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| William Trost Richards "British Coastal View (Coast of Cornwall)" circa 1880 Oil on paper mounted on artist's board, 8-3/4 x 16 inches (22.2 x 40.6 cm) |
Here's an oil study by William Trost Richards of the coast of Cornwall. If we had been able to see this painting half-finished, I believe that the areas of the water and the the headlands would have been stated as large, flat masses of relatively thin paint, and they would have been detailed later.
You can see the broader statement clearest in the shadowed bluff at the far left, where the brushstrokes from his large bristle brush carry down along the whole form. The darker subdivisions were added later with a smaller brush. At the far left are the marks of the same brush pounding downward to soften the bottom edge of the bluff and to pull the green of the grass upward.
The preliminary statement of masses probably included the average color of the water, without waves or foam, and the light and dark masses of the headlands on the right of the scene. With that paint sitting wet but not too thick, he painted the smaller lines in the rock following the natural fracture lines. The waves also came in later. You'll notice that the wavelet lines never really intersect the vertical line of the illuminated bluff.
This method of painting the poster statement and then subdividing is in contrast to that of Frederic Church. Church finalized the brushwork from the background to the foreground. The sky would have been finished and the illuminated breakers in the middle distance would also have been finished before the jagged line of the rocks was carried across it.
Previous post shows a similar technique on a Trost Richards watercolor
