Landscape Painting - How Much Detail?

As a young artist I always looked up to and admired other artists that put a lot of detail in their work. A kid into comics, I and my mates loved Neil Adams style because of the realistic detail in his art.

It wasn't until I grew older that I became more aware of the beauty gained by simplifying one's work so that  it's best attributes were put forward.

Peaceful Sojourn by M Francis McCarthy

As far as super detailed landscape painting goes the Hudson River guys were probably the most detailed school though I suppose most any type of painting can be highly detailed.  Here's a piece by Frederic Edwin Church:

Frederic Edwin Church  - a Country Home

This is fairly high rez so give it a click to see how Fred handled finish and detail. Granted this actual painting is huge but the level of finish detail is super high and in Fred's case it works quite well. I've seen Fred's work in person and it's awesome.

For me as an artist and landscape painter detail can be a straight jacket that locks up images. Like I said when I was younger I dug detail and drew plenty of detailed images. Now though I believe most every thing that's good in a picture, that's important, has nothing to do with detail.

If you work with photo reference as I often do, The fact that you can see all that detail in your reference can make it difficult not to render it all right into your painting. What you'l end up with is a box of detail more often than a cohesive painting, if you're not careful.

View of my old living room with studio beyond

I'm not a scientist but I've read a bit about how we as humans "see". We actually see only a small bit of anything in our field of vision in sharp focus. The reason we think we see all detail in a given scene at once is that our brains sew together a panoramic image for us to perceive. 

If you observe your own viewing process right now, you might notice that only an area about eight inches wide at 1 foot or so is in focus. To see more than that clearly, you must move your eye's. This is called scanning.

I try with my work to avoid scanning as much as possible. My feeling is that the painter should do the scanning for the perceiver of his paintings and present an image that just flows into the brain of the viewer. People look at the world and photos much the same way. They scan them. Good landscape paintings avoid this and lead the eye in a pleasant manner. 

There are so many ways to do this that I will expand upon later but for the purposes of this post I'll point out one of the best ways. That is this; eliminate distracting detail from your work and present only pertinent detail that pays off the viewers attention. Cheers