Depictions of courts of law aren’t common, and fall into five main groups: those showing cases and events from legend and history, modern documentary records of trials, others purely fictional, some satirical accounts, and a few general views without narrative. This article covers the first three, leaving satire and general views to come tomorrow.

The first is an account of a corrupt judge in the Achaemenid Empire around 525 BCE, and the extreme penalty he paid.

The story given by Herodotus about the corruption of Sisamnes, known as the Judgement of Cambyses, is today obscure. However, in 1489 it formed the basis for two paintings by Gerard David now viewed as forming a diptych. Sisamnes was a notoriously corrupt judge under the rule of King Cambyses II of Persia, and accepted a bribe in return for delivering an unjust verdict.

In the left panel, Sisamnes is being arrested by the king and his men, as the judge sits in his official chair. Hand gestures indicate the bribery that had been at the root of Sisamnes’ crime.

King Cambyses sentences Sisamnes to be flayed alive, as shown in the foreground of the right panel. In the upper right, David uses multiplex narrative to show the judge’s skin then covering the official chair, as a reminder to all who sit in judgement of the fate that awaits them should they ever become corrupt or unfair.

David’s gruesome pair of paintings were a pointed reminder to the authorities in Bruges of the importance of an independent judiciary, and the penalty for any judge who was tempted by bribery or any other form of influence, cautions with contemporary value even now.

Jean-Léon Gérôme’s Phryne before the Areopagus from 1861 harks back to a classical legend of an unusual court case in Athens. Phryne had been a highly successful and very rich courtesan (hetaira) in ancient Greece, who was brought to trial for the serious crime of impiety. When it seemed inevitable that she would be found guilty, one of her lovers, the orator Hypereides, took on her defence. A key part of that was to unveil her naked in front of the court, in an attempt to surprise its members, impress them with the beauty of her body, and arouse a sense of pity. The legend claims that this ploy worked perfectly.

Gérôme shows a whole textbook of responses to surprise among the members of the court, although Phryne herself is covering not her body, but her eyes; each of the men in the court, of course, is looking straight at her. At the time that Gérôme painted this, France was well into its Second Empire, when Napoleon III had removed the gag from the French press, and was moving from his early authoritarian regime towards the more liberal. The legend of Phryne was a convenient vehicle for Gérôme to express his political opinion, and her nakedness suggests her role is that of Truth.

The other much better-known story of judgement is that of King Solomon, told in the Old Testament, and in a succession of marvellous paintings since the Renaissance. Two women each claimed to be the mother of the same healthy baby, alleging that the other was the mother of a dead child. Solomon’s wise judgement was to threaten to cut the living baby in two, which elicited the correct protective response from the real mother of that child.

Nicolas Poussin’s famous painting of 1649 uses a classical composition, the two disputing women and their actions preventing it from becoming too symmetrical. Timed slightly before the raising of the sword, the master of painted narrative depicts the body language with great clarity. Solomon’s hands indicate his role as the arbiter, in showing a fair balance between the two sides.

The true mother, on the left, holds her left hand up to tell the soldier to stop following the King’s instructions and spare the infant. Her right hand is extended towards the false mother, indicating that she has asked for the baby to go to her rather than die. The false mother points accusingly at the child, her expression full of hatred. Hands are also raised in the group at the right, perhaps indicating their reactions to Solomon’s judgement.

Coverage of prominent court cases came to dominate reporting in the press throughout Europe and North America. Several cases became so popular that they moved artists to depict them, and one, the Dreyfus Affair in France, had lasting influence on that nation’s history.

Frederick Sargent’s painting of The Tichborne Trial (1873-1899) shows one of the most prominent cases in England. In 1854, Roger Tichborne, heir to a title and family riches, was presumed to have died in a shipwreck. The following year, an Australian butcher came forward with the claim that he was that heir, which was tested in a civil court case, heard between 1871-72.

The outcome of that rejected the claim, and the Australian butcher then underwent criminal prosecution for perjury, in one of the longest criminal cases heard in an English court, during 188 days between 1872-73. Sargent’s painting shows that case in progress, with the accused sitting just below the centre and looking straight ahead of him. Standing to the right of him is his barrister, Edward Kenealy, with ‘mutton chop’ whiskers.

