Essay Comparing A Wooden Landscape With Travelers

Without prior knowledge, a person comparing Joris van der Haagen’s A Wooden Landscape with Travelers and George Bellows’s Blue Snow, the Battery could mistakenly believe that van der Haagen is objectively the better painter. The impressive level of detail in the landscape, the fine brushstrokes, and the realistic use of color are all certainly very impressive. Although Bellows’s work appears far less advanced, he intentionally chose to portray the landscape with quick, loose brush strokes, which allow for far less detail and less use of nuanced colors. Van der Haagen’s painting uses the beauty and vastness of nature to show its power when compared to man; Bellows shows man’s defiance of nature’s power through his industrialization. Although both paintings are landscapes, the way in which the artists portrayed nature in their works is quite different. The main focal point in A Wooden Landscape is the large tree that stands
In Bellows’s Blue Snow, the building across the water appears very hazy and unclear, far more so than the buildings and nature in the foreground of the painting. The land the building is on is also blue and almost indistinguishable from the water and sky, which is similar to Masaccio’s much earlier use of aerial perspective in his The Tribute Money. Van der Haagen uses aerial perspective as well: the trees in the distance have a blue haze to them and are painted with little detail. There is also what appears to be some type of man-made structure in the far distance. This structure is, like the distant building in Bellows’s work, painted with very little detail and is hazy due to the aerial perspective, and is likely a symbol with which van der Haagen could show the insignificance of man. It seems to show that although man can try to build large, impressive structures, when compared with the scope of nature, man is