Oil on Paper on cardboard
38.0 x 45.5 cms
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Fearnley's luminous oil depicts a romantic 'plein airiste' at work, equipped with the tools of his trade, a tripod stool, mahlstick and paintbox whose open lid served as an easel. Numerous drawings, which Fearnley made during his Italian tour of 1832-35, served as the basis of a number of later paintings, including the present picturesque view of Sorrento. It shows the same well-dressed gentleman who appears in Fearnley's painting of Sorrento beach (Nasjonalgalleriet, Oslo), executed eight years earlier. While the model's identity remains unresolved, it is likely to have been Charles West Cope (1811-1890), the English painter whom Fearnley met in the summer of 1834. Fearnley, a leading exponent of plein air painting, presents us here with a glimpse of his own working method.Among the greatest innovations of nineteen century European art was plein air painting. Artists dispersed as widely as Joseph William Mallord Turner and John Constable in England, the Welsh-born Thomas Jones, the Belgian Simon Denise, the foremost French artists Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes, Camille Corot and Théodore Rousseau, Carl Blechen in Germany, Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg and Christen Kobke in Denmark, Johan Christian Dahl and Thomas Fearnley in Norway pioneered working sur le motif which, in turn, paved the way for impressionism. The small oil studies, mostly painted on paper and executed outdoors, became a distinguished feature of art starting around 1800. The center of this revolutionary, international movement was Rome with its luminous, claudian countryside ' the Roman campagna' and with the arrival of the Frenchman Valeciennes in the capital of the ancient world. His treatise 'Elémens de Perspective Praqtique' , first published in 1800 and again in a substantially amplified second edition in 1820 exerted great influence. That treatise, indeed, is essential to the understanding of the progress of landscape painting in the first half of the 19th Century. Valenciennes theories, in short, possessed two quite distinct ambitions, the first principally concerned paintings made in the studio, the second favoured practising plein air painting. The first was calculated 'to show nature as it could be', elevating nature beyond herself to convey to us"sensations profondes et délicieuses" (Eéments de perspective pratique, Paris, 1820, p.302). In order to achieve this the artist must be an "homme de génie" (op. cit., p. 307), with a knowledge of the sciences of drawing, perspective, anatomy, architecture, chemistry, physics and natural history and familiarity with classical literature was also a prerequisite. It is the tenor of Valenciennes' own finished landscapes through which he transformed French landscape painting. The frivolity and hedonism of the Rococo was substituted for the moral tone and idealised beauty of the historic, neo-classical landscape. 2,& - 2 - More relevant to the work of Fearnley is Valenciennes' second aim to 'present nature as faithfully as possible' (op. cit. P. 307) It is here that he presents what is perhaps the first system for painting out-of-doors, advising on the thought processes involved in making 'Etudes d'après Nature'. A few of his essential maxims can be tabulated:a. Most artists make the mistake of wishing to finish studies which must be no more than quickly done maquettes& These are carried out primarily 'pour saisir la Nature sur le fait'. b. Since nature changes all the time&. 'it is absurd for an artist to spend a whole day copying one view Nature. We have known lots of artists who have been unable to finish their paintings because Nature has changed!'c. 'Do not attempt, when sketching out-of-doors, to create detail. That takes more than two hours&.. and if studying the sun rising or setting, take no more than half an hour!' d. 'It is good to paint the same view at different times of day. The changes are so remarkable and astonishing that one can scarcely recognise the same objects'. (op. cit. P. 336)It is precisely these maxims which can only be expressed in plein air painting that Fearnley wanted to convey to us, the onlookers, in the above painting. Ironically painted in the studio in Amsterdam in 1841 and reflecting on his Italian sojourn, it sums up Fearnley's great achievements and peripatetic career. Painted in a manner at once spontaneous and improvisatory, the painting is charged with a sense of immediacy, typical of out-of-doors painting and pays tribute to his close friend and tutor Johan Christian Dahl who demanded from his pupils 'real' lighting conditions and 'truth to nature'. It is, in part, due to the innovations pursued in their own 'private' work (the picture never left the estate of the artist), that Dahl was inspired to recommend after Fearnley's death that the Nasjonalgalleriet acquire from his estate small oil studies rather than large, finished works. The gallery ignored his advice, not yet having kept pace with the perceptual and conceptual advances of the artists. At the time all manner of patrons pursued both artists with commissions for conventional landscape views, Dahl lamented being over-committed while in Italy, while their studies remained unappreciated. They held currency, however, among artists, and possessed a more elevated status, as evidence by Dahl's recognition of the artist's merit of Fearnley's oil studies.
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Sigurd Willoch, Maleren Thomas Fearnley, Oslo 1930, illustrated page 131
Manchester, Whitford Art Gallery & Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, 'Natures Way': Romantic Landscapes from Norway, January - June 1993, Cat. No. 44 illustrated page 57.