The Australian butcher was convicted, sentenced to fourteen years in prison, and eventually died destitute in 1898. His barrister’s career was also finished, and he was subsequently disbarred. He went on to be elected as a Member of Parliament for his own political party in 1875, but died shortly after losing that seat in 1880.

Courts in some jurisdictions have long been reticent about allowing parties, judges, or juries to be drawn, painted or photographed. Although American practice has long allowed artists as reporters, in 1925 Britain made it illegal to draw inside a courtroom during a trial. The thirst for images for publication has since been satisfied by artists who work entirely from memory.

Arnold Mesches’ Courtroom sketch of the US Navy’s court of inquiry about USS Pueblo’s capture by North Korea from 1969 is perhaps more of an illustrative record of a court in session, sketched from a square and conventional position. But other artists and cases are quite different.

Robert Clark Templeton’s Drawing for CBS Evening News of Bobby G. Seale and others (1971) shows the head and shoulders of the accused, who co-founded the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense and was here on trial in New Haven, CT, for the murder of Alex Rackley. The jury was unable to reach a verdict and the case was declared a mistrial.

Another fine example of courtroom art is Elizabeth Williams’ portrait of Faisal Shahzad, The “Times Square Bomber” Sentencing, Manhattan Federal Court: October 5, 2010 (2010). Shahzad had pleaded guilty to five counts of federal terrorism-related crimes committed when he planted a car bomb in Times Square, New York, on 5 May 2010, for which he was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole.

There have also been a few paintings of fictional trials.

Abraham Solomon’s wonderful pair of paintings is set immediately outside a court. In the first, the father and family of the accused are seen Waiting for the Verdict (1859) at the end of a trial. The court appears in cameo up to the right, in that strange state of suspended animation as it awaits the decision.

Solomon’s pendant shows the elation when the verdict of Not Guilty (1859) is returned. The man, now freed from the dock, is embraced by his wife, who is kneeling in supplication, as their young child reaches out to touch father’s face. His father, eyes damp with tears of relief, is thanking their barrister earnestly.

In place of the view of the distant court, which is being symbolically dismissed as the barrister closes a door at the right edge, the left side of the painting now leads out to the warm light of the early dusk in the outside world, indicating freedom.

The melodrama of legal process is shown in William Frederick Yeames’ ‘problem picture’ Defendant and Counsel from 1895. An affluent married woman wearing an expensive fur coat sits with a popular newspaper open in front of her, as a team of three barristers and their clerk look at her intensely, presumably waiting for her to speak. As we’re told that she is the defendant, the viewer is encouraged to speculate what she is defending: a divorce claim, or a criminal charge?

Ovid ends Book 7 of his Metamorphoses with one of his best stories. It’s told by Cephalus, the envoy from Athens, to the sons of King Aeacus on the island of Aegina, following the king’s account of the Myrmidons.

Having told Cephalus of the plague and the Myrmidons that followed it, King Aeacus falls asleep, so his son Phocus takes Cephalus and his companions to their accommodation. There Phocus notices the unusual javelin carried by Cephalus, with its gold tip on a shaft of wood that he cannot identify. This leads Cephalus to tell him that the javelin killed his wife, and so to explain the circumstances.

Within two months of his marriage to the beautiful Procris, when he was laying nets to catch a deer at dawn, Aurora saw Cephalus and tried to abduct him (she has a track record of affairs with humans). Cephalus protested and told Aurora of his love for his wife, so she let him go, warning him that if she saw him again, he would regret ever marrying Procris.

Nicolas Poussin’s Cephalus and Aurora (1630) shows the dawn scene of Cephalus trying to avoid the obviously amorous intentions of the goddess Aurora, who is seated and nearly naked. Behind Cephalus is the winged horse drawing the chariot of the dawn. A winged putto is holding up an image for him to view, presumably showing Procris, to help his resolve. At the left is a river god. Beyond the horse is another deity bearing a coronet: although difficult to see, that might be Diana, given her association with hunting and her role in this myth.

