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‘The earth has music for those who listens’
- William Shakespeare
Since time immemorial, this divine music has been echoed through candid portrayals of the natural world around us, popularly known as landscape art paintings. This has been the most eloquent form of expression since early human history. As art historians concede, it all started with the frescos of Santorini, a beautiful island in Greece, unveiling the ecstasy of the spring blooms in vibrant shades of red, orange, yellow, etc., all done in organic colors. Not until the 17th century, the word landscape was distinctly categorized and canonized as an anglicized version of the Dutch word ‘landschap’. But long before that, men started expressing their intense connection with nature while portraying lush pastures, languid riversides, deep and sublime seas with waves setting in, lonesome boats or mountain cliffs, silhouettes of trees, and more! It is through an artist’s impression that the rivers, mountains, forests, sky, and atmospheric elements come alive. A keen observer and painter can make sense of the fleeting shafts of light, spatial depth, and other elements in a landscape drawing and breathe life into them.
In this blog, we will try to figure out the world’s 5 most celebrated landscape painting and how they keep us engrossed even today.
Revisit Some of the Most Celebrated Landscape Art that Took the World by Awe
1. The Hunters in The Snow (1565) by Pieter Bruegel the Elder
The ‘Hunters in the Snow’ or the ‘Return of the Hunters’ by Peter Bruegel, the most celebrated landscape painter of the 16th century is a phenomenal landscape oil painting on wood that depicts the scene of the hunters returning home through a snowy path. It captures the most common balcony motif showing the hills in the foreground and a group of hunters with a pack of dogs descending the hill to the nearby village. The famous oil painting is a portrayal of the month of December filled with a melancholy of a poor catch, with just a fox dangling from the spear, carried on the shoulders of one of the hunters. Even the dogs are seen in slouching postures and not so happy with the whole hunting escapade. In the backdrop, the preparation of singeing of a pig can be seen. There are minute details of the signboard of an inn, and a passing shot of the buildings on the left. Deep down the hill people can be seen ice-skating in the frozen lakes. These vivid images have immortalized the painting, as one of the five surviving landscape paintings of the series depicting the harsh winter months of the year. The painting is in the collection of a museum in Vienna.
2. The Hay Wain by John Constable (1821): Countryside Beauty
Another illustrious landscape scene is ‘The Hay Wain’ by John Constable, the British painter who deviated from realism to romanticism. Constable was nostalgic about his childhood village in Suffolk, England, as the scenery portrays the nonchalance and the uncomplicated vibes of a rustic village setup, with a hay wain drawn by a horse in the shallow stream, paused mid-way. There are impressions of natural light playing on the landscape of lush greenery, inviting meadows, and immense sky with fleeting clouds, the leaves, and the trees as an authentic portrayal of the English countryside he loved so much. By then, the Englishmen were engaged with the Industrial Revolution and its aftermath, moving far ahead of the pastoral site of Suffolk. But Constable was deeply engrossed in his memories of a serene landscape while he looked back to the river Stour and commemorated the beauty through his intense dabs and strokes, creating a sense of depth and deep reverence for his village home.
3. Cherry Blossoms at Yoshino, from Snow, Moon, and Flowers Series (1830–1832) by Katsushika Hokusai
Katsushika Hokusai's one of the mesmerizing landscape artworks is the ‘Cherry Blossoms at Yoshino’ from his blissful ‘Snow, Moon, and Flowers’ (Setsugekka) series. Created between 1830–1832, the painting once again emphasizes Hokusai’s mastery of ukiyo-e woodblock prints, which captures the overflowing landscape and unveils Japan’s scenic beauty in the months of Cherry Blossoms.
In this painting, the focus is on the famous region of Yoshino, which is much celebrated for the abundance of Cherry Blossoms. This flower is an integral part of Japanese phenomenal beauty and cultural identity. From a distance, one can see the overflowing blooms of Cherry Blossoms in the slope of the mountains and the canopy of Mount Yoshino in its expanse, covering a fair share of the painting. The use of delicate pink and white color showcases the softness of the Cherry Blossoms, and Hokusai plays very delicately with the gradations of pink and white to evoke that feeling, as a contrast to the rocky terrains and the mountains. The composition has a lot to balance – the nature with all its tranquil serenity, almost like a spiritual bliss blending with the human figures, travelers or wayfarers. The human vs nature connection has always been a favorite theme of Hokusai’s works. He engages every frugal detail into his nature paintings, creating a seamless canvas of harmonious beauty.
‘Cherry Blossoms at Yoshino’ not only captures the splendor of ushering into spring but the cultural message and the spiritual connection of nature versus man, making it a legendary landscape work from Hokusai's magnum opus creations.
4. Starry Nights by Vincent Van Gogh (1889): Expressions of Duality
One of Van Gogh's iconic paintings, The Starry Night, was quite distinct in style and approach as a landscape painting. His painting concentrated more on the emotional tangles and feelings that he had painted on the canvas scrupulously.
Symbolism has a very significant role to play in this remarkable landscape painting of the night sky, where the flame-like cypress trees stand tall as a transition between life and death, against the starry backdrop. The theme is an intricate weaving of life, death, and transcendence that fascinated him forever. Van Gogh used the color blue rampantly which showed his unstable mental health. As a contrast to the smothering darkness, he painted the glowing morning star with the intense use of white and warm yellow resonating with hope. The night sky with the black mountains in the backdrop stands in conflict with the gleaming brightness of heaven and the transcendental cypress tree showing the duality of life.
5. The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dali (1931): An Abstract Landscape Art
When Salvador Dali, the great surrealistic painter and artist created his awe-inspiring ‘The Persistence of Memory’ (1931), he wanted to break free from the conventional portrayal of landscape, deeply intrigued to stabilize confusion with his dreamscape where the deserted landscape defied the concept of time with the soft melting clocks. The illusion was desperately created to focus on the impermanence and fluidity of time, to make room for the subconscious to surface. The ants resembled degeneration and decay, challenging the realistic perceptions of life and death.
Modern Landscape Painting & Portrayal: The Genre is Back with a Bang
The nature of landscape art was transformed over the centuries at a dramatic pace, promoted from the hoary wall paintings rooted in antiquity to a significant and most recognizable form of modern-day portrayal. That makes them more than just pretty nature portraits. The urban growth after the industrial revolution has broadened the appeal of landscape painting, while the disillusioned urban dwellers of America and other developed countries tried to reconnect with nature, after being dissociated from rural sceneries for a long spell of time. It was a sense of nostalgia that re-established the connection as they missed the innocence and simplicity of the country life.
With the advent of photography in the twentieth century, embracing nature became more and more popular, with photographer-artists creating pictorial representations of the landscapes with wide angle lenses, close-up shots, and formal photographic compositions. Though landscape painting and photography were dominated by more emerging genres of art catering to pressing social and political issues, these nature portrayals had somewhere taken the back seat. The threat of global destruction, global warming, ecological and conservation issues have retraced the demand for natural and urban landscapes and landscape photography one more time.
Today, landscape as a subject of expression continues to influence the artists, painters, and sculptors worldwide. Some of the remarkable modern landscape artists are Richard Diebenkorn, Mark Rothko, Peter Doig, Lucas Arruda, George Nick, etc. They try to connect with their immediate surroundings and places they live in to show how these portrayals are impacted by human intervention and co-existence in a much surreal way.
The legacy of landscape is back with a bang!
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