Sir Alfred Edward East - Art of Landscape Painting in Oil Colour

Sketching from Nature, Equipment, Colour, Composition, Trees, Skies, Grass, Reflections, Distance — chapters rich with timeless oil painting advice by a master landscape artist, Sir Alfred East. East had an exceptional ability to capture the individuality of trees, the quiver of their leaves against the sky. “If we look at a photograph, the edges of the trees do not give you the feeling that the tree is a living thing, they are marked with hard precision against the light, like a solid building, and yet at the same time if we see them in Nature we hear the whisper of their leaves and know that they live and breathe. To express that is a greater truth than the camera can reveal, and a higher form of realism.” East served as president of the Royal Society of British Artists from 1906 to 1913. — Summary by Sue Anderson