelleschi (1377–1446) and written down by Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472) will give an artist an idea of what to look for in a view of buildings, and how the perspective angles work best together to create a sense of space. Once familiar with these rules of perspective, artists are free to interpret them to suit their pictorial vision. In classical perspective, proportions were everything – so much so that artists became totally absorbed by them. The Italian Renaissance artist Paolo Uccello (1397–1475) was so obsessed by perspective that his wife said he thought more of it than he did of her!

Of course, artists can choose to ignore the rules of perspective when painting buildings, and work in a more naïve style. This was an approach adopted in the early twentieth century by the Modernists to try and find a more intuitive and personal response to a subject unrestricted by the rules of Western art developed during the Renaissance.

Out on location, an artist can use a knowledge of perspective to identify the principal lines of a view to transfer into a sketch; with these in place the sketch can take shape. As in all things, the more practice in observation and sketching, the better the understanding of forms and how buildings relate in space and design.

In time, observing and understanding how perspective works becomes second nature, but continued practice, as they say, makes perfect.

Good Morning New York; James Willis, oil on canvas.

The stunning view of New York in the early morning was inspired by a trip to the top of the Freedom Tower with some good friends. On this occasion there was not the opportunity to make a drawing, so many photographs were taken as the morning sun dramatically highlighted the tops of those famous skyscrapers. Back in the studio, detailed drawings of the view were made. For this particular painting, the transfer drawing was very minimal and the painting was built up on the bluish mid-tones of the under-painting where colours were blurred together to create a hazy effect. The fuller dark tones and local colours of the buildings were added next, taking care to remember the perspective design and those long avenues that cut through the city.

The oil-painting artist will also need to gather knowledge and skills through the study and use of the medium. Paintings of buildings in oil give the artist a great opportunity to demonstrate the versatility of the medium, using it in a variety of consistencies from thickened paint to thinner glazes. Oil paint has a long history, and experimentation must have happened over the centuries in order for the medium to become the most widely used and expressive in art history. Oil’s rich pigmentation and thick texture allows for it to be used in a variety of ways: thinned with solvents such as turpentine and white spirit, extended with oils and other mediums, or used specifically as impasto straight from the tube. It can even be thickened still further with the addition of wax or thickening impasto medium, and textured with the addition of sand or small beads made especially for the purpose.

Oil paint can therefore be used in its thinnest form right through to specially thickened mixtures to express the artist’s ideas. For textures in buildings it is ideal, and once familiar with the opportunities it provides, the artist can exploit its versatility. Armed with the knowledge of these theories, techniques and skills, and with an enduring interest of architecture, painting buildings in oils can begin.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF PAINTING BUILDINGS IN OILS

The ancient Romans decorated the walls of their homes in fresco paintings, some of which survive in places such as Pompeii and Herculaneum. Purely architectural scenes are rare, but it is in ancient Greece and Rome that something close to paintings of buildings that we would recognize today originated. During the centuries that followed, painting was most commonly used for the church or state, and usually depicted a biblical scene, or illustrated a theological or religious story, or was used for the portrait of a monarch or some other important person. Rarely is anything resembling a building or urban scene the main subject of a painting at this time. Occasionally, however, scenes containing buildings as part of the subject appear in the delightful miniature illuminations in prayer books known as books of hours. The Limbourg brothers, working in fifteenth-century France, are particularly well known for their detailed illustrations in the book the Très Riches Heures du Duc du Berry. None of these were painted in oils, though artists in Germany and Flanders were beginning to use oils for the painting of fine detail on panels. In his drawing, possibly for an unrealized painting of Saint Barbara in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium, Jan Van Eyck (1390–1441) shows the saint sitting in front of a large Gothic cathedral of a type being built at that time in northern Europe. The oil technique developed by Van Eyck was perfectly suited for the depiction of fine architectural detail, and can be found in many paintings of that era made in this region.

The Street; Johannes Vermeer, oil on canvas (1658). RIJKS MUSEUM, AMSTERDAM

In this view of buildings in a street in Delft, the artist Vermeer has used all the physical qualities of oil paint to depict the textures of bricks, cobbles, wooden shutters and decaying plaster. His observation of the smallest details makes this one of the earliest realistic street scenes.

