The American oil painting ‘View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm—The Oxbow,’ painted by Thomas Cole, is another monumental, highly detailed landscape painting that aims to capture the awe and power of nature. On the left side of the painting, we see dark rolling clouds over thick green forests, implying the passage of a storm. On the right side, the landscape is brighter, showing the winding Connecticut River and flattened, tamed terrain. In the foreground, a cliff overlooks the distant nature; in the center of this, we can even see the artist as he paints. 

These two paintings share many similarities, despite the differences in time, culture, and location. Through impressive detail, both artists strive to capture the essence of the power and scale of nature. In Li Cheng’s piece, a path leads the viewer through the painting. In Thomas Cole’s painting, a similar experience is achieved through the winding river that breaks up the composition. Between these two paintings, there are many differences in material, subject, and physical landscape. There is a significant difference in the style of painting that each artist uses. Li Cheng uses more stylized, almost exaggerated strokes, utilizing crisp outlines and layers of ink washes to build up the shading and texture and capture the essence of the landscape. On the contrary, Cole uses smooth blending and colors to communicate every minute detail, resulting in a more photo-realistic feeling piece. The perspective of the compositions also provides an interesting contrast with each other. While the ink painting feels as though the viewer is at the base of the scene looking up in awe, Cole’s oil painting looks down on the land, giving the viewer a sense of power, conquest, and conquer. 

I chose these two paintings because of the similarities in composition and detail, both carrying out the goal of capturing the beauty of nature in meticulous, “realistic” details. The similarities are fascinating to me, given the drastic difference in time and setting when these paintings were created. Awe of nature seems to be a common theme in many different cultures and times of art.

Mokuan Reien subjects have unique facial features, moving away from the idealized, similar facial details that are displayed in Gu Hongzhon’s Night Revels of Han Xizai or Emperor Huizhong’s Court Ladies Preparing Newly Woven Silk. Also likely learned from other Chan style paintings, is Mokuan Reien’s vast variation in brushstroke. He utilizes thick strokes of light ink washes, paper thin strokes of dark ink, dry strokes, and wet strokes that bleed the ink into the paper. 

There is a certain fluidity and relaxation in this linework. It gives the feeling that the artist used quick sloppy marks of ink, capturing the feeling of the scene rather than every line of detail. These varied lines create a stylized rather than “realistic” scene that is recognizable as to the Chan ink style painting. To me, painting takes Chan style a step further with it’s more abstracted and varied content. There is strong combination of different brush techniques. Where Lian Kai’s Sage is unified in the consistent use of thick rough brushstrokes, Mokuan Reien almost seems to use a different technique with every mark, making for more abstracted and stylized content overall.

Matisse's Olive Trees at Collioure utilizes abstract brushstrokes and colors to create its olive trees and background scenery. There is little variation in line thickness, blotchy, messy strokes are used for both texture, line, and color. Pink and green are the colors primarily used in the composition, yellows, blues and blacks are used in the outline and highlights of the subject. Two olive trees take up the most space in the composition other foliage, smaller trees and some hints of structures fill the space in the background.

These two pieces have lots of differences, but are united partially in their subject matter. Wu Zhen's ink painting has a vast variation of fine lines, dry brushstrokes, and diluted washes of ink. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Matisse uses one weight of line for all the details in the composition, creating messy details by blending colors and texture of the Oil. While the evident similarity of both paintings is it's subject of trees, there is also a similarity in technique when rendering foliage. Wu Zhen uses more abstract brushes to suggest plant life on the rocks and branches of the tree, its contrast in brushstroke making it stand out from the other linework. Matisse also uses abstract short almost stipple-like brushstrokes for details like the leaves and grass. The contrast here comes from the variation in color rather than intricate linework. I chose these two pieces because of their evident differences. It fascinates me to compare two extremely opposite styles when they have the same subject matter. I enjoy the fact that artists from vastly different times and cultures are enamored enough with the everyday nature that surrounds them that they decide to paint them.