Claude glass, Instructables and the Picturesque movement

Many of you are probably unfamiliar with this bit of 18th- and 19th-century technology, but Janeites certainly know of the Picturesque movement from Sense and Sensibility. Marianne Dashwood was enchanted by the thought of a picturesque cottage: “As a house, Barton Cottage, though small, was comfortable and compact; but as a cottage it was defective, for the building was regular, the roof was tiled, the window shutters were not painted green, nor were the walls covered with honeysuckles.” A blasted tree was more interesting than a fulsome one; a ruined temple more beautiful than an intact one. This is, of course, ridiculously simplified but essentially artists were hoping for a romantic look. In paintings, many artists were trying to emulate the works of 17-century painter Claude Lorrain.

(There’s a nice set of posts about Austen and the Picturesque at the oldgreypony blog.)

The effect was easier to reproduce if artists viewed the landscape they were painting in the reflection of a black convex mirror as it reduced the contrast and muted the tonal range, similar to the effect shown in this Lorrain painting:

William Gilpin championed the Picturesque aesthetic and Janeites are probably familiar with the Tour of Dr. Syntax in Search of the Picturesque poem by William Combe and the attendant caricatures by Thomas Rowlandson that poked fun at Gilpin and the movement.

An artist using a Claude glass to view a landscape offered the ludicrous image of someone peering intently into a small mirror (usually small enough to fit in one hand) with their back to a breathtaking view. Here’s a picture of television presenter Kevin McCloud using a Claude glass to paint an Italian landscape in the third episode of his Channel 4 series Kevin McCloud’s Ground Tour. (The series is available on Netflix.)

A Claude glass is a relatively simple thing and the instructable mentioned above shows how to take a lens from an old slide show project and paint one side with black paint. Painting with a Claude Glass is a technique still used by artists today and there’s even a Claude glass webcam pointed at Tintern Abbey (not always working, but there are archived images). J.M.W. Turner also painted Tintern Abbey in the Picturesque style.

There’s even a book you can buy at Amazon: The Claude Glass: Use and Meaning of the Black Mirror in Western Art by Arnaud Maillet.

So even two hundred years or more since Jane Austen’s day and the Picturesque movement we can still find people interested in the art forms and technology of that era. And after this little divertissement, I will go back to reading Jane Austen on my Kindle.