Landscape Painting [Paperback]

Birge Harrison (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 21, 2008

Originally published in 1909, "Landscape Painting," by Birge Harrison is a collection of impromptu talks given before the Art Students League at its summer school in Woodstock, New York. Birge Harrison was born in Philadelphia in 1854. He initially trained in the Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, but within a year moved to Paris. There he remained for twelve years as student at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, working under Carolus Duran and Alexandre Cabanel. "Birge Harrison's volume on 'Landscape Painting' a fine commentary on the technique of the craft." -The New York Times, November 14, 1909

Product Details

• Paperback: 140 pages
• Publisher: Velatura Press, LLC (March 21, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0980045428
• ISBN-13: 978-0980045420
• Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 6.8 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,328,280 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Maybe the best book on landscape painting ever written, September 24, 2008

By 

Clem J. Robins (cincinnati, ohio) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Landscape Painting (Paperback)

Apparently, someone took a copy of the original book, which is long out of print, scanned it using OCR software, and made a book out of it. Resultingly, there are chronic spelling errors. The word "motif", for example, is rendered "motive" over and over again. And the reproductions of paintings are awful -- and unnecessarily so, since high quality images of all these pictures were certainly available, and I for one would have been happy to pay twice the price to get them.

Now that I've got all of this off my chest...

If you're interested in landscape painting, I can't imagine a better book than this. Harrison lived to see the French impressionists blossom, and lived to see them re-evaluate their spot and dash system, and eventually discard it. He saw the American painters harvest the best of what the French discovered, and take landscape painting much farther. And he describes every bit of it.

I wish his description of the contemporary American method -- a "warm undertone and a cool overtone" -- were more thorough, and if anybody else ever described this method in detail, I've yet to find it.

But his explanation of refraction, of vibration, and particularly his marvelous chapter on composition, are as good as it gets. Read the book at night, because you'll want to go out into the field when the sun comes up.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good Stuff, October 31, 2009

By 

Balalaika (CA USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Landscape Painting (Paperback)

I almost didn't buy this book due to the complaints about spelling and grammar as well as awful pictures. However I went ahead and am very pleased. I just received it and have read perhaps 6 or so chapters and found them thought provoking and informative and not at all difficult to read. I did not buy the book for the pictures (if that's what you are after, you will most likely be disappointed). The content is really good stuff and worth reading and re-reading and keeping around.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great book, could have used proofreading before printing, September 15, 2008

By 

Customer (PDX) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Landscape Painting (Paperback)

The guy is genius, this book is packed with good information about what makes a good landscape. A lot of the information gets rehashed by his sucessors, but he has a good succinct way of explaining things.

The negative is there are LOTS of errors in the print. It looks like they must have put an printed edition through a scanner, but didn't bother to proofread it. There lots of letters in words that are just wrong, an 8 for an s, a b for an h, an l for an f, you know the sort of thing scanners get wrong. It is very annoying.

Since the original is long out of print, I suppose we are lucky to have any edition available to us. Too bad they didn't take even a small amount of care in preparing it.