It is from the northern artists, and quite possibly from the detailed architecture in the backgrounds of their paintings, that the development of painted buildings in oil really begins. Their work was often sought out by Italian collectors, and moved along the trade routes between the Flemish and German provinces and the wealthy trading cities such as Genoa, Venice and Florence. As a consequence of this, Italian artists saw how oil paint was able to represent realistic detail, colour and textures. In Venice, in particular, oil painting was taken up by Gentile Bellini (1429–1507), his brother Giovanni (1430–1516), Giorgione (1478–1510), Titian (1490–1576) and their contemporaries. In their hands, the limits of oils’ versatility and expressive potential were explored, developed and perfected. Amongst the hundreds of religious altarpieces and portraits made in Venice, architecture began to creep into the backgrounds. In 1496 Gentile Bellini painted the city of Venice as the setting for a procession of figures. The accurate depiction of the Basilica of St Mark’s, the base of the campanile, and the buildings surrounding the piazza must be amongst the first large-scale oil paintings of a city ever made.

The tradition of painting buildings in oils had begun. During the Renaissance, architecture features as a major component in paintings, often to demonstrate the artist’s skill at depicting realistic space with the newly invented rules of perspective. Whereas Venice helped to make the use of oil popular for painting buildings, Holland began to develop the possibility of a cityscape as the sole subject of a painting. In the seventeenth century, Dutch artists painted what they saw in incredible observed detail, building on the earlier traditions of their predecessors centuries before. In his view of Delft, painted around 1660, Johannes Vermeer (1632–1675) concentrates on the buildings of the town seen from across the river. The careful observation of architectural detail, perspectives and composition is surprisingly accurate, leading some to consider that Vermeer used a camera obscura to project the image of the town on to his panel. Although this cannot be proven, it is known that optical devices such as these were around in seventeenth-century Holland.

Venice: The Dogana and San Giorgio Maggiore; J.M.W. Turner, oil on canvas (1834). NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART, WASHINGTON

Turner trained as an architect at the beginning of his career, therefore painting buildings was always of interest to him and helped him to learn the art of perspective. Venice: The Dogana and San Giorgio Maggiore was completed after his trip to Venice in September 1833, when views of the city were becoming very popular amongst his contemporaries. The fact that he painted this in oil rather than watercolour reflected the seriousness of his aspirations for this finished painting. The painting has a low perspective, showing that Turner wanted the architecture to be viewed as it would be from the canal.

Perhaps the most famous painter of buildings is the Venetian artist Antonio Canaletto (1697–1768), who specialized in creating pictures of the city. Although views of cities including Venice were painted before him, Canaletto is considered the father of view painting. His light-filled visions of the city, with its picturesque arrangements of towers, domes, palaces and churches set along canals of blue water crowded with gondolas, are amongst the most enticing paintings of buildings ever created. In his paintings Canaletto exploited all manner of oil-paint effects to depict the varied architecture of the city. In his work it is possible to find smooth wet-in-wet effects, impasto textures using a variety of brushes, and even the scratching through of a wet paint surface to score architectural lines and details, which, in themselves, cast shadows and furrows on the surface of his paintings.

Amazingly one of Canaletto’s sketchbooks survives in the Accademia Gallery in Venice, and shows his approach to recording and sketching the city. In his detailed line drawings of the palaces along the Grand Canal and the piazzas he makes careful notes of colours, textures and even where the light and shade fall on both buildings and water. Art historians are still undecided as to whether Canaletto also used the camera obscura for his studies.

In the middle of his career Canaletto travelled to London, where he stayed for about ten years, to paint views of the city and other locations around England. His recording of the unique details of life in eighteenth-century London reveals acute observation of information such as shop signs in Charing Cross and water vessels on the Thames. At the same time, the idea of painting buildings in oil caught on, and artists such as Samuel Scott (1702–1772) and William Marlow (1740–1813) are amongst the first English specialists in the genre.

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851), working into the middle of the nineteenth century, explored the expressive textures and substance of oil paint like no other artist at the time. His early paintings of buildings (mostly watercolours) are very much in the manner of the traditional architects’ illustration. In fact, he is known to have remarked that if he could have had his time over again he would have liked to have come back as an architect! But it is in oil paintings that his individuality broke through. Buildings are enveloped in scumbles and glazes of paint touching them with the effects of light and shade, as well as a vision of almost abstract intensity where the paint itself becomes the subject of the painting.

During his trip to Venice in 1833, Turner was often observed sightseeing and drawing from a gondola. This is probably from where he first sketched the composition for his painting of one of the greatest and best known views of Venice, looking over the Bacino towards the church of San Giorgio Maggiore with the Dogana (Custom House) located to the right. In it, Turner has used light to his advantage to manipulate colourful washes and reflections, creating a sunny and restful painting, which also highlights Venice’s architectural glories. The depiction of the architecture is contrasted with the way he has used shadows in the foreground and a collection of dark gondolas and shipping, which draws the attention towards the clean lines and brilliant light and colour used for the church and surrounding area, making the architecture mor...