landscape painting, portrayal of scenes found in the natural world; these scenes are treated as the subject of the work of art rather than as an element in another kind of painting.
Early Landscapes
In the West, the concept of landscape grew very slowly. Nature was traditionally viewed as consisting of isolated objects long before it was appreciated as scene or environment. As a result landscape painting as an independent art was a late development in the West. Many scenes, from the Hellenistic pastoral paintings of antiquity to the religious works of the 16th cent. A.D., contained expansive landscape backgrounds, but they were usually subordinated within a narrative context.
The Renaissance and the Sixteenth Century
In Renaissance Italy the study of perspective perspective, in art, any method employed to represent three-dimensional space on a flat surface or in relief sculpture. Although many periods in art showed some progressive diminution of objects seen in depth, linear perspective, in the modern sense, was probably
..... Click the link for more information. gave rise to a careful rendering of scenery according to conventional formulas. Giorgione Giorgione , c.1478–1510, Venetian painter, b. Castelfranco Veneto; fellow student of Titian under Giovanni Bellini in Venice. Giorgione was known also as Zorgo or Zorgi da Castelfranco and as Giorgio Barbarelli.
..... Click the link for more information. and the Venetian painters excelled at pastoral vistas that recalled scenes from classical literature. Flemish works enhanced by meticulous landscape detail became popular in Italy and encouraged Patinir Patinir, Patenier, or Patiner, Joachim de , d. 1524, Flemish landscape and religious painter. He probably studied with Gerard David in Bruges.
..... Click the link for more information. and others to cater to this taste. Altdorfer Altdorfer, Albrecht , 1480–1538, German painter and engraver. He served as city architect of Regensburg, where much of his life was spent. Although influenced by Dürer, Altdorfer's works are less severe in mood.
..... Click the link for more information. , the Danube painter of the early 16th cent., created some of the first works devoted entirely to landscape.
During and after the Reformation the use of religious subject matter was restricted and numerous artists in the north became specialists in the landscape genre at which, when painting backgrounds of religious works, they had become proficient. These artists, among whom Pieter Bruegel Bruegel, Brueghel, or Breughel , outstanding family of Flemish genre and landscape painters. The foremost,
Pieter Bruegel, the Elder, c.
..... Click the link for more information. the elder was most notable, were devoted to fantastic scenes painted according to established convention in tones of brown for the foreground, green for the middle ground, and blue for the background panorama. In Rome, Dutch artists, led by Coninxloo Coninxloo or Koninksloo, Gillis van , 1544–1607, Flemish landscape painter. His Judgment of Midas (Dresden), Latona (Hermitage, St.
..... Click the link for more information. , initiated the concept of the ideal landscape.
The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
Claude Lorrain Claude Lorrain , whose original name was Claude Gelée or Gellée , 1600–1682, French painter, b. Lorraine. Claude was the foremost landscape painter of his time.
..... Click the link for more information. was supreme master of this genre. His serene pastoral works and the heroic compositions of Poussin Poussin, Gaspard , 1615–75, French landscape painter, b. Rome. The son of a Frenchman named Dughet, he adopted the name of his brother-in-law, Nicolas Poussin, in whose studio he worked and whose influence is visible in his interpretations of the Italian
..... Click the link for more information. contrasted with the concurrent Dutch tendency toward realism. The great 17th-century Dutch landscape masters from van Goyen Goyen, Jan Josephszoon van , 1596–1656, Dutch landscape painter. He studied at Leiden and Haarlem. In 1631 he settled at The Hague. His typically Dutch landscapes of harbors, canals, riverbanks, and winter scenes with skaters and sleighs are naturalistically
..... Click the link for more information. to Ruisdael Ruisdael or Ruysdael, Jacob van , c.1628–1682, Dutch painter and etcher, the most celebrated of the Dutch landscape painters.
..... Click the link for more information. , Hobbema Hobbema, Meindert , 1638–1709, Dutch landscape painter. In landscape art Hobbema was second only to his contemporary Jacob van Ruisdael, with whom he may have studied. Most of his life was spent in a poor district of Amsterdam, where he died a pauper.
..... Click the link for more information. , and Rembrandt Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn or Ryn , 1606–69, Dutch painter, etcher, and draftsman, b. Leiden. Rembrandt is acknowledged as the greatest master of the Dutch school.
..... Click the link for more information. transformed into paint what they saw in the Dutch countryside (see Dutch art Dutch art, the art of the region that is now the Netherlands. As a distinct national style, this art dates from about the turn of the 17th cent., when the country emerged as a political entity and developed a clearly independent culture.
