How Does Landscape Art Contain Emotion? | NZ Fine Prints

How Does Landscape Art Contain Emotion?

If you’ve ever looked at landscape art you might have wondered what the artist was trying to capture. As with most art, understanding an artist’s intention can require some time. Look long enough at a landscape painting, and you might be able to feel the emotions that the painter was trying to capture! Landscapes make popular art prints for their ability to evoke emotions. In today’s blog post, we’re exploring which techniques artists use to create evocative landscapes.

 

The history of landscapes

The most famous landscape artists are usually associated with the Romanticism movement in art. There’s a whole range of styles within romantic landscape paintings, from peaceful, pastoral visions of nature, to awe-inspiring visions of mountains and storms. A lot of romantic landscapes were used to comment on religious or philosophical ideas, but it was in this movement that the association between landscapes and emotion was forged. This association more or less still exists today; we still expect contemporary landscape art to evoke emotions when we look at it. In many ways, the Romanticists set the blueprint for the common techniques used in landscapes, especially in regard to capturing certain emotions. Below, we’re going to look at three.

 

1. Colour

The colours chosen by an artist can have a huge impact on the effect it will produce for the audience. One of the most famous landscape painters, Joseph Mallord William Turner (usually just called Willian Turner), was a master at using colour in landscapes. In fact, Turner was a key reason that landscape paintings became popular in the first place. Turner painted both sunsets and sunrises over Venice multiple times in his life, and in all these paintings the colours aren’t necessarily realistic. Often, he painted scenes like this with a reduced palette. All the bright colours are used to depict the rising or setting sun, and the rest of the image is grey or yellow, almost unfinished looking. This forces the eye to focus on the sun, just like how a real sunset or sunrise captures your attention; everything else around you seems to fade away. A lot of early landscapes also used warm colours to create feelings of nostalgia or comfort, especially when depicting the countryside and trying to foster a sense of kinship with the land.

 

2. Brush techniques

The brushstrokes also change the way a landscape feels. Harsh, sharp brush techniques make the bristles of the brush stand out a lot more in the paint, and this can dramatically alter the atmosphere of a piece of art. One of the most interesting things about this is that the effect can change based on the context creating a sense of grief, or chaos, or even awe. Landscape painters in particular tend to use visible brushstrokes to reinforce the power of nature.

 

3. Scale

Landscape artists often choose subjects that are overwhelmingly big, like mountains, the sea, or the sky, and all these subjects have roots in the romantic origins of landscape paintings. Romanticists were fascinated by an emotion that they called the “sublime”, and this was true of Romantic poets and writers too, not just visual artists. To the Romanticists, the sublime was best described as a feeling of being overwhelmed by the sheer scale and beauty of the world. You may have even felt this yourself, when looking up into a clear starry sky, or down at a rolling view from the top of a mountain. It’s an experience that makes you feel tiny and insignificant, but also enthralled by the beauty of the scene. For the Romanticists, it usually had an explicit connection to Christianity too; they felt they were experiencing God through the majesty of nature, so in many ways, the sublime was a spiritual experience. Quite a hard thing to attempt to capture in a painting! To try to replicate the unique mixture of powerlessness and euphoria, early landscape artists chose to paint things that were massive, and usually tried to show this to the audience by painting tiny people into the scene for scale, showing them dwarfed by the scene around them.

 

Interested in landscape art for your home?

Here at NZ Fine Prints, we have a whole collection of contemporary New Zealand landscape art, showcasing our own unique environment and its beauty. Browse our collection to find some of the best landscape canvas art prints in NZ, like Dale Gallagher’s Majestic Fiordland, and Church of the Good Shepherd Lake Tekapo. Landscape prints can bring true character to your home or office and make a great way to celebrate the stunning environment here in Aotearoa. To find out more, feel free to contact us today!

The Best New Zealand Landscapes for Art Prints | NZ Fine Prints

The Best New Zealand Landscapes for Art Prints

When exploring the world of framed wall art in New Zealand, you can quickly discover that there’s a wealth of options. Landscapes are a popular pick, especially because there’s no shortage of incredible scenery in Aotearoa, and thus no shortage of art featuring stunning natural features and breathtakingly vistas, viewed through the lens of the artist.  In this blog, we look at some of the best New Zealand landscapes, and discuss why they lend themselves so well to art.

 

Aotea / Great Barrier Island

Aotea, known to most as Great Barrier Island, is part of Auckland’s well-known Hauraki Gulf. The island lies around 100 kilometres from the central Auckland harbour. It’s the sixth-biggest island in the country, and Mount Hobson—the island’s peak—reaches over 600 meters above the sea. Aotea is the ancestral home of Ngāti Rehua, and the island has two marae, one affiliated with Ngāti Rehua, and the other with another local iwi; Ngātiwai. 

Print of Great Barrier Island by Justin Summerton

During the colonisation of New Zealand, Aotea was settled by Europeans for mining, Kauri logging, and was later the location of New Zealand’s last whaling station. As time went on, more on more of the island fell under the protection of the Department of Conservation, and these days, over half of the island is a nature reserve. Just under 1000 people live on the island, and those who visit tend to feel like it is like stepping backward through time.  

Aotea’s position just off the coast of Auckland is a big part of what makes it so great for art. It’s pronounced shape in the heart of the harbour draws the eye, and it hasn’t been settled in the same way that other islands—like Waiheke—have. Even though it’s just next door to New Zealand’s biggest city, the island remains largely how it always has.

 

Piopiotahi / Milford Sound

Milford Sound Canvas Print by Dale Gallagher

Milford Sound, or Piopiotahi in Māori, almost needs no introduction. The South Island fjord is world-famous, having been named the world’s number one travel destination in the TripAdvisor 2008 Traveler’s Choice Awards. Piopiotahi is potentially New Zealand’s most famous attraction, and in the age of the Travel Instagram, the magical location has charmed thousands. Rudyard Kipling even once called it the eighth Wonder of the World!  It’s no wonder Milford Sound makes such a popular subject for landscape art—it’s hard to think of any part of New Zealand that looks more visually arresting. View our Milford Sound prints for more!

 

Aoraki / Mount Cook

Mt Cook & The Tasman River by Peter Beadle

The tallest mountain in New Zealand, the mighty Aoraki reaches 3,724 metres above sea level, towering over the Southern Alps; the mountain range that forms the spine of the South Island. Mount Cook has long attracted avid mountain climbers, with several summits, and views of nearby glaciers.  Ngāi Tahu, one of the main iwi in the south of New Zealand, have a strong connection to Aoraki. They hold the mountain as a sacred ancestor—Aoraki forms a physical link between the natural world, and the supernatural. It’s easy to see why the locals hold the mountain in such high regard—it truly is awe-inspiring. Mountains—particularly volcanoes—are almost always held in high regard by indigenous peoples, and perhaps this sense of awe is also why so many artists are drawn to it, in an attempt to capture the immense sense of scope the mountain has. View our Mount Cook prints to find the perfect landscape piece for your space.

 

Want a piece of New Zealand’s landscape in your home?

Here at NZ Fine Prints, we sell a huge range of NZ landscape prints, from a number of celebrated artists. If you’re looking to decorate your home with a piece of New Zealand’s natural majesty, you can’t do much better than a framed print. See the range for yourself in our shop today!