Peter Paul Rubens’ oil sketch of Aurora Abducting Cephalus was probably made in 1636-37, late in Rubens’ life, for his workshop to complete as a painting for King Philip IV of Spain’s hunting lodge at Torre de la Parada, near Madrid. In addition to showing the willing Aurora trying to persuade the reluctant Cephalus to join her in her chariot, it includes some details at odds with Ovid’s story: Diana’s hunting dog and javelin, which Procris gave to her husband after their reconciliation, later in the story. Here they may be intended as attributes to confirm his identity.

Over the following couple of centuries, there was a steady stream of paintings showing the abduction of Cephalus, but to my eye the next major work using this theme was Pierre-Narcisse Guérin’s romantic Aurora and Cephalus (1810). Instead of a substantial chariot, the seductive figure of Aurora is bearing a sleeping Cephalus aloft on a bed of cloud, as dawn breaks over the mountains below.

Forty years later, Pierre Claude François Delorme uses a similar motif recomposed into his Cephalus Carried off by Aurora (c 1851). This features ingeniously interlocking arms and embraces: Aurora cradles Cephalus’ shoulder and chest, Cephalus reaches out to Cupid, and Cupid back to Cephalus.

As he went back to his wife, Cephalus started to worry whether his wife had been unfaithful to him. He became aware that Aurora had changed his appearance, and entered the city of Athens unrecognised. When he got home, his household and wife didn’t recognise him either, so Cephalus put Procris to the test: with his wife still thinking him a stranger, he offered her great riches to spend a night with him, and managed to get her to waver with uncertainty.

He then revealed himself to be her husband, and accused her of being unfaithful. She said not a word, but fled to the mountains, where she joined the followers of Diana.

Cephalus yearned for his wife, so begged her forgiveness, and admitted that he too would have given way when made such an irresistible offer. Procris returned to him, and the couple lived happily again together. She brought back with her gifts from Diana: a hunting dog who outran all other dogs, and that unusual javelin.

Then the city of Thebes was once again put into difficulty, after Oedipus had broken the siege imposed by the Sphinx. This time the problem took the form of a wild beast that ate all its livestock. All the younger men, including Cephalus, went to hunt the beast, but it eluded them and their dogs. Cephalus then unleashed Diana’s hound to chase the beast. The dog caught it, but it broke free again. Cephalus prepared to throw his javelin, then noticed that his dog and the beast had suddenly been transformed into marble statues.

Cephalus returned to his now blissfully happy marriage with Procris. He went hunting alone at dawn, always feeling safe with his javelin. As the heat of the day came on, he would call on an imaginary zephyr of the cool breeze, talking to it as if it was a real nymph. One day he must have been overheard, and word was taken back to Procris that he was meeting a woman when he was supposed to be hunting. His wife was shocked, but refused to accept the story without herself witnessing her husband’s deceit.

The following morning, Cephalus was out hunting at dawn again, and when he grew hot, he rested and spoke to his imaginary zephyr as usual. He thought that he heard a sound nearby, which he suspected was an animal. He turned and threw his javelin at that noise.

He next heard his wife’s voice, rushed towards it, and found her mortally wounded, with his javelin buried deep in her chest. He took her up into his arms and tried in vain to stop blood from pouring from the wound. Knowing that she was dying, Procris implored him not to take the zephyr as his wife. He then realised the fatal misunderstanding, that Procris believed that he had been unfaithful. As Procris died in his arms, Cephalus tried to explain to her that the zephyr was only imaginary, and that seemed to bring her some comfort in her last moments.

In the foreground of Paolo Veronese’s account from about 1580, Procris has fallen, the javelin embedded in her upper abdomen, and her life is fading fast. Cephalus isn’t embracing her, though, merely holding her hand as he tries to plead his innocence. Veronese leaves us with two small puzzles too. The first is the large hunting hound behind Cephalus’ right shoulder, remembering that Diana’s dog was turned into stone while hunting the beast of Thebes. More puzzling is another figure, and a second dog, in the distance, at the left edge of the painting. These might represent the first part of the scene, before Cephalus throws his javelin, in multiplex narrative.

