Epic landscape painting. School encyclopedia. Cityscape: types of cityscape

The most important and most ancient look landscape - an image of pristine nature, rural areas. This is the original understanding of the French word “paysage” and the German “Landschaft” (image of a village, image of the land), which over three centuries have become firmly rooted in our language. The industrial landscape, which emerged at the end of the 18th - beginning of the 19th century, as well as the urban landscape, constitute separate directions in the development of landscape painting.

IN medieval Europe nature art for a long time experienced a certain decline. Depicting the grape harvest, the Garden of Eden or the end of the flood, the medieval European artist limited himself to only decorative designation of nature, not caring about any visual similarity to the natural world (V.N. Stasevich’s book “Landscape. Picture and Reality”).

The achievements of ancient realism, which came into medieval painting, seem to fade away and degenerate into decorative motifs or extremely conventional designations of the scene of action. This is especially typical for the art of Byzantium. In the 14th century, a certain turn towards realism was noticeable in the art of this country. Accordingly, the image of nature takes on a more specific character.

The influence of Byzantine art spread to Italy and the part of the European continent north of the Alps. Related principles of depicting trees, mountains and other elements of nature are found in Western European art, including in the frescoes of artists of the Italian Trecento - the period preceding the Renaissance.

Landscapes in European miniature of the 15th century are lyrical images of places familiar to the artist, often very accurately conveying the appearance of a particular landscape and architectural structures.

Since the early Renaissance, artists have been occupied with questions of linear and aerial perspective. Perspective images are used even in relief, which acquires a picturesque character that is not typical for sculpture. Interest in real space gave impetus to the discovery of the laws of perspective

In the 17th century, Holland experienced a surge of spiritual renewal. In this country, genres of art such as still life and landscape are becoming widespread, which presuppose the viewer's ability to enjoy art without religious, historical or heroic reminiscences. Here, for the first time, a realistic landscape as an image of a specific area received wide recognition. Here the sea becomes the hero of the paintings. After all, it was a real breadwinner for the country of sailors and fishermen.

The seascapes of Adrian van Velde are so excellent in their accuracy of depiction of nature, in their sense of light and color, that later art critics began to wonder whether the artist painted his paintings from life.

No less significant artistic merit works by Albert Cuyp, Jan van Goyen, Solomon van Ruisdael.

For Dutch masters The mid-century is characterized by painting in similar tones, in brownish-silver or yellowish-silver tones. These tones attracted artists with the opportunity to convey the moisture-saturated air of Holland (Meindert Gobbema, Philipp Wouwerman, Claes Berchem, etc.). Artists loved to paint cloudy skies, when the dim light of the sun penetrates through a thin layer of clouds and evenly envelops nature.

Vermeer's landscape of Delft "View of Delft" can be called real pearls of painting.

But the Dutch landscape painters were not limited to reliable “portraits” native land. There were “Italianist” or “novelist” artists who painted Italian landscapes or followed the trends of the “composed” Italian landscape (KlasBerchem, Jan Asseleym, Jan Bot, etc.). A major master of the romantic style was Hercules Seghers, who was followed in his interpretation of nature by Jacob van Ruisdael and Harmenswan Rein Rembrandt. In the landscapes of these artists, Dutch realism is combined with a romantic beginning.

Landscape of Baroque and Classicism. A different attitude towards the image of nature is observed in Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens. Rubens' art was formed under the strong influence of the Baroque. Baroque is an artistic movement prone to exaggeration, in which a realistic attitude to the objective world coexists freely with fiction. It originated in Italy and spread throughout Europe.

An exceptionally talented artist, Rubens became the head Flemish school, and transferred the principles of Baroque to the depiction of nature. When in your later works the artist turned to the image of Flemish nature, he painted heroic, ideal, collective image. Hence the characteristic panoramic scope of his canvases, coming from the traditions of the 16th century.

