Nature

Artist: Thomas Gainsborough

Title: Wooded Upland Landscape

Date: 1783

Medium: oil on canvas

Provenance: National Gallery of Art

Source: www.nga.gov

Description: wooded landscape with hills, mountains, people, and sheep

Line: diagonal line up to the right made by line of tree tops and mountains

Natural Shapes and Forms: trees, people, mountains, hills, sheep, grass, rocks

Color: dark colors with dark shadows cast from trees and hills

Texture: mountains and rocks are rough but trees and grass are smooth

Space: illusion of space created through trees and mountains in the background; positive space shown through trees, people, and animals; negative space shown through sky and mountains in the background

Balance: asymmetrical and beaver on the right side

Contrast: contrast between the tree tops and mountains and between grass and rocks

Emphasis: emphasis placed on the person and his dog because of their placement in the center

Movement: eyes travel down the line of mountains, then down the hill, and rest on the person in the middle

Proportion: person is small compared to the trees and trees are small compared with the mountains

Unity: lines work together to create emphasis on the person in the middle, lack of a lot of texture helps create a hazy picture, dark colors make the painting dreary and sad