Peter Paul Rubens offers another oil sketch, of Cephalus and Procris (1636-37), showing the couple just before Cephalus throws the fateful javelin, which rests at his side.

There is another painting that has been claimed to show The Death of Procris, but which is more accurately titled A Satyr Mourning over a Nymph, made by Piero di Cosimo in about 1495.

A brilliant painting, it uses the full width of a panoramic panel to show a satyr with his goat legs and distinctive ears, ministering to a dying or dead nymph, who has a severe wound in her throat. At her feet is a hunting dog, with another three in the distance. But there’s no reason to show Cephalus as a satyr; Procris was impaled in the chest by the javelin; Procris was behind cover, where she was spying on Cephalus, not out in the open; and Cephalus had only one hound, a gift from Diana, which had in any case already been turned to marble. It’s a superb painting of a different story.

Ovid ends the book with Cephalus and his audience in tears, as Aeacus arrives with his other two sons and the army which they have been raising to counter the forces of Minos, setting the scene for the start of the next book.

In yesterday’s article, I showed examples of apotheoses. Following a couple of even more liberal interpretations, this article moves on to the second and third items in this list:

• Apotheosis, when a pre-christian hero is elevated to the status of god or goddess;
• Catasterisation, when a mortal is changed into a celestial body such as a star or constellation;
• Assumption, when the Virgin Mary was taken up into Heaven;
• Ascension, when Jesus Christ ascended into Heaven, and sometimes available to saints on their martyrdom.

Girodet’s painting of the Apotheosis of the French Heroes Who Died for the Fatherland during the War of Liberation, Ossian receiving the Ghosts of the French Heroes was probably completed in 1802, and is perhaps the most elaborate and complex painting inspired by the bogus Scottish poet Ossian. It’s unclear how those French war heroes became involved with Ossian, but an extraordinary mixture of myths and legends from contrasting cultures.

In Vasily Vereshchagin’s bleak Apotheosis of War (1871), ravens/crows perch on a huge pile of human skulls in a barren landscape outside the ruins of a town.

A few Christian religious paintings came close to being apotheoses.

Alexandre Cabanel’s The Death of Moses (1850) tackles one of the vaguer episodes in the life of this Old Testament prophet. When he was 120 years old, according to the book of Numbers, Moses assembled the tribes of Israel on the banks of the River Jordan, reminded them of the laws under which they must live, sang a song of praise, blessed the people, and passed his authority to Joshua. He then ascended Mount Nebo, looked over the Promised Land, and died. Cabanel shows this as an apotheosis, with God the Father (upper left) welcoming Moses (centre right) with open arms.

Being transformed into a celestial body in catasterisation was an honour accorded those mortals who couldn’t aspire to deity, among them the giant Orion. He arrived at Chios, where he became drunk, and raped Merope, the daughter of Oenopion. As punishment for that, Oenopion blinded Orion and cast him from his land. Orion then went to Lemnos, where Hephaistos took pity on him, and lent him his servant Kedalion to sit astride his shoulders and act as his guide. An oracle advised Orion to proceed east into the rays of the rising sun, so that those rays would restore his sight. So cured, Orion then went to Crete to hunt.

There are differing accounts of Orion’s death. Some involve his love affair with Eos, which was opposed (possibly out of jealousy) by Artemis. In these, Artemis ended up killing Orion with her arrows. Other versions claim he was killed by a giant scorpion. In death, Artemis asked that Zeus catasterised him, together with the scorpion, to form the constellation Scorpio. Once there, Orion pursues the daughters known as the Pleiades, which form a prominent open star cluster nearby.

Poussin’s Landscape with Orion, or Blind Orion Searching for the Rising Sun was painted late in his career, in 1658, at a time when the artist’s hands were suffering a tremor that was starting to disrupt his ability to paint. It is among his finest allegorical landscapes, and one of the most intensely studied works of his career.

