David Dunlop in St. Remy en Provence, France

Landscapes Through Time with David Dunlop

See Art Through a Different Lens in a Groundbreaking New CPTV/PBS HD Series

Great artists unique visions and perceptions have fascinated and delighted -- and sometimes outraged -- people throughout history.

Now, a new CPTV/PBS series offers viewers the opportunity to experience that unique artistic vision in a new way. The series travels to the same renowned gardens, groves, seascapes and mountainous terrains that served as the inspiration for some of the world's most celebrated and familiar works of art.

Landscapes Through Time with David Dunlop -- a lively and entertaining new 13-part CPTV/PBS series shot in HD -- offers viewers the opportunity to travel with noted painter and lecturer David Dunlop to magical, historic locations in the United States and France as he follows the lives and artistic paths of celebrated artists such as Turner and Monet. Dunlop journeys to the locations these artists visited and learns how they transformed their vision into a familiar painting. Dunlop's infectious enthusiasm and vast knowledge of art, philosophy and history inspire every episode as he shares his passion for landscape painting and his artistic skill as he paints the same storied landscape in the technique of the artist. This CPTV National series premieres in June on PBS and on Saturday, June 28, at 6:00 p.m. on CPTV.

This series offers an unrivaled blend of art, history, travel, science, philosophy and painting technique as Dunlop uses his unique integrative approach, making each artist and his art and life come alive. Each half-hour episode contains three components:

* Dunlop takes viewers to a beautiful place that inspired a famous artist and, in his entertaining, energetic style, sets the artist in his appropriate historical context, while discussing who, when, where, how and why he painted.

* Dunlop then sets his easel in the same place that the legendary artist set his and paints that same landscape in the style of the artist, explaining each step of the painting process, including artistic, technical, optical and perceptual insights and revealing techniques and secrets of the master.

* Dunlop then offers tips and techniques while working with one of his students who is transforming his or her painting at the same location.

Landscapes Through Time with David Dunlop travels to Claude Monet's home in Giverny, France, to paint his water lily garden and to the asylum of St. Paul de Mausole in St. Remy en Provence, where Vincent van Gogh committed himself in 1889 and painted many of his masterpieces, including Starry Night, Olive Trees and Cypresses . With his easel and painting supplies in hand, Dunlop scales the rugged terrain of Kaaterskill Falls in upstate New York, where Hudson River painters Thomas Cole, Asher Durand and Sanford Gifford all found inspiration. Dunlop's journey also leads him to Pierre-Auguste Renoir's home and garden at Cagnes Sur Mer, France; the Lieutenant River in Old Lyme, Connecticut; the white cliffs of Etretat on France's Normandy Coast; and Contentment Island off the coast of Connecticut, where John Frederick Kensett painted the Long Island Sound.

This groundbreaking series appeals not only to artists, but to everyone who is fascinated by art and the process of its creation, with demonstrations for the painter and non-painter alike. It also offers invaluable techniques and insights for artists of all levels of expertise. Watching Dunlop dramatically transform his students' paintings with just a bit of highlighting or a small change in the composition is absorbing. He demonstrates the basic principles of composition and perspective, old master and contemporary techniques and color-mixing theories for effective landscape painting.

Producer Connie Simmons, also a painter, was inspired by Dunlop and his engaging enthusiasm for the creative process and his investigation into how the mind is involved with perception and vision. Simmons explains, "There is a mysterious magic to painting and an excitement in seeing where a great landscape was painted. It was thrilling and inspiring to actually walk where Turner, Inness or Monet walked -- seeing what they saw and then comparing that vision to a familiar painting. With this series, we hope to capture some of the particular power and excitement of each artist and to share it with our audience."

Episode Descriptions

Episode #101 “Van Gogh – St. Remy, Provence, France”

David takes us through the penultimate year of Vincent van Gogh’s life – 1889, where he voluntarily committed himself to the asylum of St. Paul de Mausole in St. Remy en Provence. David walks down its lanes, olive groves, and countryside and shows us van Gogh’s room and studio.  In this protected retreat, van Gogh was free to paint over 150 paintings, including many of his masterpieces, including “Olive Trees” and “The Cypresses.” He demonstrates van Gogh’s expressive palette and brushwork, his drawing techniques as a preparation for his paintings, reveals his connections to Dutch landscape painting and shows how he employs these ideas in expressive, moving gestures.

Van Gogh's "The Starry Night" and "The Cypresses" are on display at the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven. The exhibit runs through September 7 and is free. Listen as Yale art curator Jennifer Gross takes WNPR's Diane Orson on a preview...

Episode #102 “Monet – Water Lily Garden at Giverny, France"

David visits the enchanting village of Giverny, 45 miles northwest of Paris, and the last home of Claude Monet, considered the father of Impressionism. David discusses Monet’s continuing development from a teenage caricaturist to maverick Impressionist, and final evolution into expressionism at the end of his life with his carefully cultivated water lily garden as his inspiration. David paints that same water lily garden using Monet’s techniques.  He then works with his students who are painting Monet’s famous Japanese bridge, discussing his lasting influence on painting with his revolutionary new language for releasing color from the outlines of static shapes.

Episode #103 “Cezanne – Origins of Modernism, Mont Sainte-Victoire, France”

Travel with David to the magnificent landscape of Mont Sainte-Victoire, Paul Cezanne’s (1839-1906) lifelong inspiration near Aix en Provence in France. David walks in Cezanne’s footsteps, visiting his studio, his family home Jas de Buffon, and the views from Sainte Marguerite toward Mont Sainte-Victoire – while describing Cezanne’s artistic ambitions to pull art from nature. David demonstrates Cezanne’s strategies, from sketch to watercolor to oil. He explains the master’s insights into visual perception, his difficulties, frustrations, and his ultimate success, as the grandfather of Cubism and Modernism’s most influential painter. 

