Mt Holly Nj

Hugh Campbell was born on December 4th, 1905 in Atchison, Kansas. He moved to the Camden, New Jersey area when he was 10 years old. Hugh Campbell left a nine-to-five job in the 1930s to pursue an artist's life. He jumped into his new life with nothing but determination and a feeling that he could paint. He had no formal training. Training himself was his priority, which he did by drawing over 1,000,000 free-hand circles and then over 130,000 action sketches of people on the streets. But it was the fields around his boyhood fishing spots in Mount Holly, where he felt the most at home. Campbell commuted from Camden to Mount Holly regularly as he discovered that those fields and streets were the subject matter that he wanted to paint. He had no money and no place to stay so he would pitch a tent in a field and stay overnight. At one point, the owner of Hacks Canoe Retreat told him that he didn't have to pitch a tent, he could come as often as he liked and stay as long as he liked in an unheated canoe barn at no charge. The owner thought Campbell was going to stay a week or two, but he ended up staying for seven years. In the 1940s, Campbell bought an old tar paper bicycle repair shop building for $150 and moved in onto Kates Tract, the woods on the banks of the Rancocas. He had a quiet, austere lifestyle. Each night, winter and summer, he would go to Mill Dam Park and meditate. Each day, carrying his heavy painting gear, he would roam the fields, valleys and woods up and down the Rancocas Creek, and look for inspiration. Then, after painting, he would record in his voluminous diaries the goings-on all around him. Every Sunday, Campbell would display his paintings along the concrete wall on High Street for even then unheard of prices of $20 or $30. He earned, on average, an income of about $2.00 to $5.00 a week from the sale of his paintings. As he refined his technique, he became a regular at the "Rittenhouse Square Annual Clothesline Exhibition" in Philadelphia.

It could be argued that cave walls were the canvases for the world’s first landscape paintings, which depict and elevate natural scenery through art, but there is a richer history to consider.

The Netherlands was home to landscapes as a major theme in painting as early as the 1500s, and ink-on-silk paintings in China featured mountains and large bodies of water as far back as the third century. Greeks created vast wall paintings that depicted landscapes and grandiose garden scenes, while in the late 15th century and early 16th century, landscapes were increasingly the subject of watercolor works by the likes of Leonardo da Vinci and Fra Bartolomeo.

The popularity of religious paintings eventually declined altogether, and by the early 19th century, painters of classical landscapes took to painting out-of-doors (plein-air painting). Paintings of natural scenery were increasingly realistic but romanticized too. Into the 20th century, landscapes remained a major theme for many artists, and while the term “landscape painting” may call to mind images of lush, grassy fields and open seascapes, the genre is characterized by more variety, colors and diverse styles than you may think. Painters working in the photorealist style of landscape painting, for example, seek to create works so lifelike that you may confuse their paint for camera pixels. But if you’re shopping for art to outfit an important room, the work needs to be something with a bit of gravitas (and the right frame is important, too).

Adding a landscape painting to your home can introduce peace and serenity within the confines of your own space. (Some may think of it as an aspirational window of sorts rather than a canvas.) Abstract landscape paintings by the likes of Korean painter Seungyoon Choi or Georgia-based artist Katherine Sandoz, on the other hand, bring pops of color and movement into a room. These landscapes refuse to serve as a background. Elsewhere, Adam Straus’s technology-inspired paintings highlight how our extreme involvement with our devices has removed us from the glory of the world around us. Influenced by modern life and steeped in social commentary, Straus’s landscape paintings make us see our surroundings anew.

Whether you’re seeking works by the world’s most notable names or those authored by underground legends, find a vast collection of landscape paintings on 1stDibs.