Look & Learn Guide: Mountains

• Fruit
• Faces
• Mountains
• Forests
• Trees and Buildings
• Tabletops

See how mountains can dominate the landscape or appear small and hazy in the distance.

John Frederick Kensett
View on the Hudson, 1865
This 19th-century landscape artist knew all the traditional tricks to make it seem that you could travel deep into his painting.
Guide (pdf) | Image (jpg, 1 mb)

 

Paul Cézanne
Mont Sainte-Victoire Seen from the Bibémus Quarry, c. 1897
Paul Cézanne manipulated the landscape to make the great mountain appear closer than it actually was. Cézanne has been called "the painter of distance that seems near."
Guide (pdf) | Image (jpg, 2 mb)

 

 

Marsden Hartley
Mont Sainte-Victoire (pink), 1927
Hartley builds a mountain and meadow out of patches of color.
Guide (pdf) | Image (jpg, 1.3 mb)

 

 

Marsden Hartley
Mont Sainte-Victoire (red), 1927
Hartley uses color to press background and foreground into a single plane.
Guide (pdf) | Image (jpg, 1.7 mb)

 

 

Max Weber
Sea Cliffs, late 1920s
Weber adopted Cézanne's broad brushstroke technique to build a cliff.
Guide (pdf) | Image (jpg, 2.3 mb)