Living waterways - Teaching art with Art - Cover Story

Arts & Activities, Nov, 2001 by Guy Hubbard

Most people today travel either by road or air, so it is easy to forget that, until recently, the great highways of the world were over water. Rivers, lakes and seas enabled travelers to move around much more easily than going over land on bad roads.

Waterways also provided water for drinking and growing food. Not surprisingly, natural waterways provided the idea for the creation of man-made waterways--digging canals to make artificial rivers and building aqueducts to carry water from distant reservoirs to cities.

Because of the importance of waterways, communities grew up beside them so that, today, most of the great cities of the world are found on their shores. Some of the best-known cities of North America are found on lakeshores or at the mouths of rivers, including New Orleans, New York, Chicago and Vancouver. Other world-famous cities that are found beside water include Paris, France; Rotterdam, Netherlands; Sydney, Australia; and Shanghai, China.

Because all living things need water to survive, waterways are where much of human history has been made. Since they were natural boundaries, battles were fought on their shores. Sometimes these battles were naval battles that took place entirely on the water. Explorers and merchants set sail from seaports located near the mouths of rivers, and ancient festivals and ceremonies continue to be held on waterways that pass through great cities.

Numbers of these events are recorded in artworks with the waterways appearing either as backgrounds or as the focus of attention. Most water scenes in works of art, however, show much more modest events, such as fishermen at work or boats at anchor. For example, Dutch painters and Japanese printmakers, each in their own unique ways, brought quiet, everyday river scenes to life through their art.

Today, ocean waterways are home to large container ships carrying goods to different parts of the world, while equally large cruise boats take travelers on vacations. While vessels carry cargo on lakes and rivers, these smaller waterways are places where families have summer homes and keep boats for recreation. Water sports are now so popular that it is quite common on a summer afternoon to find people swimming, canoeing, fishing, sailing, rowing, water-skiing and jet-skiing all on the same body of water.

Some students may already have realized that waterways make good subjects for their own artworks and have begun to explore these possibilities. Other students may need help discovering ways of including waterways in their art.

One of the best ways of helping students make this discovery is for them to visit a river, canal or lake, and either make sketches or take photographs of interesting objects and events they observe. The place could be somewhere nearby or it might occur during a family vacation. If a school visit is not practical, good-quality photographs and reproductions of artworks can be helpful.

The artworks reproduced in this article provide several examples of how different artists have depicted waterways. But a great many other possibilities will be discovered in art-room picture collections or from searching through art books in school or local libraries.

The four pictures reproduced here were chosen in part because they are all extremely different from each other. This was done in the hope that the diversity might introduce students to the wide range of ideas from which they might choose. The artists all lived at different times and places, and their pictures show very different kinds of waterways, each with unique events taking place on them.

Franklin McMahon traveled the world drawing and painting interesting sights. In this picture, he tells viewers about the densely populated riverbanks in the capital city of Bangkok, Thailand.

In this lush, tropical country, buildings are packed close together, but are built to be quite open so that air can circulate. They are shown here, extending out over the narrow river so that boats can be loaded easily and people can make purchases from the long boats carrying fruit and vegetables in circular baskets.

In the background, among the crowded buildings, is a red-roofed Buddhist temple, with its traditional curved roof ends. A sign that this is a recent picture is the presence of a television antenna visible on a rooftop, and a tall pole in the center carrying a few telephone lines.

The artist's style fits well with his subject. He uses a pencil and draws very quickly. The main shapes of people and objects are easy to understand because he draws what he sees, but very little detail is present. McMahon is more concerned with capturing the scene in front of him than bothering with detailed accuracy. Watercolor paint is applied equally quick in a way that matches the loosely drawn pencil work.

In Canaletto's lifetime, the city of Venice, Italy, held many celebrations every year. One of the most important was when the ruler of the city (the Doge) was rowed out to sea for a ceremony marrying the city to the sea. This event happened 40 days after Easter Sunday, on Ascension Day.