Tweetalig Onderwijs

atmospheric perspective

Teaching in English as a non-native speaker comes with a lot of work. This week I had a discussion with my colleague how to describe the phenomenon that colours at a distance are less saturated than colours in the foreground.
This visual aspect has been used by artists to create depth in the picture plane since medieval times. Last year I introduced the word “colour depth” in our second form. I know I had some reason to do so, I must have come across the word somewhere used in this sense. However, when checking I found that this term is predominantly used to refer to computer graphics in which the number of colours depends on the digital definition i.e. on its depth. I have been mistaken.
As my colleague rightly commented: the proper word for this visual aspect is atmospheric perspective or aerial perspective. Now, which one is best for our purposes, the first or the latter?  Maybe I am splitting hairs now but I take that using those two words randomly might create confusion.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have a glossary for t.t.o. art teachers, a list of words that we agree on to describe visual aspects? Glossaries galore are to be found on the internet. Have a look at the page “glossaries.” in which I listed some of them. However, I would like to have recourse to a national list that matches the usual words in the Dutch spoken art room, a national tto-art word bank for our subject.

Picture: BRUEGHEL, Jan the Elder / A Flemish Fair (detail) / 1610s / Oil on copper / Royal Collection, Windsor / Web Gallery of Art