Set in one of Poussin’s wonderful idealised landscapes, near the coast, the giant Orion is striding purposefully towards the rising sun. He carries a huge hunting bow, and a quiver taller than a man. Standing on his shoulders is Kedalion, servant to Hephaistos, who is acting as his guide. Above and beyond Orion is a strange formation of backlit cloud, generally interpreted as being storm-cloud. Atop that is the standing figure of Artemis, with her distinctive crescent moon coronet, and an owl perched on her left shoulder. She leans nonchalantly against the cloud, her head propped against her right hand. In the far distance is the sea, with a prominent lighthouse.

There have been few other attempts to tell any part of the story of Orion on canvas. In 1685, Daniel Seiter ( –1705) painted this view of Diana by the Corpse of Orion, following in the brushstrokes of his teacher Johann Carl Loth. This shows Diana (Artemis), with her distinctive crescent moon, looking regretfully at the dead Orion, after she had killed him with her arrows.

Sidney Hall’s etching of Orion, a hand-coloured plate in a set of celestial cards from 1825, is an ingenious lesson in observational astronomy.

The Pleiades were originally the seven daughters of the titan Atlas and the sea-nymph Pleione. When Atlas was made to carry the heavens on his shoulders, Orion started to pursue the Pleiades, so Zeus transformed them first into doves, then into stars. Their name is given to a star cluster, which appears to be chased across the night sky by the constellation of Orion.

Elihu Vedder’s painting of The Pleiades (1885) was made in association with his first illustration for the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, representing Khayyam’s horoscope. Each of the sisters is connected by a thread to their corresponding star, perhaps representing the process of catasterisation.

There are a great many paintings of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, of which I show here just a tiny sample.

Francesco Botticini’s spectacular example painted in about 1475-76 places unusual emphasis on Paradise, with its triple tiers of figures rising to those of the Virgin Mary kneeling in front of Christ at its summit.

Tintoretto painted several versions of The Assumption of The Virgin, this one for the Cappella di Santa Maria Assunta, in the Gesuiti, Venice. It’s thought that Tintoretto had promised to paint this in the style of Veronese.

Poussin’s Assumption of the Virgin from about 1650 is plainer and more orthodox.

Gaetano Previati’s Divisionist rendering of the Assumption from about 1901-03 shows a group of winged angels raising Mary’s body to Heaven.

Ovid tells one final story about the downfall of Medea after she has married King Aegeus in Athens, linking back to the saga of Jason, and forward to his next thread telling the story of Theseus. As this brief bridge only hints at the early life of Theseus, I here provide a more detailed account of his origins.

Aegeus had been childless, but following the prophecy of the oracle at Delphi, the King of Troezen got him drunk and packed him off to bed with his daughter Aethra. She had been instructed in a dream to leave Aegeus asleep, and to go to a nearby island, where she was also impregnated by the god Poseidon. Theseus, who was presumed to have been conceived that night, was thus considered to have double paternity, by god and man, a common qualification for mythical heroes.

Aegeus returned to Athens, after burying his sword and sandals under a massive rock. He told Aethra that when his son grew up, she should tell him to move the rock as a test. If he succeeded, then he should take the sandals and sword as evidence of his paternity.

When Theseus was old enough, his mother Aethra showed him the rock, and gave him Aegeus’ instructions. Theseus moved the rock, found the sandals and sword, then undertook an epic journey overland to his father in Athens.

One of the earliest depictions is Laurent de La Hyre’s Theseus And His Mother Aethra (1635-36). This shows the young Theseus lifting a heavy pillar to reveal a pair of shoes and a sword.

In one of his rare collaborative paintings, Nicolas Poussin worked with Jean Lemaire to show the same scene, of Theseus Recovering his Father’s Sword, in about 1638. This shows a marked contrast between the two actors: Theseus, destined to be a great hero, looks rough and brutish, while his mother Aethra wouldn’t look out of place modelling for the Madonna.

Nicolas-Guy Brenet’s more sketchy painting of Aethra Showing her Son Theseus the Place Where his Father had Hidden his Arms from 1768 adds a river god for good measure, and has Aethra giving Theseus his marching orders to go find his father.

In Antonio Balestra’s Theseus Discovering his Father’s Sword (c 1725) Theseus looks less enthusiastic to follow his mother’s directions.