But the landscape of the 17th century is not only Holland and Flanders. This genre received a characteristic solution in the art of France, in particular in the works of Nicolas Poussin, Claude Jelle, and Claude Lorrain. The landscapes of Poussin and Lorrain have all the necessary signs of classicism: orderly balance, thoughtful distribution of volumes, tonal and pictorial masses of the composition, fragments of antique columns, statues, and even entire structures reminiscent of ancient architecture, necessary from the point of view of classicism. There are mythological and biblical motifs, borrowed from literary monuments of the ancient world and the Middle Ages and introduced into the landscape as staffage to revitalize it and provide semantic orientation.

The classical landscape is called “historical”, for its connection with scenes from ancient and medieval history. Unlike the baroque landscape with its elemental heroism, the classic one has the harmony and clarity of nature. A classical landscape is a composed landscape, but composed on the basis of artistic exploration of reality.

In France, by the 30s of the 19th century, a school of artists was emerging - creators of the national landscape. Georges Michel was one of the first to turn to the image of national nature. The nature of “everyday” France, with its birches and poplars, became the theme of Camille Corot’s paintings. He loved to paint the transitional states of evening and morning, avoiding bright contrasts.

A group of Corot's contemporaries - Theodore Rousseau, Leon Dupre, Charles-François Daubigny, Constant Troyon, Narcisse Diaz de la Pena, who were not satisfied with the rational system of the academic landscape - decided on an experiment reminiscent of Constable's experiment. They began to paint the groves, fields, and creeks surrounding Paris. Sometimes they worked together, gathering in the village of Barbizon with Theodore Rousseau. The result of their efforts was a natural, life-true composition of the landscape.

The 20th century introduced something completely new into the history of landscape, breaking with the centuries-old traditions of depicting nature. This is cubism, the first representatives of which were the French artists Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso. Cubism is based on a purely speculative constructive analysis of forms, dividing them into arbitrarily assumed elements or absolutizing them geometric meaning. Cubist landscapes are perhaps less connected with the landscape of reality than the landscapes of past centuries.

IN Russia XIX The century in landscape art began with the gradual conquest of realistic positions. As in Europe, this was expressed in the development of plein air and the national motif. At the beginning of the century, many traditions of classical landscape were still preserved. Russian artists went to Italy for landscapes.

However, the artists of Sylvester Shchedrin’s generation were not satisfied with the static scheme of the classic landscape-scenery with its nameless trees. In an effort to convey the life of nature, they introduce romantic lighting effects into their works, move away from the “scene” composition and brown color, and strive to capture sunlight and the specific character of nature.

Alexander Andreevich Ivanov made a colossal step in this direction. His paintings are characterized by purity and naturalness of color, richness of tonal and color relationships. Ivanov, like his other contemporaries, was attracted to nature by signs of the eternal, rather than the transitory.

The epic calm of the ideal image prevails even in those cases when Russian artists took the national landscape as a basis and sought to depict it ingenuously. native nature, as it is. These are the landscapes of A.G. Venetsianov, his students G.V. Soroki, I.S. Krylov and other pioneers of the national Russian landscape, who saw the scope and beauty of the “nondescript” Russian nature.

Among these artists, the original phenomenon was represented by the brothers G.G. and I.G. Chernetsovs, the first artists of the Volga. Intending to paint a panorama of both banks of the river, they traveled from Rybinsk to Astrakhan on a special barge and created many original sketches and sketches. One of them is “View of the Syukeevsky Mountains on the Volga in the Kazan Province.”

The real systematic artistic exploration of Russian nature began in the second half of the 19th century, in the work of artists of the 60s. Russian nature, discreet and “not ideal” - swampy lowlands, slushy mudflats, monotonous flatness - became the main character in the landscapes of the Wanderers. Russian artists finally “discovered” their homeland and stopped going to Italy for beauty. They discovered the beauty of the natural manifestation of life and lost the need to search for an “ideal” nature.”

