Australian Landscape: Oil, by William Dargie

Taken from The Artist 1959, William Dargie offers help for overcoming some regular problems when painting landscapes en plein air.

I never fail to be surprised at the number of landscape paintings that come to a bad end because the artist has failed to take note of certain very elementary problems in his path.

Take note of the weather

When I survey the many abortive attempts that litter my own past, I realise the disasters that overtook me were often due to a recklessly optimistic disregard of one or more of the simple obstacles confronting every painter of landscape.

To be particular: it is practically impossible to paint a landscape on one of those exhilarating spring days when the wind is high – it will blow your easel over, of course – when sunlight and shadow chase each other at express speed across hill and field and valley.

Constable, at the height of his powers and experience, might capture something of such an effect, but it is just as well for the rest of us to come to terms with reality in admitting that few of us are Constables. This is an extreme and rather negative example. Let us take a more positive attitude about avoiding situations liable, as it were, to put one off one’s stroke.

If the day is sunny, take a good look, before beginning to paint, at the shadows cast by the trees or houses or other solid objects in the subject, and try to calculate the direction in which those shadows will move and how much and how quickly they will change the appearance of the subject in so moving. In the late afternoon, a hillside and all the trees and houses on it can move into shadow very quickly.

Keep the subject simple

The Gleaners: Oil, John Constable (reproduced by courtesy of The Trustees of the Tate Gallery, London)

Do not try to be too ambitious in the choice of subject. Most of the great landscape paintings we must take as models prove on analysis to be remarkably simple.

A few trees by the edge of a pool, with a church spire in the middle distance; a bridge over the Thames, barely seen by moonlight; a single haystack in a field: of such a simple sort was the stuff out of which Corot and Whistler and Monet made masterpieces.

Constable on one occasion was taken to the top of a hill from which it was possible to see five counties. He remarked later that it was one of the grandest views in England and therefore the least suitable as a subject for painting.

This leads logically to a most important consideration: always try to choose the subject for the interest of its masses rather than the interest of its detail. The effect of any picture depends on the tonal relationship and proportions of the main masses of light and dark, and if these are wrong or badly calculated, no amount of superimposed intricacies of drawing will save the final result from looking amateurish.

All of us are well aware that one perceives a wood before becoming aware of the individual trees of which it is composed and, proceeding further, the perception of the general shape of each tree precedes the recognition of the shapes of particular leaves. It is right and proper to make one’s statements on a canvas in this logical visual order.

The placing of the canvas

The Claudian Aqueduct: Oil, Corot (reproduced by permission of the Trustees of the National Gallery)

The general tonal pitch of a picture is as often as not determined by the light in which the canvas is placed for painting.

If the sun is shining directly on the canvas, the artist will find that black pigment is scarcely dark enough to match the intensity of the deeper and nearer shadows; naturally so, because of the intense illumination in which he is working.

On the other hand, if the canvas is in shadow, white paint will not be light enough to match the tone of the sky.

In either case, the finished painting will be at variance with normal human perceptions, since even the most intense shadows in bright sunlight are rarely perceived as being black, and few skies could be said to look like blank white sheets.

This is the answer to this problem: the painter, before applying any paint at all to the canvas, should mix two tones on the palette, one light and one dark, defining, as far as he can judge, the upper and the lower limits of his tonal range All the intervening tones should then be judged by relationship to these two extremes.

By following this simple rule it is possible to paint the canvas either in the sun or in shadow, with a reasonable chance that the painting, when taken indoors to the studio, will continue to give something of the authentic appearance of the subject.

Limit the time

I believe the landscape painter should set himself a time limit, since light and weather change so quickly. This may also be one of the main reasons why the great landscape painters have chosen such comparatively simple subject-matter.

Even in the most settled overcast weather I doubt if a subject would have exactly the same appearance for more than two or three hours. In sunny weather it is obvious that shadows will be pointing in opposite directions in the morning and the afternoon. Any student who persists in working on his picture from morning through to dusk on a sunny day should be arrested by the police, heavily fined, and sent back to his teacher for instruction in first principles.

This does not mean that every landscape painting must be begun and finished in – let us say – an hour. There is no reason why one should not have half a dozen paintings in progress at the same time, each being brought out for further working when the weather and time of day produce again the selected effect. It means simply, one should never work longer than the effect lasts.

To get steady effects, I always find it best to work in the early morning or late in the afternoon, especially in the summer.

Don't set out with a fixed subject in mind

Australian Landscape: Oil, William Dargie

It is unwise to set out for a day’s painting with one’s mind full or preconceptions about the sort of subject one is going to find and paint.

I remember in my youth following an artist friend for miles and miles up and down the barren hills of the Australian countryside, in a shade temperature of 105 degrees, whilst he looked for a Corotesque subject. Needless to say, we did not find one.

At seven o’clock in the evening, hot and sweating and irritable, with our arms nearly dragged out of their sockets by the weight of our painting boxes and easels, and with the sun rapidly sinking, we settled down to paint a tree by the roadside not a hundred yards from the railway station from which we had set out at 9 o’clock that morning.

Check before you leave

In concluding this list of elementary warnings, I want to mention the important point that one should not set out to work before checking to see one has assembled all the necessary materials and equipment. I have a little formula I always say over to myself before I go out to paint: “Have I got brushes, palette, oil, easel, paint rag, canvases?”

Once I was painting a snowy landscape when a friend came over to me and asked rather awkwardly if he could borrow some paint. I said, “Of course, yes. What colour?” Very embarrassed, he muttered “I forgot to bring any flake white with me”.

Painting the landscape

The Three Idols: Oil 16” x 20”, William Dargie

Now to get to the most important thing, which is, after all, the actual painting of the picture.

I cannot emphasize too strongly that the successful outcome of the work depends almost entirely on the correct tonal relationship of the masses. Here is an example: suppose one is painting an oak tree by the side of a field of wheat and silhouetted against a light summer sky; then the sky will be the lightest tone, the wheat, as well as being different in colour from the sky, will be slightly darker in tone, and the oak tree will be by far the darkest tone of all. Inside each of these main areas there will be slight variations of light and dark, but none of these minor variations should be so overstated on the canvas that they interfere with the clear and precise definition of the three major tones.

Regarding the question of the actual set of basic colours to be put on the palette, I feel a student should find by trial and error those that seem to suit him best; with this proviso, that he should not get into a habit of working with colours that are not permanent and that he should try to work with as few colours as possible. For some time I worked at landscape with these colours: flake white, yellow ochre, indian red, monastral blue and viridian. Obviously, I had to get my greys by means of a mixture of yellow, red and blue, but I found this no great difficulty. The resulting harmony within the tonal relationships more than made up for the restricted varieties of colours available. However, there is no real need for any student to restrict himself so hardly in the choice of colours. The best rule is to have an adequate but not lavish colour palette.

It is best to proceed by observing one’s subject closely, by analysing its tones and by imitating their effect on the canvas; and by bearing in mind that no painting that looks like its subject can be altogether a bad painting.

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This article was first published in volume fifty seven of The Artist which covers March 1959 - August 1959

About William Dargie

Captain Sir William Alexander Dargie CBE (4 June 1912 – 26 July 2003) was a renowned Australian painter, known especially for his portrait paintings. He won the Archibald Prize, Australia's premier award for portrait artists on eight separate occasions; a record held since 1952.

Dargie was an official Australian war artist during World War II and painted multiple portraits of Elizabeth II, Queen of Australia, as well as the official portraits of two Prime Ministers of Australia and two Governors-General of Australia.