The Moonlit Landscape

The Moonlit Landscape by Washington Allston

With the expansion of America westward came new subjects to paint. Most of the artists coming to America at this time were from Europe and trained in the classical styles of painting. Upon encountering this polar opposite of a landscape, these artists instantly fell in love with the expansive scenery that America offered. By the 1800’s Romanticism gripped the world. At times it manifested in the passion shown between people, but America fell in love with itself and it came out through these wonderful landscapes.

Following in the tradition of Romanticism, Allston uses lighting and proportions to emphasize the mood behind the painting. The first thing one might note is how brightly the landscape is lit by what is supposed to be the moon. This is part of the effect that Allston is going for. The luminescence of the painting is created in part by Allston’s creative use of glazes. By layering his paints with glaze, Allston creates a glowing effect that, along with the atmospheric color, enhances the majesty of the landscape. To fit an impeccable amount of detail into this 25in x 36in canvas, Alston uses extremely fine and measured brush strokes.

The placement of the figures is essential to accentuating the landscape. Allston does this by creating them as sharp images in the bottom center and blurring the rest of the landscape. By drawing the observers eye to the bottom initially, it makes the observer see the rest as the background, however, because of the scale between the people and the background, it makes the background look expansive. The objective of the artist is not to show the people but to make the expansive landscape the main attraction. The stark contrast between the sky and the landscape as well as the cloud structure helps to accentuate the moon in the center. The line of moonlight divides the painting and goes through the arch of the bridge. This heavenly ray of moonlight helps add to the majestic mood and glow of the painting, which developed, with Allston’s help, into the style of the Hudson River School.