Ovid’s story starts with the arrival in the court of King Aegeus of Theseus, who hasn’t yet been recognised by his father. Medea then tries to trick Aegeus to administer poisonous aconite to Theseus before his recognition, in a bid to keep Aegeus to herself. She prepares the poison in a cup which the king then offers to the young Theseus. At the last minute, just as his son is about to drink the aconite, Aegeus recognises that the sword borne by Theseus is his, knocks the cup away, and saves his son’s life.

In 1832, the theme chosen for the prestigious Prix de Rome contest was the moment that Aegeus recognised Theseus, immediately before the latter could swallow any of Medea’s poison. Two of the contenders for that great prize remain accessible today.

In Antoine-Placide Gibert’s Theseus Recognised by his Father (1832), the three main actors are arranged almost linearly across the canvas. Just left of centre, Theseus stands, his head in profile, with the fateful cup in his left hand, and his father’s sword in his right. The king is just right of centre, looking Theseus in the eye, and appearing animated if not alarmed. At the far right is Medea, her face like thunder, sensing her plot to kill Theseus is about to fall apart.

It was Hippolyte Flandrin’s Theseus Recognized by his Father (1832) that won the Prix de Rome, with its more neoclassical look influenced by Jacques-Louis David. Flandrin establishes the scene as Athens, with a view of the Acropolis in the background. His timing is different from Gibert: this painting shows the moment immediately after Aegeus has recognised his son, and the cup of aconite lies spilt on the table. Theseus stands in the middle of the canvas conspicuously naked, his father’s sword held rather limply in his right hand. Aegeus stands to the left of centre, talking to his son quite emotionally. But of all the characters shown in this painting, it is Medea who is the most fascinating. Stood at the far left, she appears to be on her way out. She is po-faced, and looks as if she has come not from Greece, but from central Asia, perhaps.

Medea flees, never to be heard of again, leaving Aegeus to give thanks to the gods. Ovid then introduces Theseus with a short resumé of some of his accomplishments, including his killing of the Minotaur and of Procrustes, to be recounted later.

The myths of Theseus were at one time as popular as those of Heracles or even Aeneas or Jason. In about 1340-41, Giovanni Boccaccio wrote about them in his epic poem Teseida, or The Theseid. This in turn inspired The Knight’s Tale in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Paolo da Visso (1431–1481) painted these three scenes from Boccaccio’s epic on the front of a cassone, the visual equivalent of Ovid’s catalogue of the adventures of Theseus.

For z, the last letter in this alphabet of landscape painting, I offer a small selection of the very finest works that form the zeitgeist of the genre in Western art.

Landscape of the Danube near Regensburg is one of Albrecht Altdorfer’s five known pure landscape paintings, and was made between about 1528-30. This develops repoussoir, following the foreground – middle distance – far distance convention, with a low horizon to accommodate the framing trees and allow a dramatic cloudscape, laying the foundation for so many landscapes of the future.

Landscape with a Calm from about 1651 is one of Nicolas Poussin’s late pure landscape paintings, of a view that never existed except in the artist’s imagination, although there’s something familiar about each of the elements within it. Like an Advent calendar, it contains scattered scenes which the viewer is tempted to try to construct into a coherent narrative, but are probably all part of the painting’s mode.

In the foreground is a herdsman with his dog, tending to a small flock of goats, which are grazing erratically at the borders of a track meandering down to the lake. The only distinctive feature of the man, indeed of this whole passage, is how non-descript he is. He has nothing that could be interpreted as an attribute, and gives no clue as to his identity. The most prominent feature of the painting is its large Italianate villa. In front of its outermost earthworks, two herdsmen tend a flock of sheep and cattle. The man on the left is playing bagpipes. There are figures scattered just outside and within the grounds of the villa, and two visible at its ground floor windows. There is nothing which appears to be out of the ordinary here either.

All the clues given by the artist point towards the mode of calm and peace in this landscape. Its one small burst of activity is a galloping horse. The air is so calm that the lake reflects like a mirror, and one tiny patch of broken water stands out.

