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The Natural Painter: Art, Science, and Spirit in Nineteenth-Century Landscape Painting
Nineteenth Century Studies
1AÍ Wr'l hen one thinks of science and W w the art of landscape painting, nineteenth-century Britain and images by John Constable (1776-1837) inevitably come to mind. Famous for his scientific studies of clouds and rainbows, Constable took a phenomenological approach to recording his experiences of the English countryside that became a model for landscape painters, not only in his native England, but also on the Continent and across the Atlantic. Indeed, early in his career, Constable wrote to his friend John Dunthorne (i77o?-i844), the amateur landscape painter, the famous words that would throughout his career define his artistic mission and, in turn, much of landscape painting in the nineteenth century. Complaining about the Royal Academy exhibition of 1802, he declared: "There is little or nothing in the exhibition worth looking up to-there is room enough for a natural painture have its day-but Truth (in all things) only will last and can have just claims on posterity." Constable s claim to a "natural painture," based, as he remarked to Dunthorne, on "laborious studies from nature" so as "to get a pure and unaffected representation," transformed the French peinture-the art of painting-into a natural style for this nature painter.1 As the three studies under review make clear, however, a scientific study of nature, even a laborious one, does not preclude feeling, imagination, or spirituality.
Aesthetic Appreciation of Nature in Early Modern Science
Three features of Northern European visual art of the early 17 th century stand out as historically distinctive. One is naturalism, the interest in the faithful depiction of plants and animals. Flowers, crustaceans, game birds, and domestic animals are drawn and painted with affection and care. A second, related feature is ordinariness and intimacy. In Dutch painting of the period, ordinary folk are shown calmly engaged in the activities of daily life, preparing their meals, minding their children, employing their brooms and scales, absorbed in their reading, or practicing their musical instruments. They replace the saints and mythological figures portrayed in earlier genres in dramatic or highly emotional states, connected to supersensible reality. A third feature is the virtuostic rendering of materials, reflexy-const as the technical manuals of the period called it; the transparency of glass and the sheen of metal, but also the minute detailing of the products of human fabrication, such as cloth, carpets, figured porcelain, and silver. Earlier, painters of the English School had abandoned the classical interest in folded monochromatic drapery to depict their aloof subjects in spectacular outfits of figured tapestry, or embroidered with geometrical designs, and with jewellery and trim tending to the fantastic— webs of gems, lace ruffs and cuffs. The interest in repeated patterns and geometrical forms such as floor tiles and brocades extends to the " mathematical engagement" of still life composition, and in these pictures, both defamiliarization and an intimacy suggestive of Platonic reminiscence seem to remove them to a higher order of experience. A style of presentation implies a set of choices—what to depict and how to depict it-and choice implies a need for justification, for both the production and the consumption of art objects requires investment, of training, time, and effort on one hand, of money on the other. The objects depicted must therefore reveal ―a dimension of value capable of justifying their representation.‖ 1 and historians have long sought to explain the values of the above-mentioned
Landscape: art and ecological thinking
2021
Never more than at the present time, so fraught with difficulty, has the question of mans's relationship with nature been so topical. A complex, dynamic relationship in which the progressive technical emancipation of man has accompanied a growing need for nature to be safeguarded, preserved and protected – the result of an inexorable inversion of roles which has seen man move from being the victim of uncontrollable forces to the principal destroyer of the earth which nourishes him, and of the ecosystem of which he is an integral part. This paper is a brief study on the artistical approach to ecology in the 20th cent.
Paragons of Art and Nature in Eighteenth century British Aesthetic Theory
2023
This dissertation examines the interaction of nature and art as objects of aesthetic appreciation in eighteenth-century Britain, with special emphasis on the aesthetic theories of Anthony Ashley-Cooper-3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, Joseph Addison, and William Gilpin. Despite its openness to explore principles of aesthetics and concepts, such as beauty and sublimity, that were common to both nature and art, modern aesthetic theory framed the relation of art to nature hierarchically, an aspect captured by the term ‘paragon’. In this dissertation I trace a movement away from theories in which the superiority of nature to art was recognized (chapter 2 on Shaftesbury’s aesthetics) to theories where this aspect was complicated (chapter 3 on Addison’s aesthetics), contested, and reversed (chapter 4 on Gilpin’s aesthetics), and I argue that this transformation was deeply interwoven with complex and changing notions of artistic imitation, conceptions of the sublime, and aspects of natural theology that were then an integral part of the aesthetic. By showing that the supersession of nature by art was already contained within Gilpin’s notion of the picturesque, this dissertation offers a historical antecedent to Hegel’s radical exclusion of natural beauty from the scope of philosophical aesthetics.
Journal of Architectural/Planning Research and Studies (JARS)
The beautiful, the sublime, and the picturesque were three key concepts of aesthetics originated in philosophical context of the 18th century. Together, they outlined the variety of aesthetically significant experiences. The article aims to review historical roots of the three aesthetics and how they were associated with landscape architecture and environmental art, both of which concerned with shaping the land and environment. Subsequently, the article discusses associations between the English Landscape School - landscape architecture embraced by the 18th century three aesthetics and the ecological design - modern landscape architectural design theme primarily dominated by Ian McHarg in the 1960s. Conclusively, the article critically discussed lessons learned from the associations and how landscape architecture should be shaped forward.
A favourite topic of conversation in the salons of eighteenth-century London, Weimar and Paris was the respective merits of art and nature. Can and, if so, should nature be 'perfected' or 'improved' by art? Which is the more impressive, the sublimity of mountains or the genius of the artist who captures this quality on a canvas? These were not simply issues of 'Taste'of aesthetics in any narrow sense. For at stake were the kinds of significance for human beings that artworks and natural places can have. When, in 1770, Arthur Young proclaimed that the artificial magnificence of Versailles was as nothing in comparison with 'the sportive play of nature in the vale of Keswick', he gave voice less to an aesthetic preference than to a judgement on the importance that art and nature should respectively have for us. The opposite judgement was implied by the words of another author for whom the gardens of Chatsworth were a 'paradise' in comparison with 'Nature's shames and ills'.
Visions of Nature in the Eighteenth-Century English Landscape Garden
2018
Relationships with what is called “nature” are often fundamental to the understanding of our experiences of the world, and therefore of our politics, our knowledges, and our everyday lives. The historical examination of these relationships and their meanings for certain people can therefore be a critically important archeo- logical means for exploring the origins of how we today think about these relationships. The English land- scape garden, intimately imbued with “natural” meanings and experiences, offers one site for such an exam- ination. It was the product of a set of philosophies and theories—aesthetic, epistemological, ontological, and political—that were foundational to the experience of the eighteenth-century gentleman, and therefore to the history of ideas in the Western world.