Landscape art
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- For the art of designing external spaces, see landscape architecture.
Landscape art depicts scenery such as mountains, valleys, trees, rivers and forests. Sky is almost always included in the piece, and weather is a facet of the composition. In the 1st century, Roman frescoes of landscapes decorate rooms that have been preserved at Pompeii and Herculaneum.
The word landscape is from the Dutch, landschap (the German cognate is 'landschaft) meaning a sheaf, a patch of cultivated ground. The word entered the English vocabulary of the connoisseur in the later 17th century.
Early in the 15th century landscape painting was established as an art genre in Europe, as a setting for human activity, often a religious subject, such as the themes of the Rest on the Flight into Egypt, the Journey of the Magi, or Saint Jerome in the Desert.
The Chinese tradition of "pure" landscape, in which the minute human figure simply gives scale and invites the viewer to participate in the experience, was well established by the time the oldest surviving ink paintings were executed.
Related -scapes
- Skyscapes or cloudscapes are depictions of clouds, weatherforms, and atmospheric conditions.
- Moonscapes show the landscape of a moon'''.
- Seascapes depict oceans or beaches.
- Riverscapes depict rivers or creeks.
- Cityscapes or townscapes depict cities (urban landscapes).
- Hardscapes are paved over areas like streets and sidewalks, large business complexes and housing developments, and industrial areas.
- Aerial landscapes depict the planetary surface from above, especially as seen from an airplane or spacecraft. (When the viewpoint is directly overhead looking down, there is of course no depiction of a horizon or sky.)
See also
References
- [Sharon L. Hirsch, "Landscape: the Grand tradition"] (Exhibition catalogue text) Dickinson University (on-line text)
- Pavel Machotka, Cezanne : Landscape into Art
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