Views of the landscape in painting

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

The genre of fine art, the main theme of which is the living or man-made environment, became independent later than others - plot, still life or animalistics.

Views of the landscape began to develop with renewed vigor when artists got the opportunity to work in the open air.

Definition

The French word "paysage" ("pays" - "country", "locality") is close in meaning to the German "Landschaft" and the English "landscape". All of them denote the spatial environment surrounding a person in the open air. This environment may consist of elements of natural origin (landscape, vegetation, bodies of water, air atmosphere), created or modified by man (roads, buildings, farmland, power lines, etc.).

The word "landscape" has several meanings: it is simply what the human eye stops at outdoors, the description of nature in a literary work, the depiction of the environment through visual art. In almost every work of art there are different types of landscapes. Photo, film, video, computer graphics and, of course, painting are involved indisplaying the world around.

Variety of topics

Every true artist has his own view of the environment. To help understand this diversity, it is customary to distinguish between certain types of landscape. For preschoolers, high school students, students and art lovers of any age, there is a gradation of landscape paintings depending on the theme of the image of nature and its character.

There are natural, rural and urban landscapes in painting. Each of them has varieties and features. Historical and heroic, epic, romantic and mood landscapes stand out in character.

Natural scenery

Even in the Middle Ages, the image of nature was schematic and planar. It was of an auxiliary nature to supplement religious, mythological or historical compositions. But starting from the Renaissance, paintings began to appear in which plots or figures of people were not used to express feelings and emotions, the main characters in them were earth, forests, sky, sea in different states.

One of the founders of the "pure landscape" genre is the German engraver, draftsman and painter Albrecht Altdorfer (1480-1538). For the first time on mythological canvases, the figures of heroes were often hardly distinguishable against the backdrop of a grandiose image of the natural environment.

Marina - a picture of the sea

In the natural landscape, a special place is occupied by images of the aquatic environment, which has always attracted the attention of artists. Landscape types associated withnavigation, and marine studies (marina - a picture of a marine theme) were born in countries where shipbuilding was a common thing - in Holland, England, etc.

At first, the sea was an integral part of the image of ships and water battles, but then the expressiveness and powerful beauty of the elements, its elusive variability began to captivate painters in themselves. The real pinnacle of world significance is the work of the Russian marine painter I. K. Aivazovsky (1817-1900).

The image of celestial spaces, planets and stars is also referred to as a natural landscape. Views of the landscape, called cosmic or astral, have always been a genre of fantastic or futuristic art, with the beginning of regular space flights, such paintings are more realistic.

Rural landscape

Since the time of the idyllic scenes of the life of shepherds and shepherdesses of the Rococo era, the rural landscape has always held an important place in the pictorial art.

Proximity to nature, harmony of life on earth, peasant labor were the theme for many outstanding masters of different eras, such as Pieter Brueghel (1525-1569), Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665), Camille Corot (1796-1875), François Millet (1814-1875).

Russian painting has had a rural theme since the time of A. G. Venetsianov (1780-1847). Examples of the highest peaks in the rural landscape are among the brilliant Russian artists: I. I. Levitan (1860-1900), A. K. Savrasov (1830-1897), V. D. Polenov (1844-1927), A. A. Plastov (1893-1972). Special Poetryrural life surrounded by Russian nature inspires contemporary artists.

Cityscape

In the 17th century, a genre in painting called "veduta" ("veduta" (Ital.) - "view") became very popular in Europe. These were paintings, views of the landscape, the essence of which is a topographically accurate and detailed depiction of city buildings, streets and entire neighborhoods. For their writing, a camera obscura was used - a device for obtaining an accurate optical image on a plane. The best examples of this genre are photographically accurate architectural cityscapes. Views of Venice and London of the 18th century are presented in the paintings of A. Canaletto (1697-1768), the amazing skill of J. Vermeer (1632-1675) in the painting “View of Delft”.

Architectural landscape shows the value of buildings as works of architecture, their relationship with each other and with the entire environment. A special kind of such a landscape is fantasy compositions born from the imagination of the artist. At one time, "ruins" were very popular - views of the landscape from ancient ruins, giving rise to thoughts about the frailty of life.

One can also single out a futurological, fantastic landscape - views of the cities of the future, the image of which changes with the passage of time depending on the progress, achievements of science and technology.

Another kind of urban landscape is the industrial landscape, depicting nature as transformed by man as possible. The main theme of such canvases is the aesthetic impression of buildings,dams, bridges, towers, roads, transport networks, factories and factories, etc. Among the first significant works of the industrial landscape, we can mention the painting by Claude Monet (1840-1926) "Gare Saint-Lazare".

The park landscape is also distinguished into a separate category. Similar in theme to rural or purely natural, geographically it belongs to the city.

Landscape Painting Styles

A work of art is always a creative understanding of the world, and the landscape of a real artist is not just an image that looks like reality, but an image of the natural or urban environment, an impression of it, expressed by a creative person. Such comprehension very often determines the style that is characteristic of both an individual and entire communities connected by one place and one time.

The historical affiliation of the master to a certain style in landscape painting is especially noticeable. "Landscape with a Rainbow" by P. P. Rubens (1577-1640) - a masterpiece of the Baroque era and the painting of the same name by Konstantin Somov (1869-1939) are similar in plot. They are filled with the same admiration for the world around them, but in what different ways these feelings are conveyed!

The work of the Impressionists had a special influence on this genre. All types of landscape - natural, urban, rural - with the advent of the opportunity to work in the open air, have undergone dramatic changes. Trying to express momentary changes and the smallest nuances of light, using a new free painting technique, the Impressionists opened new horizons in the landscape genre. After the masterpieces of Claude Monet (1840-1926), Camille Pissarro(1830-1903), Alfred Sisley (1839-1999) and many other impressionists, it became impossible to look at the world with the same eyes, not noticing its beauty, not seeing the richness of its shades.

Eternal source of inspiration

Nature has always been the main source of new feelings and impressions for a true artist. Our distant ancestors tried to paint the sunrise on the cave wall with a piece of dried clay, landscape views for preschoolers today are photographs of Mars transmitted from its surface by a self-propelled spacecraft. What remains common is the feeling of surprise from the infinity of the world, from the joy of life.