Landscape

The term landscape actually derives from the Dutch word landschap, which originally meant “region, tract of land” but acquired the artistic connotation, “a picture depicting scenery on land” in the early 1500s. The development of the term in the Netherlands at this time was logical because the Netherlands was one of the first places that landscape had become a popular subject for painting. At this time, the rising Protestant middle class sought secular art for their homes, creating the need for new subjects to meet their tastes; landscapes helped fill this need.

The 19th century held many milestones for the history of landscape art. As the Industrial Revolution altered the traditions of rural life, the old hierarchy of subjects crumbled. Throughout Europe and North America landscape painting gained a new supremacy.

In the early 20th century, painters continued to embrace the landscape. As photography gained acceptance as an art form, artists used the medium to create interpretations of the land through pictorialist effects and, later, through formal compositions of close-up, cropped views of the landscape. In America, photographer Ansel Adams captured the country’s attention with his breathtaking views of the wild beauty of the American West. Even though the major artistic movements of the mid-20th century were no longer dominated by the landscape as a subject, the genre’s importance continued as artists responded to fears of increased industrialization, the threat of global destruction, and ecological disasters.

Romanticism

Romanticism was an art form that rejected classicalism and focused on nature, imagination and emotion (1) . Therefore, this started a new way of thinking and created a new type of art. It crossed between music, painting, photography and many other art forms. Landscape photography was popular at this time, therefore, romantic landscapes were common.

The landscapes focused on the beauty of nature and included a lot of running water and vast forests . One photographer that comes to mind is Ansel Adams . He focused on the beauty of the world and captured that in his photos. His photographs did not include people, cars or man made objects.

The sublime

The theory of sublime art was put forward by Edmund Burke in A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful published in 1757. He defined the sublime as an artistic effect productive of the strongest emotion the mind is capable of feeling.