Efim Volkov painted mainly landscapes of northern and central Russia: as the subject of his paintings, he chose not beautiful “landscapes”, but modest corners of the nature of the Russian North, and in them he tried to notice and convey their inherent poetry and charm. He owns many paintings on the theme of a swamp shrouded in foggy haze: “Swamp in Autumn” (1871), “Evening” (1877), “Marsh Swamp” (1878), “Autumn” (1890), “ Foggy morning"(1881), "Landscape with a Swamp" (1898), "Swamp" (1902) and many others. Contemporaries called Efim Volkov “the poet of Russian autumn and Russian fogs.”

IN mid-19th century, the idealizing aesthetics of romanticism and classicism began to become a thing of the past. The national landscape begins to acquire leading importance in Russian art.

The very concept of “national landscape” presupposes a “portrait” of a certain geographically specific nature, characteristic of Holland, France or England. For Russian artists, this kind of nature has become such a thing for a long time. middle lane Russia. But, unlike the Europeans, Russian masters often invested social meaning into national motifs.

The nature of the Russian landscape was influenced by the principles critical realism. Sorrowful motifs are inherent in images of nature not only in the paintings of V.G. Perov (“Seeing Off the Dead Man”) or I.M. Pryanishnikov “Empty”, where the landscape is an accompaniment to the depiction of the negative sides of Russian life.

Characteristic of the Russian national landscape is the attraction to the epic, in a sense ideal image Russian land, glorious for its forest wealth, wide fields and mighty rivers (I.I. Shishkin).

The beginning of the lyrical Russian landscape is usually associated with the work of A.K. Savrasov and his well-known painting “The Rooks Have Arrived”. At the same time, in other works of Savrasov - “Country Road” or “Rye” - the spirit of romanticism is alive.

Dynamic landscapes imbued with a romantic feeling talented artist F. Vasilyeva. In the film “Swamp in the Forest. Autumn".

Vasiliev’s teacher I.I. set himself a different task. Shishkin. Shishkin believed that “a painting from life should be without imagination.” Shishkin's sunny paintings are not devoid of poetry, a sense of the epic grandeur of nature.

A.I. Kuindzhi, an epic-romantic artist, believed that an artist should paint a landscape “by heart,” relying entirely on creative imagination. With a complete impression of naturalness, his landscapes are distinguished by thoughtful balance. Often the artist introduces an almost stereoscopic image of three-dimensional details in the foreground into the picture. They serve to further emphasize the illusion and scope of space.

Less common in Russian art seascape. However, almost every major Russian artist painted the sea. I.K. Aivazovsky has come a long way creative path from the romantic to the realistically convincing poem “The Black Sea”, or the magnificent “Waves”. Without overtly romantic effects, A.P. wrote his “water” landscapes convincingly and truthfully. Bogolyubov.

The theme of landscape as a genre visual arts is the terrain. The word “landscape” is translated from French as “terrain, country.” After all, landscape is not only the image of nature that is familiar to us. The landscape can also be urban (architectural, for example). In the urban landscape, a documentary-accurate image is distinguished - “veduta”.

And if we talk about the natural landscape, then there is a separate seascape, which is called “marina” (accordingly, artists depicting the sea are called “marinists”), and cosmic (image of celestial space, stars and planets).
But landscapes also differ in terms of time: modern, historical, futuristic landscapes.
However, in art, no matter what the landscape is (real or imagined), it is always artistic image. In this regard, it is important to understand that for everyone artistic style(classicism, baroque, romanticism, realism, modernism) are characterized by their own philosophy and aesthetics of landscape images.
Of course, the landscape genre developed gradually, just as science developed. It would seem, what do landscapes and science have in common? A lot in common! To create a realistic landscape, you need to have knowledge of linear and aerial perspective, proportionality, composition, chiaroscuro, etc.
Therefore, the landscape genre is considered a relatively young genre in painting. For a long time, landscape was only an “auxiliary” means: nature was depicted as a background in portraits, icons, and genre scenes. Often it was not real, but idealized and generalized.
And although the landscape began to develop in ancient Eastern art, it received independent significance in Western European art starting around the 14th century.
And it would be very interesting to figure out why this happened. After all, by this time a person was already able to quite correctly depict abstract ideas, his appearance, his life, animals in graphic symbols, but he remained indifferent to nature for a long time. And only now is he trying to understand nature and its essence, because... In order to depict, one must understand.

