The power of nature captured in art

THE earliest paintings encapsulating nature are from seventh century Chinese artists who were inspired by Taoism. The greatest age of Chinese landscape paintings in ink and wash was from 907 1127 AD embracing the Tang dynasty. Artists such as Jing Hao, Li Cheng, Fan Kuan, and Guo Xi painted the majestic towering mountains of Northern China, whilst Dong Yuan and Juran specialised in the rolling hills and river valleys of the South. The sheer beauty of the tower karst hills along the River Li valley, which I saw as a painting at university, inspired me to specialise in tropical karst topography.

Japanese landscape and seascape painting was inspired by the philosophy of Zen Buddhism in believing in the dictum, ‘Nature is my teacher’. Creating a living environment by bringing people closer to nature was an important part of Japanese culture in the 12th and 13th centuries. Minimalistic, simple gardens were created in houses, with bonsai trees and waterfalls embellishing the townscapes. Carefully raked gravel, most artistically designed in intricate shapes, simulated flowing rivers.

I well remember my late head of the English Department, Jo Storr, with his students, creating a Japanese garden outside of my headmaster’s office. Jo felt that I needed time for contemplation as, indeed, did all students – miscreants and well behaved – who called into my office to visit me! He and his gardeners weekly raked the gravel into the most intricate of patterns between the bonsai tree and the giant boulders.

Islamic art

Islamic artists, between the eighth and 14th centuries, celebrated the beauty of the natural world and Allah’s creations by capturing these in ceramics and mostly mosaics depicting the geometric patterns of flowers, fruits and the tendrils of plants. Islamic long-standing mosques are elaborately decorated from the floors to the ceilings, truly capturing nature’s creations and inspiring worshippers to get closer to the hand of Allah. The great collector of Mughal art was Jahangir in his short reign as Emperor of Hindustan from 1605 to 1625. His collection of paintings included studies of birds, flowers and animals.

Early 18th century fine art

The early 18th century saw the incredible fine art works of Maria Merian, a German born artist who specialised in botanic art. This was at the time the Swedish naturalist Linnaeus was classifying species. Maria’s mother was a botanical artist and from her childhood days Maria was encouraged to draw insects and plants. Moving later in life to the Netherlands she visited Surinam, then a Dutch territory, and produced the most intricate of paintings of tropical plants, frogs, snakes, spiders and amphibians, including a series showing the metamorphosis of caterpillar to a chrysalis and eventually a butterfly. Her art works are valued today.

Romantic Movement

This movement encouraged the British public to venture outside, not only to observe the beauty of nature but to look overhead to view the skies and cloud patterns. Such were expressed in the paintings of JMW Turner and John Constable. Turner’s paintings captured the forces the seas, brutal storms, snowstorms and vortices. The viewer of his paintings show nature not only expressed in art as we see it but how we can feel it. Certainly, his paintings inspired people to not only view landscapes and to look up, overhead, to observe the sky and its cloud patterns.

The 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora in Sumbawa, Indonesia, caused heavy ash rains in Borneo leading to global climate anomalies. The year 1816 became known in Western Europe as ‘the year without a summer’. This eruption occasioned prolonged brilliantly coloured sunsets in pink and purple above the horizon at twilight and orange or red near the horizon as the sun finally set. The refraction of the setting sun Turner captured in many of his paintings.

John Constable, by comparison, liked to include figures in his landscapes of the county of Suffolk where he lived. Even today, a part of the Suffolk countryside is known as ‘Constable Country’.

Mid-19th century

Whilst superb paintings of deep canyons, powering mountains, forests and snowscapes were captured by American artists, it was the American photographer, Carleton Watkins, who captured the beauty of the Californian landscape. His photographs of the 1,000-metre-high vertical cliff, known as El Capitan and superb waterfalls in Yosemite, well displayed his eye for nature. Such photos inspired Abraham Lincoln and Congress to create, in June 1864, the first protected landscape in the world in Yosemite National Park. This was later followed by Yellowstone National Park. Today, only 15 per cent of our world is now officially protected from human encroachment in National Parks, Nature Reserves and Maritime Protected Areas.

Changes through time

Geomorphologists and meteorologists have all drawn inspiration from historical paintings. What was before the artist’s eye in his/her painting, many moons ago, has changed over time by the forces of nature and human exploitation of the environment. The fact that Mount Tambora blasted millions of tonnes of volcanic ash into the sky, producing ’the year without a summer’, helped meteorologists, by viewing paintings of that year, to conclude that 1816 was the coldest year since 1400 in British history. It was the vivid sunsets of Turner’s paintings that drew meteorologists’ attentions.

Coastlines have changed in the shape of beaches and cliffs with storm surges eroding the landscape. Sections of cliffs have collapsed. The latter can no better be seen in the photographs accompanying this article. The painting of ‘The Crowns’ at Botallack in West Cornwall’s former tin mining district depicts the forces of the Atlantic Ocean’s waves breaking against the sea cliffs. It was painted in oils, by my former geography teacher, in 1982. Bob Quixley, now 93 years of age, taught me geography and geology at my grammar school and is a much-revered member of the Newlyn School of Artists. Alongside is a very recent photo. Notice how the landscape has changed with a cliff collapse between the island containing one ‘tower’ and the mainland ‘tower’. Mid-19th century photographs taken in the height of Cornish tin mining revealed a wooden bridge, over the zawn (sea chasm), linking the two deep mineshafts. The forces of nature led to the collapse of the bridge long ago.

The future

Abstract paintings of landscapes, although well-designed, have never captured me. I like to draw and paint what I observe and how I feel when close to nature. What I can see one day is gone as time passes by. My late wife had a passion for photographing sunsets and rainbows against landscapes and seascapes in Somerset, England and during our frequent visits to Sabah and Southern France. These are memories encapsulated in time. A very close friend has sent me photos of pitcher plants he has encountered on many treks to Sarawak’s summits and ‘shots’ of a humming-like bird picking nectar off his tropical balcony plants. Photographs are treasures!

When living in the Northwest of England in the 1970s, I took snapshots of the aftermath of a particularly violent storm that hit Blackpool overnight. Disguised as a council worker in bright orange waterproof clothing, I managed to avoid police cordons to photograph the damage to once stout seawalls and the massive erosion of a nearby sand dune system. With climate heating and storm surges more frequent, photographs and paintings of low-lying islands such as the Maldives and Seychelles become even more precious as sea levels rise.

What Chinese artists captured in their exquisite paintings many centuries ago have revealed the fact that the more we understand nature, the more we get to understand ourselves. Next time you go on a trip, take a sketch pad or camera with you to encapsulate a view of nature as can be seen by your naked eye. Be sure that you date the sketch or painting or snapshot image, for natural and human forces will inevitably change that image in a relatively short time. Your vision of the natural world, as you observed it, will forever remain in your time capsule.