Episode #104 “Renoir – Landscapes, Cagnes Sur Mer, France”

Renoir and Monet are largely responsible for the advent of modern art and the development of the greatest art movement of the 19^th century – Impressionism. David visits Renoir’s home, garden and studio at Les Colettes in the ancient hill town of  Cagnes Sur Mer, and explores Renoir’s enduring contribution to art. Our host sets his easel precisely where Renoir set his  - in the ancient olive grove overlooking the Mediterranean  - and demonstrates the master’s methods, describing his effects and explaining his thoughts. 

Episode #105 “Americans in Giverny – Giverny, France"

David continues his visit to the small village of Giverny, the site of an exciting art colony in the 1880’s-1920s, the American Impressionists. They were drawn by the magnetic creativity of Claude Monet. David’s investigation includes visits to the hotels, gardens and hillsides frequented by American Impressionists. Focusing on the work of Theodore Robinson and Willard Metcalf, David explores the similarities and differences between French and American Impressionism. He recreates the atmosphere of Giverny among the Americans and demonstrates their painting systems in this historic French river town.

Episode #106 “Turner - The Harbor of Honfleur, Normandy Coast, France”

David believes that Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851) is the greatest of English landscape painters – perhaps, even, of all time. Abstract expressionists, Impressionists, Hudson River Painters, Tonalists, and others all cite Turner as a source of influence and inspiration. David examines why. In this episode, David visits the dramatic Northern French coast at the harbor of Honfleur, a favorite location of Turner’s and of French artists, an inspiration for his watercolor and oil paintings. He recreates Turner’s innovative techniques in composition and paint. 

Episode #107 “Etretat – A Landscape of Inspiration along the Normandy Coast of France”

The white cliffs rising out of the sea at Etretat on France’s Normandy Coast played a role in the inventive periods of French painting from the romanticism of Delacroix, the realism of Courbet to Monet’s Impressionism through the 1880s. David visits the various inspired viewpoints along the cliff walks above Etretat and below on its beaches to paint a landscape demonstrating principles from those schools of painting. David compares the styles and visions of Etretat’s artists to its landscape and reveals the keys to its interpretation. 

Episode #108 “American Impressionism – Florence Griswold Museum Garden, Old Lyme, CT” 

Old Lyme – close to New York and Boston -- a popular artist colony at the turn of the century, offered many parallels to Claude Monet’s home of Giverny, France. Willard Metcalf painted poppy fields in France and in Old Lyme, Childe Hassam painted flower gardens in both places, and J. Alden Weir painted the gardens in France and his home in Connecticut. In this episode, David looks at the origins of the French Impressionist idea of sensual delight in a mid-day sunlit garden. He takes us through the Griswold garden, demonstrating how American Impressionists created the sensual experience of interwoven color, texture, and movement from a palette of colors painted outside – or “en plein air,” a term made popular during this time.

Episode #109 “Inness – The Evolution of a Hudson River Painter into American Modernism, Montclair, NJ”

George Inness (1825-1894) began painting with the Hudson River painters and is considered one of America’s most celebrated landscape painters and the father of American Modernism. David explores the evolution of Inness’s unique painting style, his quest for a union of spirituality with painting, and his reliance on ambiguity. At a reservation near Inness’s home in Montclair, New Jersey, which overlooks the Manhattan skyline and Inness’s New York studio, David creates a painting using techniques of Inness while discussing his sources of inspiration and his enduring influence in the world of American art.

Episode #110 “Kensett – The American Luminist, Contentment Island, Darien, CT”

The Luminists, considered to be a later development of the Hudson River Painters, included John F. Kensett (1816-1872), one of the founder’s of New York’s Metropolitan Museum. David follows Kensett’s evolution into American Luminism and visits Contentment Island in Connecticut, where Kensett lived and painted after the end of the Civil War. At a location ten feet from Kensett’s Contentment Island studio, David demonstrates the techniques used to evoke Luminism’s suffused unified light and paints a poetic scene of the Long Island Sound that fascinated Kensett and his fellow artists. 

Episode #111 “Hudson River Painters – Kaaterskill Falls, NY”

David continues his exploration of the Hudson River Painters with a trek to Kaaterskill Falls, located in the Catskill Mountains and painted by many Hudson River artists. In the mid-1800s, Americans were swept with new passions: geology, meteorology, biology and botany. The Hudson River painters were also inspired by these new sciences and a desire to be spiritually and morally uplifting as they created artworks of unsurpassed fidelity to nature. David paints the magnificent wilderness from the top of the 300-foot Kaaterskill Falls, as he discusses the inspiration of artists Thomas Cole, Asher Durand and Sanford Gifford.

Episode #112 “American Impressionism –The Lieutenant River, Old Lyme, CT”

David Dunlop investigates the connection between French Impressionism and its transplantation to America, at Old Lyme, Connecticut, known as the American Giverny. We examine the formative role of Giverny and Monet on the distinct American style of Impressionism that retained its Hudson River traditions of drawing and a reliance on classical forms. David considers their use of new scientific ideas of perception and new technologies in paint as they captured a sensual, personal vision on canvas. Following their example, David paints a river scene in the tradition of Childe Hassam’s “Summer Afternoon.”

Episode #113 “Hudson River Painters – Frederic Church’s Olana, Hudson Valley, NY”

David Dunlop explores the locations, history, techniques and artists who were considered Hudson River painters. Popular from 1825 to 1875, these painters were attracted to the natural grandeur of the new nation and their paintings gave Americans their first vision of national identity and also inspired the creation of a national park system. David and his students explore Olana, Frederic Church’s Persian-inspired home and park and paint the same panoramic vistas of the Hudson River Valley painted by Church.