Landscape into Art: Painting and Place-Making in England, c.1760-1830

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapter

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 languageEnglish
Title of host publicationA Companion to British Art: 1600 to the Present
Pages373-396
Number of pages24
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 21 Feb 2013

Keywords

  • England
  • landscape
  • painting
  • public art
  • social change

Cite this