The text provides insights on how landscape artists should study and replicate the natural effects observed in various elements like trees, skies, and distant views, ensuring variety and specificity in technique. It emphasizes learning the general painting rules as foundational for landscape art and the importance of perspective in creating realistic landscapes.
Drawing.
It would be desirable for the landscape artist to copy from nature, and on several sheets, the different effects observed in trees in general, and to do the same with different species of trees specifically, like in the trunk, leaf, and color. The nature of an oak, for example, is different from that of a willow, and the touch should also be different: it's particularly this variety of touch that brings spirit and good taste to the landscapes that are drawn. This should also be applied to some plants, whose diversity is a great ornament for the terraces in the foreground of a painting.
The landscape artist ought to study in the same manner the effects of the sky, in different hours of the day, in different seasons, in the various arrangements of clouds in calm weather, and in storms and thunder. The same should be done for distant views, architectural structures, and ruins, for the various characteristics of rocks, water, and the main objects that are part of the landscape.
General Observations on Landscape.
As the general rules of Painting are the foundations of all dependent genres, one seeks to practice in Landscape, assuming they have been instructed already. Here, we will only make some observations that specifically concern this genre of Painting.
Landscape assumes the habit of the principal rules of Perspective to not stray from realism.
Translation Notes:
"Paysagiste" translates to "landscape artist." "Touche" refers to the way an artist applies paint or drawing material, which affects the texture and appearance in their work.