The Birth of Landscape Painting from the Tres Riches Heures to Bruegel The Très riches heures' fame is due to the extraordinary series of miniatures decorating the manuscript. These pictures were the work of the so-called Limbourg brothers. Traditional scholarship has emphasized the extraordinary "naturalism" of the paintings. The sense of illusionistic space and attention to light are […]

17th Century: A Golden Age of Landscape: Claude, Rubens and the Dutch The 17th century ushered in the classical, or ideal, landscape, which set scenes in the mythic and idyllic Arcadia of ancient Greece. The leading practitioners of the classical landscape were the French-born Italy-based artists Nicolas Poussin and Claude Lorrain. Poussin and Claude attempted to elevate the reputation of the landscape […]

Romantic Landscape - Friedrich, Turner, Constable, Samuel Palmer The Academic Hierarchy of Genres had placed landscape painting low in its scale of values, but landscape painting took on increasing prominence and prestige in the Romantic period.  Romantic landscapes are typically “moody” in atmosphere; they are more about the subjective feelings of the artist, than an […]