Development of landscape in European painting

Interest in landscape becomes clearly visible, starting with painting Early Renaissance.
Italian artist and architect Giotto(c. 1267-1337) developed a completely new approach to depicting space. And although in his paintings the landscape was also only an auxiliary means, it already carried an independent semantic load, flat, two-dimensional space Giotto turned the icons into three-dimensional, creating the illusion of depth using chiaroscuro.

Giotto "Flight into Egypt" (Church of San Francesco in Assisi)
The painting conveys the idyllic spring mood of the landscape.
The landscape began to play an even more important role in the era High Renaissance(XVI century). It was during this period that the search began for the possibilities of composition, perspective and other components of painting to convey the surrounding world.
The masters of the Venetian school played a major role in the creation of the landscape genre of this period: Giorgione (1476/7-1510), Titian (1473-1576), El Greco (1541-1614).

El Greco "View of Toledo" (1596-1600). Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York)
The Spanish city of Toledo is depicted under a gloomy stormy sky. The contrast between heaven and earth is obvious. The view of the city is given from below, the horizon line is raised high, and phantasmagoric light is used.
In creativity Pieter Bruegel (the Elder) the landscape is already gaining breadth, freedom and sincerity. He writes simply, but in this simplicity one can see the nobility of a soul that knows how to see beauty in nature. He knows how to convey both the petty world under his feet and the vastness of fields, mountains, and skies. He has no dead, empty places - everything lives and breathes with him.
We bring to your attention two paintings by P. Bruegel from the cycle “The Seasons”.

P. Bruegel (the Elder) “Return of the Herd” (1565). Kunsthistorisches Museum (Vienna)

P. Bruegel (The Elder) “Hunters in the Snow” (1565). Kunsthistorisches Museum (Vienna)
In pictures Spanish artist D. Velazquez we can already see the birth of plein air ( plein air- from fr. en plein air – “on outdoors") painting. His work “View of the Villa Medici” conveys the freshness of greenery, warm shades of light sliding along the leaves of trees and high stone walls.

D. Velazquez “View of the garden of the Villa Medici in Rome” (1630)
Rubens(1577-1640), life-affirming, dynamic, characteristic of the work of this artist.

P. Rubens “Landscape with a Rainbow”
From a French artist Francois Boucher(1703-1770) landscapes seem to be woven from blue, pink, and silver shades.

F. Boucher “Landscape with a water mill” (1755). National Gallery (London)
Impressionist artists sought to develop methods and techniques that made it possible to capture the most naturally and vividly real world in its mobility and variability, to convey your fleeting impressions.

Auguste Renoir "The Paddling Pool". Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York)
Post-Impressionist artists developed the traditions of the Impressionists in their painting.

Vincent Vague Gogh "Starry Night" (1889)
In the 20th century Representatives of a wide variety of people turned to the landscape genre artistic directions: Fauvists, Cubists, Surrealists, Abstractionists, Realists.
Here is an example of a landscape by an American artist Helen (Helen) Frankenthaler(1928-2011), who worked in the style of abstract art.

Helen Frankenthaler "Mountains and Sea" (1952)

Some types of landscape

Architectural landscape

N.V. Gogol called architecture “the chronicle of the world”, because she, in his opinion, “speaks even when both songs and legends are already silent...”. Nowhere is the character and style of the time manifested so figuratively and clearly as in architecture. Apparently, this is why the masters of painting captured the architectural landscape on their canvases.

