Historical Painting Techniques, Materials, and Studio Practice

Figure 4. Esaias van de Velde, Winter Landscape, signed and dated 1623. Panel, 25. 9 X 30.4 em. The National Gallery, London (6269).
ish practice, but this underpaint is more varied, not restricted to sharply
defined bands of color receding into the composition. Throughout the foreground
and middle ground the underpaint is a web of grayish green and
yellow passages, worked wet-into-wet.
The landscape paintings of Esaias van de Velde, produced during his years in
Haarlem (1609-1618) and in the Hague until his death in 1630, are central
to the development of the naturalistic landscape. Though Esaias was trained
by the Flemish inunigrant Gillis van Coninxloo, he developed most of the
elements of technique that were to define the work of the naturalistic tonal
landscapists, who included his pupils Jan van Goyen and Pieter de Neyn. This
is particularly apparent in his winter scenes, where the bare landscape encourages
a particularly limited tonality. The Winter Landscape of 1623, now
in London, is prepared with a thinly rubbed ground that barely fills the grain
of the oak panel (Fig. 4). A cross section from the upper edge of the sky
shows this extremely thin layer, textured on the underside by the grain of
the wood (layer 1) (Plate 32). This preparation is barely perceptible on the
painting; the warm pinkish tone that dominates passages, such as the distance
at the right and parts of the fo reground, is created by the wood showing
through the slightly tinted ground (12). In a loose and suggestive underdrawing,
the artist situated the main elements of the landscape and indicated the
foliage along the horizon with a few looped strokes but made no provision
for the figures (Fig. 5). Following the guide of the underdrawing, he toned
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Historical Painting Techniques, Materials, and Studio Practice