He
pushed up the key of landscape painting to the highest power. He
attacked the fascinating, but of course demonstrably insolvable, problem
of painting sunlight, not illusorily, as Fortuny had done by relying on
contrasts of light and dark correspondent in scale, but positively and
realistically. He realized as nearly as possible the effect of
sunlight--that is to say, he did as well and no better in this respect
than Fortuny had done--but he created a much greater illusion of a
sunlit landscape than anyone had ever done before him, by painting those
parts of his picture not in sunlight with the exact truth that in
painting objects in shadow the palette can compass.
Nothing is more simple. Take a landscape with a cloudy sky, which means
diffused light in the old sense of the term, and observe the effect upon
it of a sudden burst of sunlight. What is the effect where considerable
portions of the scene are suddenly thrown into marked shadow, as well as
others illuminated with intense light? Is the absolute value of the
parts in shadow lowered or raised? Raised, of course, by reflected
light.
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