F. Ya. Alekseev “View of the Exchange and the Admiralty from the Peter and Paul Fortress” (1810)
The painting shows the Arrow Vasilyevsky Island. The compositional center of its architectural ensemble is the Exchange building. In front of the Exchange there is a semicircular square with a granite embankment. On its two sides there are columns that served as beacons. At the foot of the columns there are stone sculptures symbolizing the Russian rivers: the Volga, Dnieper, Neva and Volkhov. On the opposite bank of the river the Winter Palace and the Admiralty buildings are visible, Senate square. Construction of the Exchange, designed by Thomas de Thomon, lasted from 1804 to 1810. When Pushkin arrived in St. Petersburg in 1811, the Exchange had already become the architectural center of the Spit of Vasilyevsky Island and the busiest place in the port city.
A type of architectural landscape is the veduta. As a matter of fact, this landscape by F. Alekseev is the vedova.

Veduta

Veduta - genre European painting, especially popular in Venice in the 18th century. It is a painting, drawing or engraving of a detailed depiction of an everyday city landscape. So, the Dutch artist Jan Vermeer depicted exactly his native city of Delft.

Jan Vermeer "View of Delft" (1660)
Veduta masters worked in many European countries, including Russia (M. I. Makhaev and F. Ya. Alekseev). Whole line leading with Russian views performed by Giacomo Quarenghi.

Marina

Marina is a genre of painting, a type of landscape (from the Latin marinus - sea), depicting a sea view or a scene of a naval battle, as well as other events taking place at sea. As independent type landscape painting Marina stood out in early XVI I V. in Holland.
Marine painter (French mariniste) is an artist who paints marine life. The most prominent representatives of this genre are the Englishmen William Turner and Russian (Armenian) artist Ivan Constantinovich Aivazovski, who painted about 6,000 paintings on a marine theme.

W. Turner “The last voyage of the ship “Brave””

I. Aivazovsky “Rainbow”
A rainbow that appears in a stormy sea gives hope for the rescue of people from a shipwrecked ship.

Historical landscape

Everything about it is quite simple: to show the past through the historical setting, natural and architectural environment. Here we can remember the pictures N.K. Roerich, images of Moscow in the 17th century. A.M. Vasnetsova, Russian Baroque of the 18th century. HER. Lanceray, A.N. Benoit, archaic K.F. Bogaevsky and etc.

N. Roerich “Overseas Guests” (1901)
This is a painting from the series “The Beginning of Rus'. Slavs". In the article “On the Way from the Varangians to the Greeks” (1899), Roerich described an imaginary poetic picture: “The midnight guests are sailing. The gently sloping shore of the Gulf of Finland stretches like a light stripe. The water seemed to be saturated with the blue of the clear spring sky; the wind ripples across it, driving away matte-purple stripes and circles. A flock of seagulls landed on the waves, carelessly swayed on them, and only under the very keel of the front boat flashed their wings - they were alarmed peaceful life something unfamiliar, unprecedented. A new stream makes its way through the stagnant water, it runs into the centuries-old Slavic life, it will pass through forests and swamps, it will roll over a wide field, it will raise the Slavic families - they will see rare, unfamiliar guests, they will marvel at their strictly martial, at their overseas custom. The rooks are coming in a long row! Bright coloring burns in the Sun. The bow sides turned up dashingly, ending in a high, slender nose.”

K. Bogaevsky “Consular Tower in Sudak” (1903). Feodosiyskaya Art Gallery named after I.K. Aivazovsky

Futuristic (fantastic) landscape

Paintings Belgian artist Jonas De Ro are epic canvases of new, unexplored worlds. The main object of Jonas's images are extensive pictures of the post-apocalyptic world, futuristic, fantastic images.
In addition to the future of absolutely real cities, Jonas also draws completely original illustrations of an abandoned city.

J. De Roe “Abandoned Civilization”

Philosophy of landscape

What is it?
At the center of landscape painting is always the question of man's relationship to the environment - be it a city or nature. But the environment also has its own relation to man. And these relationships can be harmonious and inharmonious.
Consider the landscape " evening call, evening Bell».

