Landscape is one of the genres of painting
In French, this word has the meaning "locality, country", and its theme is just a certain area.
The most familiar thing under the concept of "landscape" is to mean only the image of nature, but it is broader: the landscape can be architectural, urban.
And a documented accurate image in the urban landscape is called "veduta" (ital. veduta). The favorite genre of Dutch (Dutch) artists was not only still life, but also veduta.
The development of the landscape genre
The landscape genre was formed gradually, in accordance with science. It turns out that there is a lot in common between landscape painting and science, because when creating a realistic landscape, it is necessary to have concepts about aerial perspective, proportionality, chiaroscuro, etc.
Such a familiar and familiar genre of landscape for everyone for a long time was only auxiliary, as a background, although it was known even in ancient Eastern fine art. Nature was depicted as a background in portraits and icons. In this version, it was more often idealized, generalized.
Therefore, landscape is considered a relatively young genre of painting - it received its independent meaning around the XIV century .
Types of landscape
In the genre of natural landscape, marine and space landscapes are distinguished. Marina (from Lat. marinus - marine). Marine artists depicted the sea view, scenes of naval battles and everything connected with the sea. Russian artist Aivazovsky painted about 6 thousand seascapes (marinas).
Cosmic landscape is an image of the celestial space, planets and stars.
From the point of view of time, the landscape can be historical, futuristic (the landscape of the future), modern.
Landscapes differ in belonging to a certain style of art
For example, the romantic landscape of the English artist William Turner is unusually poetic, transparent. The landscapes of the German artist Caspar David Friedrich are distinguished by a mystical atmosphere, and the realistic landscapes of Ivan Shishkin depict the majestic beauty of the northern expanses, and many of the artist's paintings are based on a "portrait" image of a particular place.
European landscape
In European painting, a clear interest in landscape was manifested in the Early Renaissance. The Italian artist Giotto in the XIII century depicted a landscape in three-dimensional space, creating the illusion of depth. But in his time, the landscape still remained an auxiliary tool.
In the epoch of the High Renaissance (XVI century) landscape painting has already begun to develop intensively, especially in the works of artists of the Venetian school Giorgione, Titian, El Greco.
Freedom and sincerity distinguish the landscapes of the Dutch artist Pieter Brueghel (the Elder).
The Spanish artist Velasquez made the first attempts at plein-air painting (outdoors), although its founder is considered to be an English artist of the XIX century. John Constable. A great contribution to the development of plein-air painting was made by French impressionist artists (Corot, Pissarro, Renoir, Monet), who sought to convey the movement of air on their landscape canvases.
Rubens' landscapes were as life-affirming and dynamic as his characters.
Russian landscape
Landscape painting has always been popular in Russia and has developed intensively. Many paintings by Russian artists are considered masterpieces of landscape painting. Landscape genre became independent in Russia in the XVIII century . Semyon Shchedrin (1745-1804) is considered its founder. His landscapes are emotional, expressive and filled with light.
F. Alekseev (1753/1755-1824) was one of the first to paint urban landscapes, he is the greatest master of Russian veduta.
A. Martynov (1768-1826) traveled a lot in Russia and created landscapes of Siberia, Crimea, the banks of the Volga.
Sylvester Shchedrin (1791-1830) is the author of wonderful romantic landscapes.
A. Venetsianov (1780-1847) was the author of dim landscapes of the Central Russian strip.
The second half of the XIX century gave a whole galaxy of talented landscape painters: F. Vasiliev, V. Borisov-Musatov, B. Kustodiev, A. Savrasov, A. Kuindzhi, I. Shishkin, etc. All landscape traditions continued their development in the XX century in the works of P. Konchalovsky, I. Grabar, K. Yuon and many other artists.
Landscape is popular in our time, it is an eternal genre, and it will never run out.
From the history of the landscape
Although some believe that Leonardo da Vinci was the author of landscape painting, this is a common misconception. The history of the landscape can be traced back to China in the 4th century AD, when Chinese artists sought to transfer their impressions of the surrounding nature to paintings. In fact, this genre has become so popular that the beginning of the 9th century is called the dawn of the Chinese landscape.
In the Western tradition, it has not always been accepted to value nature as such. Landscapes were usually used as backgrounds for historical paintings or portraits. Landscape in Europe became a popular genre only in the 17th century. There is some evidence of the landscape tradition of Ancient Greece and Rome, but these paintings often had other significant elements besides landscapes. "Pedestrian Bridge" by Albrecht Altdorfer, dating from the beginning of the 16th century, is considered the first real landscape in the history of Western art.
In the Renaissance, landscape painting became a serious artistic genre. From Italy, she came to the rest of Europe, and with the French artists Claude Lorrain and Nicolas Poussin, she began to dominate. Early European landscapes were highly stylized works imitating the landscapes of Ancient Greece and Rome - basically, they were idealized pastoral scenes. Meanwhile, famous Dutch artists in the 17th century began to develop a more naturalistic style, which can be seen in the work of Art van der Neer "Moonscape with a bridge".
The French Academy classified the genres of art, placing landscape fourth out of fifth in order of importance. This rating demonstrated a rather dismissive attitude of society towards nature at that time. However, in the 18th century, the genre of landscape painting really came to life. The boom in its popularity was the result of two factors: the emergence of the idea that nature is a direct manifestation of God on earth, and the unrestrained industrialization and urbanization of most of Western Europe during the Industrial Revolution. Industry has separated people from nature, giving rise to a nostalgic desire to glorify the world in all its glory. Landscape painting was described by John Ruskin as "the main artistic creation of the nineteenth century." Nowhere has this tradition been more popular than in the UK, where the industrial revolution has found its epicenter. Here landscape painting was embodied by two masters of the genre: John Constable and Joseph Mallord William Turner.
Meanwhile, in France, the Impressionists continued this trend and added their own flair to the genre. Artists such as Claude Monet and Pierre Auguste Renoir used a deliberately informal approach, blurring the boundaries between sketches and finished works. They sketched the scene directly - en plein air - and abandoned traditional techniques such as chiaroscuro and perspective in order to directly embody their own experience. Soon, both in the UK and in France, the traditional hierarchy of genres collapsed, and landscape became one of the most popular forms of painting.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the "Hudson River School" marked the beginning of the development of original landscape painting in the USA. It was in the USA that the genre was expanded to include industrial and urban landscapes.
Of the outstanding, world-famous Russian landscape painters, Isaac Levitan, Ivan Shishkin, Ivan Aivazovsky should be mentioned.
