IMPRESSIONS
OF LANDSCAPE & COUNTRY LIFE
A
brief introduction to the catalogue and to the history
and development of landscape prints
A
delight in landscape representation is perhaps a universal
response in modern man to enforced urban life. Landscape
prints answer this demand for rus in urbe. First introduced
as a backdrop to religious or hunting scenes, pure
landscape, as a subject in its own right, was achieved
by the close of the 16th century. Old master prints
hint at Arcadia and show the charms of a recreational
countryside; more recent works show an agricultural
landscape, to our post-War eyes equally a glimpse of
a lost golden age.
The
growing interest in landscape depictions in the 16th
century came to fruition in 17th century printmaking.
After somewhat of a hiatus in the 18th it revived with
the etching revival in the 19th and was a particularly
favoured theme among certain British etchers in the
first half of the 20th century.
From
its inception in the north of Europe, the development
of landscape art reflects a dialogue between Italy
and those countries north of the Alps. The Alps presented
not only a physical and symbolic barrier but also inspired
the very shape of the landscape, with its high viewpoint
and distant craggy peaks, in early landscape prints.
Flemish
landscape of the 16th century, though full of naturalistic
detail, presented an accumulation of individual motifs
within an idealised framework of fanciful mountain
scenery. The interaction with contemporary Dutch art
and the impact of Italy brought about the modern concept
of the landscape print, with detail subordinated to
the whole and unified by light.
In
17th century Holland Protestant bourgeois independence
fostered secular art, while pride in terrain made it
a subject fit for representation. Growing urban communities
discovered the recreation of trips into the countryside;
prosperity ensured a ready market for printed ‘recollections’ of
such excursions. However, although special conditions
fostered its development in Holland, an appreciation
of landscape was apparent throughout contemporary 17th
century Europe.
The
clear light of Italy and the Virgilian associations
of the Roman Campagna drew northern artists south.
Some, such as Bril, Esheimer, Poussin and Claude settled
in Italy permanently. The tradition of landscape painting
and printmaking which they established remained influential
through the following two centuries.
The
genre of landscape printmaking coalesced in the period
that etching came to the fore as artists’ preferred
printmaking medium. It is more than coincidental that
in the 18th century (with the exception of a few etchers
trained in Italy) interest in both etching as a medium
and landscape printmaking declined and in the revival
of etching as a creative medium in the 19th century
landscape became a principal motif.
Right
at the beginning of the 19th century in England the
Norwich School artists anticipated the Etching Revival;
and in a landscape itself geographically reminiscent
of Holland, they looked to the Dutch old masters, especially
Ruisdael, for inspiration. Their work makes an interesting
comparison with the two great series of didactic mezzotints,
essentially in the 18th century reproductive mould,
by those colossi of romantic landscapists, Turner and
Constable.
In
France too it was the provinces which took the early
lead in the revival of original etching and of depicting
the local scene. Lyon produced a fine school of regionalist
landscapists and by the middle years of the 19th century
Barbizon was the home of Rousseau, Millet and Jacque.
Corot, Daubigny and Dupré had also settled outside
of Paris; a trend continued by artists of later generations,
Pissarro, Sisley, Frélaut and Beaufrère.
This
desire to not only depict but live in the countryside
was evident in England too. Palmer, Calvert and their
fellow Ancients withdrew to Shoreham, though Palmer’s
plates which vividly recall the spirit of that time
were only etched three decades later. Griggs, admirer
of Palmer, settled in the Cotswolds. The majority of
the XXI Gallery artists, Sutherland, Drury, Hoyton,
Badmin moved out of London.
The
period of the etching boom in early 20th century Britain
witnessed a rich variety of original landscape printmaking
in all the print media including the tone processes
of aquatint and mezzotint more associated with the
previous centuries. A nostalgia and neo-romatic feeling
for the loss of old farming methods to mechanisation,
inspired several artists and in particular Stanley
Anderson to record traditional craftsmen at work and
the Jersey artist Blampied, among others, to show a
farming scene still dominated by the horse.
Published
1989
52 pages, 170 prints described, 170 b/w illustrations
(Currently
out of print)
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