Abstract
This essay examines two very large topics: the development of the Landscape park and its adoption, in the half century or so after 1760, by the majority of country landowners as a setting for their homes; and the emergence, in the same period, of rural landscape painting as an accepted form of public art. The two phenomena have been related to contemporary patterns of social and landscape change by a number of eminent scholars, including John Barrell, Anne Bermingham, and Elizabeth Helsinger. The chapter begins with the issue-the chronology of enclosure-because it is something frequently misunderstood, or at least oversimplified, by art historians. Meaningful studies of landscape art, in short, should adopt a more sophisticated contextual, "historicist" perspective than is perhaps currently fashionable, and proceed hand-in-hand with detailed investigations into the physical as well as the social contexts in which both landscape paintings, and landscape designs, were produced.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | A Companion to British Art: 1600 to the Present |
Pages | 373-396 |
Number of pages | 24 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 21 Feb 2013 |
Keywords
- England
- landscape
- painting
- public art
- social change