After the storm

The big clear-up continues after the recent storms, and I took this photo of trees near the studio. 

The broken branches and split tree-trunks look as if they are straight out of a Salvator Rosa landscape!

Neapolitan painter Rosa (1615-1673) was hugely popular in his day - turning out wildly rugged landscapes, allegorical paintings and etchings, and also outraging society with his satirical plays and poems.  His dramatic visions, of moody landscapes with raging storms and colourful unsavoury characters roaming the countryside, later struck a chord with the 19th century Romantic movement.  

Rosa was painting en plein air - painting outside on location - over 200 years before the Impressionists.  It was the invention of the collapsible tin tube that led to artists being able to easily transport materials out of doors, and enabled Cezanne to pack up his oils and take them across the countryside to paint Mont St Victoire.  

It must have been a lot harder for Rosa to do this - he would have had to use something a lot fiddlier, small leather pouches with stoppers - but he seems to have been quite a thrawn and determined character!