I. Levitan “Evening Bells” (1892). State Tretyakov Gallery (Moscow)
The painting “Evening Bells” depicts a monastery at a bend in the river, illuminated by the evening sun’s rays. The monastery is surrounded by an autumn forest, clouds float across the sky - and all this is reflected in the mirror surface of a calmly flowing river. The bright joy of nature and the spiritual world of people’s existence and feelings are fused in harmony. I want to look at this picture and look at it, it calms the soul. This is blissful, idyllic beauty.
And here is another landscape by the same artist - “Above Eternal Peace.”

I. Levitan “Above Eternal Peace” (1894). State Tretyakov Gallery (Moscow)
Levitan himself wrote about this picture: “... I am all in it, with all my psyche, with all my content...”. In another letter: “Eternity, a terrible eternity, in which generations have drowned and will drown again... What horror, what fear!” It is this menacing eternity that Levitan’s painting makes us think about. The water and sky in the picture captivate and amaze a person, awakening the thought of the insignificance and transience of life. On a steep, high bank there is a lonely wooden church, next to it is a cemetery with rickety crosses and abandoned graves. The wind shakes the trees, drives the clouds, drags the viewer into the endless northern expanse. The gloomy grandeur of nature is opposed only by a tiny light in the window of the church.
The artist may have wanted to answer with his painting the question about the relationship between man and nature, about the meaning of life, contrasting the eternal and powerful forces of nature with weak and short-term human life. This is sublime tragedy.

Scenery(French Paysage, from pays - country, locality) - a genre of fine art (as well as individual works of this genre), in which the main subject of the image is pristine nature, or nature transformed to one degree or another by man. Modern representations about the landscape have been formed over the centuries with the development artistic techniques for his image. In a landscape work, special importance is attached to the construction of perspective and composition of the view, conveying the state of the atmosphere, air and light environment, and their variability.

Landscape - a genre of painting

Characteristics of the genre

The landscape is relatively young. For centuries, images of nature were drawn only as images of the characters’ habitats, as decorations for icons, and subsequently for scenes of genre plots and portraits.

Gradually, with the development of scientific and experimental knowledge of linear and aerial perspective, chiaroscuro, proportionality, general composition, color, image relief, natural views initially became an equal member plot composition, and then transformed into the central subject of the image.

For a long period of time, landscape motifs represented generalized, composed, idealized views. A significant breakthrough in the artist’s awareness of the meaning of landscape was represented by his depiction of a specific location (the shore of Lake Geneva, the 15th-century Swiss artist Conrad Witz).

In the world-cultural process, landscape as a pictorial genre declared itself, first of all, as european art, despite the existence of ancient Chinese and other eastern traditions the arts of landscape drawing and their influence on European artistic processes.

Landscape works by European masters of the 17th-18th centuries are an integral example of ideal aesthetic views on landscape; the works of the impressionists and post-impressionists were the culmination of the extraordinary development of the landscape genre at the end of the 19th century.

The rise of landscape painting was marked by the development of the plein air landscape, associated with the invention in the 19th century of the method of producing tube paints. The painter could work away from his studio, in nature, in natural light. This significantly enriched the choice of motifs, brought art closer to the viewer, and gave the creator the opportunity to translate his immediate emotional impressions into a work of painting.

If in past times, especially under the dominance of academicism, landscape belonged to a “minor” genre of painting, then, especially starting with the impressionists (with their undoubtedly leading landscape priority) to this day, this direction is represented in the works of many artists and enjoys the enduring interest of amateurs painting. When looking at the best landscape works, you can almost physically feel the blow of the wind, the smell of the sea, the silence of the snow or the rustle of leaves.

Elements, types and characters of the landscape

Landscape usually depicts open space. It usually presents an image of the water and/or earth surface. Depending on the direction - vegetation, buildings, technology, meteorological (clouds, rain) and astronomical (stars, sun, moon) formations.

Sometimes the artist also uses figurative inclusions (people, animals), mainly in the form of relatively fleeting plot situations. In a landscape composition, however, they are given a clearly secondary importance, often the role of staffage.

