painting
Landscape in Seneffe
Alfred William Finch
About this work
Object details
- TitleLandscape in Seneffe
- Date1890 ?
- Mediumoil on canvas
- Measurements61 × 98,7 cm
- Inventory number3425
More about this work
Dotty about landscape
Apply the paint as dots of pure colour, equally sized and in series. The size should be proportional to the dimensions of the canvas. Take account, obviously, of the ‘real’ colour of things, of the light and of the fact that two neighbouring hues influence one another. The colours will then be ‘blended’ in the viewer’s eye. These are the basic principles of Pointillism or, as the artists themselves called it, Neo-Impressionism – a painting technique introduced to the world in May 1886 by the Frenchman Georges Seurat. Finch was impressed by what he called the technique’s ‘purity of forms’ and by its scientific underpinning.
From April 1890 to 1892, Finch lived in La Louviere in the Belgian province of Hainaut. Seneffe is not far from there and he probably made this apparently simple work in 1890, when the trees were in full leaf. He exhibited it in 1891 and again in 1892. We can make out four zones, beginning in the foreground with a dark mass of foliage. Beyond this are fields and meadows with the occasional bush, and further away still a blue-shaded forest with a prominent church on the skyline. Above it all is the sky. Finch began relatively simply by brushing in a layer of light-blue and white paint, over which he applied the white, greyish and beige dots. In other words, not exactly by the (Pointillist) book.
References
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