Waterfall in Summer Mountains, Nakabayashi Chikuto, hanging scroll, ink and color on silk, 50 x 17 inches (126 x 43 cm), in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

19th century (Edo period) Japanese artist Nakabayashi Chikuto paints a beautifully subtle and evocative mountain scene with a strong, eye-leading composition.

My eye goes to the crest of the mountain, follows the verdant landscape down through the mist and cascades with the waterfall, leading me to the small lone figure sitting on a bridge in apparent contemplation of nature.

The small size of the figure in relation to the grandure of the scene emphasizes our role as part of the natural world.

Andries Stilte as a Standard Bearer, Johannes Cornelisz Verspronck, oil on canvas, 41 x 31 in. (104 x 79 cm), in the collection of the National Gallery of Art, DC, which has both a zoomable and downloadable version of the image.

I hadn’t heard of 17th century Dutch painter Johannes Verspronk until I came across this painting while browsing the National Gallery site.

The portrait grabbed my attention with its striking persence and dimenaionality, the latter largely accompished by the extended elbow and the overall value structure, which thrusts the figure forward into the light out of the dark background..

Meticulous attention is paind to the uniform, a symbol of the subject’s rank and position in the malitia. Though some of the elements, like the feathers, are handled quite economically.

Autumn – On the Hudson River, Jasper Francis Cropsey, oil on canvas, 60 x 108 in. (152 x 275 cm), in the collection of the National Gallery of Aart, DC, which has both a zoomable image and a downloadable high res file available.

Cropsey was a 19th century American architecht and first generation Hudson River painter known for his colorful and dramatic views of mountains and valleys, particularly when arrayed in bright fall foliage.

This painting is considered his landmark work, painted in the studio from memory, notes and sketches. It’s common to talk of landscape paintings as haveing a morefgound, middleground and background, but Cropsey’s composition appears to have six or seven levels of distance, reinforced by his deft handling of atmospheric parspective.

I love the little details that lend the image scale; the family picnicing on the hillside in the foreground (images above, second down), the horse and rider on tha path between the trees in the middleground, a bit to the right of center (images above, third down) and the cows drinking from a stream at the lower right (images abvoe, bottom).