Woods Wall Art
WALL ARTForest and woodland offered landscape painters an enclosed, changeable subject quite different from open countryside, built from filtered light, dense foliage and a sense of depth that had to be constructed rather than simply observed. Painters used woods as a setting for myth, allegory and hunting scenes, and increasingly, from the nineteenth century, as a subject studied for its own atmospheric qualities rather than as a stage for figures. Named forests attracted repeated attention from painters working near them, producing informal series over years of return visits. Printmakers found woodland especially suited to the medium, since line could render bark and branch with an economy paint could not match.
