Historical Painting Techniques, Materials, and Studio Practice

Figure 4. Esaias van de Ve lde, Winter Landscape, signed and dated 1623. Panel, 25. 9 X 30.4 em. Th e Na tional Gallery, London (6269).

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ish practice, but this underpaint is more varied, not restricted to sharply

defined bands of color receding into the composition. Throughout the fo re­

ground and middle ground the underpaint is a web of grayish green and

yellow passages, worked wet-into-wet.

The landscape paintings of Esaias van de Velde, produced during his years in

Haarlem (1609-1618) and in the Hague until his death in 1630, are central

to the development of the naturalistic landscape. Though Esaias was trained

by the Flemish inunigrant Gillis van Coninxloo, he developed most of the

elements of technique that were to define the work of the naturalistic tonal

landscapists, who included his pupils Jan van Goyen and Pieter de Neyn. This

is particularly apparent in his winter scenes, where the bare landscape en­

courages a particularly limited tonality. The Winter Landscape of 1623, now

in London, is prepared with a thinly rubbed ground that barely fills the grain

of the oak panel (Fig. 4). A cross section from the upper edge of the sky

shows this extremely thin layer, textured on the underside by the grain of

the wood (layer 1) (Plate 32). This preparation is barely perceptible on the

painting; the warm pinkish tone that dominates passages, such as the distance

at the right and parts of the fo reground, is created by the wood showing

through the slightly tinted ground (12). In a loose and suggestive underdraw­

ing, the artist situated the main elements of the landscape and indicated the

fo liage along the horizon with a few looped strokes but made no provision

fo r the figures (Fig. 5). Following the guide of the underdrawing, he toned

Historical Painting Techniques, Materials, and Studio Practice