Capri Sunrise

Travelling was a big part of Frederic Leighton’s life. He could speak French, German, Italian and Spanish. It was on sojourns to Rome, Greece and North Africa that he made some of his most attractive yet least-known paintings.

2Capri Sunrisewas painted whilst on a trip to the Italian island in 1859. It shows a town scene from behind, with Leighton’s easel set up amid a grove of olive trees. The lighting effects are reminiscent of Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, whom Leighton admired deeply.

3In Leighton’s work, the perfectly delineated planes of the buildings capture the slow-moving light and shadow of a sunrise. In the distance, the land and sky are painted in pastel tones of peach,mauve and blue. These colours work as the ideal ground for the more prominent shades of white, khaki and tan that make up the foreground. These simple shades match the rock rising up on the left-hand side, giving the whole foreground a unified feel and a brilliantly worked sense of space.

旅行是弗雷德里克·萊頓生活重要的組成部分。他會說法語、德語、意大利語和西班牙語。在意大利羅馬、希臘和北非逗留期間，他創(chuàng)作了一批極具魅力卻鮮為人知的畫作。

2《卡普里日出》是1859 年萊頓在意大利卡普里島旅行時(shí)所畫。此畫從背面描繪了一個(gè)城鎮(zhèn)的風(fēng)貌，萊頓作畫的地點(diǎn)位于一片橄欖樹樹林中。畫面呈現(xiàn)的光影效果讓人想起法國巴比松畫派著名畫家讓-巴蒂斯特-卡米耶·柯羅——柯羅是萊頓非常敬仰之人。

3在萊頓的畫作中，建筑立面勾勒完美，清晰捕捉到日出時(shí)緩慢移動的光影。遠(yuǎn)處的大地和天空呈現(xiàn)出柔和的桃紅、淡紫和天藍(lán)——這些顏色極好地映襯了前景，讓前景深淺不一的乳白、卡其和黃褐更加突出。這些樸素的色調(diào)與左邊高聳的巖壁相得益彰，使整個(gè)前景和諧統(tǒng)一，空間感把握得恰到好處。