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When creating a landscape, painters have to consider where their landscape is, whether to offer up an urban, rural or suburban view and who and/or what will appear in the image. Just as important, but easy for us to take for granted, is light. The way that light is depicted in a painting effects everything that we see in it through shadow, colour and mood.
The intensity of light will be determined by the place the landscape depicts. In Canaletto’s Regatta on the Grand Canal, the light is bright and the colours heightened, suggesting a sunny and warm climate and adding to the positive feeling of celebration as befits the occasion of the regatta. Marilhat’s image of Beni Suef on the Nile offers a very different type of light: it is pale and dusty, suggesting the end of the day in a hot arid climate.
The weather and natural phenomena certainly affect the light in works of art. Seascapes can change significantly in mood depending on the light and the weather. Some show boats being tossed about on a stormy sea, their sails billowing under a dark sky, while other vessels sit happily on a calm flat sea, the sky above them clear and serene. Examples of these are Bonavia’s Storm off Rocky Coast and Van der Velde’s Fishing Boats in Calm Sea. Perhaps one of the most dramatic uses of light on this site shows a natural phenomenon: the Eruption of Vesuvius. Here the colour and light is suitably dramatic and fiery for such an event.
The time of day is another thing which will help an artist decide how to depict light. Obviously, if the scene is a nightime one, such as in Moonlight with Skaters, the moon rather than the sun will be present. The offers a very different type of light from the sun, sometimes more magical or eerie. While the light from a clear moon can make an image clear and crisp, that from a thin sliver of a moon, or one shrouded in cloud, can bring mystery or murkiness to the scene.