Depending on the type of motif depicted, rural, urban (including architectural - veduta and industrial) landscapes can be distinguished. A special area is the image of the sea element - a seascape or marina. At the same time, landscapes can be both intimate and panoramic.

In addition, the landscape can be epic, historical, heroic, lyrical, romantic, fantastic and even abstract.

Landscape in the fine arts of Europe

Development of the landscape genre from antiquity to the 20th century

Elements of the landscape can be found already in rock art Neolithic era (Tassilin-Ajjer plateau in the Sahara). Primitive craftsmen schematically depicted rivers or lakes, trees and boulders on the walls of caves.

In the art of the ancient Mediterranean, the landscape motif is a fairly common detail in the wall paintings of patrician houses.

However, later, in the art of the Middle Ages, the ideals that inspired ancient artists - the joy of being, physicality, truthfulness - gave way to fine arts, first of all, in a complete, figurative form, giving an idea of ​​the beauty of the divine: painting was designed to influence the viewer as a silent sermon (the vast majority of the population did not have access to direct access to the Bible - its translation from Latin appeared only in the 14th century).

Landscape practically disappears from painting for a long time - icon painters almost neglect the background, if necessary depicting nature and buildings in a very schematic and non-volume manner.

Interest in landscape becomes clearly noticeable, starting with the painting of the Early Renaissance - Quattrocento, XV century. (four hundred years, starting from the thousandth). Many testify to the desire of painters to achieve a harmonious and holistic image of nature and man. Such, for example, is the painting “Procession of the Magi” by the Italian master Sassetta (1392-1450/51).

Landscape motifs began to play an even more important role in the era of the High Renaissance, the Cinquecento (16th century). It is this period, more than any other, that is focused on searching best opportunities composition, perspective and other components of painting to convey the surrounding world. Now the landscape seems to be an important element of the picture. The clearest example that is famous portrait Mona Lisa, painted by Leonardo (1452-1519). It is not for nothing that it was during this era that the social status artist: from a representative of one of the lower classes of traditional society (in the Middle Ages, the artist was assigned to a paint shop), he is transformed into a sociocultural ideal, since it is in his activity that the main cultural ideas, values ​​and ideals of Renaissance humanism are realized: freedom, creativity, initiative, self-sufficiency and self-development.

The masters of the Venetian school played a major role in the creation of the landscape genre of this period. One of the first artists in whose paintings nature is the main character was Giorgione (1476/7-1510). The landscape on the canvas “Thunderstorm” is definitely a bearer of feelings and moods. And already in Titian’s (1473/88-1576) early painting “The Flight into Egypt” (1508), the image of nature in the background begins to dominate the scenes shown in the foreground.

The traditions of the Venetian school were also reflected in the painting of Titian’s student, the Spanish artist El Greco (1541-1614). Among the most famous paintings master - landscape “View of Toledo”.

IN Northern Europe Since the 16th century, landscape has also gradually left the field of attraction of other artistic genres. Images of nature occupy important place in the works of many artists Dutch school- Pieter Bruegel (the Elder) (c. 1525-1569), John Vermeer of Delft (1632-1675) and others. Most Dutch landscapes are characterized by a muted color, consisting of light silver, olive-ocher, brownish shades, close to the natural colors of nature.

The realistic art of Spain, Italy and France influenced the further development of landscape painting. The masterly paintings of the great Spanish master Diego Velazquez (1599-1660) testify to the emergence of plein air painting. His work “View of the Villa Medici” conveys the freshness of greenery, warm shades of light sliding along the leaves of trees and high stone walls.

During the period of classicism (17th century), nature was interpreted based on the laws of reason, and its representation in the form of ideal harmony was considered an aesthetic standard (idyllic landscape). Claude Lorrain (1600-1682) and other painters.

Nature appears differently in the paintings of Baroque masters, who strive to convey the dynamics of the surrounding world, the turbulent life of the elements. Landscapes that affirm the joy of being are characteristic of the work of the Fleming Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) (“Landscape with a Rainbow”).

