Watercolor Artist – October 2019

12 Watercolor artist | OCTOBER 2019

Anatomy of a Painting

The Long View

An English landscape artist travels to Paris

and paints one of its cherished sites.

By Jerry N. Weiss

W

ith the end of the Napo-

leonic Wars in 1815,

relations between France

and Great Britain began to thaw. Th e

cultural benefi ts were almost immedi-

ate. Soon after the French defeat at

Waterloo, British artists exhibited at

the Paris Salon, and French painters

sent their work to London. Art histo-

rian Patrick Noon has written that

“a profound engagement between two

previously unsympathetic schools of

painting resulted in innovations that

would radically aff ect the course of

modern art in Western Europe.”

Undoubtedly, the most famous

example of cross-pollination was the

epiphany that French painter Eugène

Delacroix (1798–1863) experienced

in front of a painting by British artist

John Constable (1776–1837). As in

the war recently past, the British had

the upper hand. Th eir art—particu-

larly in the watercolor medium—

was considered more advanced.

One of the many British artists who

visited France after the wars was a

gifted amateur named Amelia Long

(née Hume), Lady Farnborough

(1762–1837). Her parents were art

collectors who sat for their portraits

by Romney and Reynolds, and her

husband was a founder of the National

Gallery. A noted horticulturalist, Long

was the favorite student of watercolor

prodigy Th omas Girtin (English, 1775–

1802), whose style infl uenced her

work. From him, she learned the prac-

tices of applying broad washes, adding

color to her sketches on the spot and

using water refl ections in her composi-

tions. She also followed his example of

choosing large, coarse sheets of paper,

working with a limited palette and

leaving incomplete passages.

Long visited France at least by

1817, when she was painting in

Normandy. Two years later, she

painted Notre-Dame From the Ile St.

Louis. While she’s best known for her

English landscapes, it’s safe to venture

that she never painted a more success-

ful evocation of atmosphere than she

did with this watercolor. WA

Jerry N. Weiss is a contributing writer

to fi ne art magazines and teaches

at the Art Students League of New York.

Notre-Dame From the

Ile St. Louis (1819; water-

color on paper, 7x10¾ )

by Amelia Long

Long’spanoramicview

ofParisisreminiscentof

similar compositions by

her teacher, Thomas

Girtin, whose work Long

and her husband

admired and collected.

It appearsthat

Long paintedthe

broad sky before

adding the distant

cathedral. Oncethe

upper portionwas

dry, Notre-Dame’s

towers were laidin.