..... Click the link for more information. ). The Rococo saw a revival of ideal pastoral scenes in the works of Watteau Watteau, Jean-Antoine , 1684–1721, French painter of Flemish descent, b. Valenciennes. Until 1704 poverty forced him to work in the shops of mediocre artists, where he produced genre and devotional subjects.
..... Click the link for more information. and Gainsborough Gainsborough, Thomas , 1727–88, English portrait and landscape painter, b. Sudbury. In 1740 he went to London and became the assistant and pupil of the French engraver Hubert Gravelot.
..... Click the link for more information. . The 18th-century Englishman Thomas Girtin Girtin, Thomas , 1775–1802, English draftsman and watercolorist. He was apprenticed to an engraver but was employed, together with J. M. W. Turner, to make topographical drawings.
..... Click the link for more information. was an important influence on future landscape painting.
The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
England produced the major late 19th-century landscape masters: the visionary Turner Turner, Joseph Mallord William, 1775–1851, English landscape painter, b. London. Turner was the foremost English romantic painter and the most original of English landscape artists; in watercolor he is unsurpassed.
..... Click the link for more information. and the poetic Constable Constable, John, 1776–1837, English painter, b. Suffolk. Constable and Turner were the leading figures in English landscape painting of the 19th cent. Constable became famous for his landscapes of Suffolk, Hampstead, Salisbury, and Brighton.
..... Click the link for more information. . Constable, who greatly influenced the French Romantics, also served as an important inspiration to the Barbizon school Barbizon school , an informal school of French landscape painting that flourished c.1830–1870. Its name derives from the village of Barbizon, a favorite residence of the painters associated with the school.
..... Click the link for more information. in France, whose members returned to the serene pastoral mood. In Germany, C. D. Friedrich Friedrich, Caspar David , 1774–1840, German romantic landscape painter. After studying painting in Copenhagen he visited various scenic spots in Germany and chose to live in Dresden, where he remained until his death.
..... Click the link for more information. sustained the poetic tradition of landscape, as did the luminists of the American Hudson River school Hudson River school, group of American landscape painters, working from 1825 to 1875. The 19th-century romantic movements of England, Germany, and France were introduced to the United States by such writers as Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper.
..... Click the link for more information. . Turner's exploration of the atmospheric effects of light interested Monet Monet, Claude , 1840–1926, French landscape painter, b. Paris. Monet was a founder of impressionism. He adhered to its principles throughout his long career and is considered the most consistently representative painter of the school as well as one of the
..... Click the link for more information. , whose plein-air plein-air [Fr.,=open-air], term used for paintings or drawings made directly from nature and infused with a feeling of the open air. Painting outdoors is a relatively recent practice; the impressionists and the painters of the Barbizon school made plein-air painting
..... Click the link for more information. works, forming the basis of impressionism impressionism, in painting, late-19th-century French school that was generally characterized by the attempt to depict transitory visual impressions, often painted directly from nature, and by the use of pure, broken color to achieve brilliance and luminosity.
..... Click the link for more information. , elevated landscape to the highest position in artists' esteem that it had yet held.
Landscape also became a principal source material of postimpressionism postimpressionism, term coined by Roger Fry to refer to the work of a number of French painters active at the end of the 19th cent. who, although they developed their varied styles quite independently, were united in their rejection of impressionism.
..... Click the link for more information. . The exponents of surrealism surrealism , literary and art movement influenced by Freudianism and dedicated to the expression of imagination as revealed in dreams, free of the conscious control of reason and free of convention.
..... Click the link for more information. revealed the fearful power of imaginary landscape. In addition, many of the 20th-century artists working in the abstract idiom have employed both landscape and still life as basic sources for their widely differing work.
Landscape Art in the East
In China landscape art reached extraordinary perfection as early as the 8th cent. It engaged the highest talents during the T'ang, Sung, and Ming dynasties (see Chinese art Chinese art, works of art produced in the vast geographical region of China. It the oldest art in the world and has its origins in remote antiquity. (For the history of Chinese civilization, see China.
..... Click the link for more information. ). The prominence accorded landscape in both Chinese and Japanese art Japanese art, works of art created in the islands that make up the nation of Japan.
Early Works
The earliest art of Japan, probably dating from the 3d and 2d millennia B.C.
..... Click the link for more information. reflects the esteem for nature characteristic of East Asian religions.
Bibliography
See K. Clark, Landscape into Art (1949, repr. 1961); Z. Szabo, Landscape Painting in Watercolor (1971); P. Monahan, Landscape Painting (1985); J. Arthur, Spirit of Place: Contemporary Landscape Painting and the American Tradition (1989); A. Wilton and T. Barringer, American Sublime: Landscape Painting in the United States, 1820–1880 (2002).