An Autumn Landscape with a View of Het Steen in the Early Morning (c 1636) is one of Peter Paul Rubens larger landscapes from the end of his career. As the sun is rising off to the right, a man drives a cart, on top of which a woman is perched precariously, away from Ruben’s castellated mansion. Beside that stream, a hunter is stalking game with his gun and dog.

A small group of people are on the grass in front of the house: a woman is seated, perhaps nursing an infant; next to her is another woman, and a man. Another man is fishing in the moat, from the bridge which connects its main entrance with the outside world. At the far right, a milkmaid walks out to a small herd of cows. There are birds in the sky, and some small tits and others on the scrub in the foreground. Beyond, a great plain of meadows and woods sweeps far to the horizon. The day has begun.

The similarities in his composition with those of nearly twenty years earlier are remarkable. However, there’s one big difference: while undoubtedly idealised, this painting is based on a real and known geographical location just outside the city of Antwerp.

Some landscape painters, including Jacob van Ruisdael, turned their canvases to make portraits of towering clouds, as in his View of Haarlem with Bleaching Fields from about 1665. The distant town of Haarlem with its monumentally large church of Saint Bavo – works of man – is dwarfed by these high cumulus clouds, the works of God. This motif proved so popular that van Ruisdael painted many variants of the same view, making it now one of the most widespread landscapes across the galleries of Europe.

Before Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes sketched in oils in front of his motifs in the Roman Campagna, in around 1782, very few landscape paintings were made in front of the motif. Valenciennes not only assembled himself a library of sketches such as this magnificent View of Rome, but wrote an influential treatise advocating this as a technique. This paved the way for greater fidelity in views and ultimately Impressionism.

JMW Turner’s Modern Rome – Campo Vaccino from 1839 anticipates Impressionist style. It retains several conventional features, though, using repoussoir at the right, and a parade of buildings to lead the eye past the mass of the Colosseum into the distant mist. He uses staffage extensively in the foreground, with a group of three goats at the right and sundry figures at the left. As this is a view from elevation looking down, the horizon is for once well above its midline.

Claude Monet’s masterwork Autumn on the Seine, Argenteuil from 1873 is a textbook example of a river landscape in autumn painted in high Impressionist style, with high chroma and loose brushstrokes.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s The Wave, painted on the Normandy coast in the summer of 1882, is inspired by the ukiyo-e print of Hokusai’s Great Wave, and takes Impressionism to its limits in the dissolution of form.

In the late nineteenth century, landscape painters including Camille Pissarro transferred their attention to cities like Paris, in his case primarily because of eye problems. In January 1897, Pissarro painted from a hotel room overlooking the Rue Saint-Lazare, then in February transferred to a room with a view over the Boulevard Montmartre, where he painted some of his finest cityscapes. His Boulevard Montmartre, Spring Morning (1897) is composed primarily of buildings and streets, a plethora of figures, and countless carriages to move those people around.

Ferdinand Hodler’s view of Lake Geneva with Mont Blanc in the (Red) Dawn Light, painted a few months before he died in 1918, completed his reduction of this view into bands consisting of water coloured by the sky, a zone of blue reflections of the far bank, the merged distant shore and mountains, and the sky.

Paul Nash’s Eclipse of the Sunflower (1945) was inspired by William Blake’s poem Ah! Sunflower, from his Songs of Experience (1794):

Ah Sun-flower! weary of time,
Who countest the steps of the Sun:
Seeking after that sweet golden clime
Where the travellers journey is done.

Where the Youth pined away with desire,
And the pale Virgin shrouded in snow:
Arise from their graves and aspire,
Where my Sun-flower wishes to go.

Nash shows a sunflower undergoing an eclipse, as if a celestial body. Below is a windswept sea and the coast of Dorset, as he had painted below the ‘flying boat’ in his Defence of Albion in 1942. Just above that coast are more peculiar botanical structures relating to the sunflower, and behind is the threatening sky of an imminent storm.

I hope you have enjoyed this series celebrating different aspects of landscape painting.

In every continent except Antarctica, the letter t in this alphabet of landscape painting can only stand for trees, whether in distant forests, framing the painting in repoussoir, or the subject of a portrait. Because of their frequency and importance, this week’s subject extends to two articles.

The depiction of trees has long been a popular subject for instructional texts about painting. Without exception, at least until the twentieth century, these have taught an anatomical method, where the structure of the tree is built up from its trunk and branches before applying foliage. This is best learned by painting studies of trees in front of the motif, before transferring those to finished paintings in the studio.

Like many artists since, Peter Paul Rubens made studies of trees to support his studio paintings in oils. This, known simply as Landscape (c 1635-40), is a careful and detailed sketch in gouache of a group of trees on the bank of a small river. The evidence, from the tree in the mid-right, is that he constructed them anatomically, putting in the structural curves and lines of the branches, then laying down areas of foliage.

Back in the studio, Rubens used those studies to assemble larger paintings in oils, such as Evening Landscape with Timber Wagon (c 1630-40). They are still constructed using the anatomical method, and in some sections of foliage the underlying branches can be seen. Although they’re backlit and shown in the gathering dusk, he places gestural highlights on some trunks, and uses tonal range to give the foliage depth.

Many of Nicolas Poussin’s paintings employ foreground trees to frame the view in repoussoir, enhancing the sense of depth. His Landscape with Two Nymphs and a Snake from about 1659 is unusual in that the trees on the right are more than a framing device, and are established as an important part of the whole view.

Seen in this detail view, Poussin has varied the amount of detail shown in the foliage, as well as its tone and colour, to ensure that the trees don’t appear flat like a proscenium arch. Fine detail on the lower trunks gives them realistic texture, as an alternative to the highlights that would have been shown had they been in different light. This also shows evidence of Poussin’s use of the anatomical method.

Thomas Gainsborough was arguably more accomplished in his depictions of trees than he was of the portraits that earned him his living. His Wooded Landscape with a Cottage and Shepherd (1748-50) is dominated by a single tree, whose wonderfully gnarled and lichen-encrusted bark threatens to subsume the shepherd at its foot. Sadly, the tree’s rather thin foliage appears to have become more transparent over time. However, this does reveal the whole of its tortuous branch system, and demonstrates clearly his use of the anatomical method: each branch could have come from a textbook on the painting of trees.

John Constable was a great fan of Gainsborough’s trees and landscapes, and an avid plein air sketcher using both watercolours and oils. This Landscape at East Bergholt (c 1805) is a quick watercolour sketch, but he still took time and care to ensure that its trees, particularly the dominant one filling the right half of the paper, are carefully constructed on anatomical lines.

Constable’s finished studio paintings are inevitably richer in fine detail. The Vale of Dedham (1828) employs a similar compositional form to his East Bergholt sketch, although the trees and distant setting are different. Textural detail in the bark of the lower trunks is meticulous rather than gestural, and unlike Poussin, the level of detail in the foliage varies little. Constable’s more painterly style is seen in his oil studies, particularly the final full-size studies for his ‘six footers’, where it often appears more effective than his finished works.

As Constable was painting his later works, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot was starting his career by becoming the most skilled plein air painter of his generation. Although his Ville-d’Avray: Entrance to the Wood (c 1825) was clearly painted at speed, and lacks Constable’s detail, it’s unlikely to have been completed in a single sitting.

Most of Corot’s landscapes feature trees, and his approach to them varies considerably. In this painting there’s an intermediate level of detail, sufficient for him to structure marks forming the leaves of the smaller tree in the right foreground, but the central and dominant tree has its foliage shown en masse.

A few years later, Samuel Palmer’s The Weald of Kent (c 1833-4) uses a tree to construct deep repoussoir, where the motif forms but a small area in the very centre of the painting. Palmer’s billowing foliage looks more solid and less leafy, and glows rich gold in the autumn sun.

The brilliant colours of autumn gave George Inness inspiration for Across the Hudson Valley in the Foothills of the Catskills (1868). Here the contrasting gold, red, and green trees are so marked as to appear almost unreal. He also provides good visual evidence of his use of the anatomical method in their construction.