In the 18th century, architectural landscape became widespread, elements of which appeared in the art of the Middle Ages. Representatives of the Venetian school of painting Francesco Guardi (1712-1793) and Canaletto (1697-1768) were remarkable masters of the vedata.

A bright representative Rococo art (XVIII century) was French artist Francois Boucher (1703-1770), who created landscapes that seemed to be woven from blue, pink, and silver shades. Another French artist who worked in this style studied with Boucher, Jean Honore Fragonard (1732-1806), whose colorful landscapes are permeated with air and light.

In landscape painting of the Enlightenment era (second half of the 18th century), artists sought to show the viewer the aesthetics of natural nature. Based on field observations and equipped with bright lighting effects, the seascapes of Joseph Vernet (1714-1789) aroused the delight of his contemporaries.

Vernet's painting influenced representatives of the romantic movement that appeared in European and American art in the first half of the 19th century. Significant representatives romantic landscape in England there were William Turner (1775-1851) and John Constable (1776-1837), in Germany - Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840).

The beauty of simple rural nature was discovered for the viewer by French landscape painters - representatives of the Barbizon school: Theodore Rousseau (1812-1867), Jules Dupre (1811-1889) and others. Close to the art of the Barbizonians is the painting of Camille Corot (1796-1875), who sought to convey the quivering air environment with with the help of valers.

Camille Corot was considered his predecessor french impressionists. Plein air landscapes by Claude Monet (1840-1926), Auguste Renoir (1841-1919), Edouard Manet (1832-1883), Camille Pissarro (1830-1903), Alfred Sisley (1839-1899) and others amazingly convey the changing light-air environment .

The traditions of the impressionists were also developed in their painting by post-impressionist artists: Paul Cezanne (1839-1906), Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890), Georges-Pierre Seurat (1859-1891), Paul Signac (1863-1935), etc.

In the 20th century, representatives of a wide variety of artistic movements turned to the landscape genre. Vivid pictures of nature were created by the Fauvists: Henri Matisse (1869-1954), Andre Derain (1880-1954), Albert Marquet (1875-1947), Maurice Vlaminck (1876-1958), Raoul Dufy (1877-1953), etc.

Cubists - Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Georges Braque (1882-1963), Robert Delaunay (1885-1941) and others executed their landscapes in the form of geometric shapes. The landscape genre was also of interest to surrealists - Salvador Dali (1904-1989) and others, and abstractionists - Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011) and others.

Representatives of realistic movements invariably remained recognized masters of landscape painting in the 20th century - Rockwell Kent (1882-1971), George Wesley Bellows (1882-1925), Renato Guttuso (1911/2-1987), etc.

Landscape in Russian art

The evolution of landscape painting from romanticism to realism

In Russian art, landscape as a genre of painting appeared at the end of the 18th century. Its founder is considered to be Semyon Shchedrin (1745-1804). Shchedrin's landscape works are built on the stylistic canons of classicism (the use of wings in the composition, three-plane color distribution, smoothed texture of the letter). In their still conventional beauty, they nevertheless differ significantly from the previously existing “picturesque views” of cities and places of interest in their artistic and emotional expressiveness. It is achieved in a variety of ways by the depth and breadth of distances, the contrasts between the large masses of the foreground and the green-blue expanses opening behind them, which overall gives his landscapes an impressive airiness.

Other pioneers of this genre were the artists Fyodor Matveev (1758-1826), Fyodor Alekseev (1753/55-1824) and other artists, like Shchedrin, who were trained in academic painting in Western Europe.

Classicism continued to occupy a dominant position in the Russian art of landscape painting at the beginning of the 19th century. Matveev (heroic landscapes) and Alekseev (elegiac views of St. Petersburg and Moscow) continue to work; urban views also attract Andrei Martynov (1768-1826).

This direction, however, was gradually increasingly replaced by romanticism. Here it should be noted Sylvester Shchedrin (1791-1830), Vasily Sadovnikov (1800-1879), Mikhail Lebedev (1811-1837), Grigory Soroka (1823-1864), and, of course, Alexei Venetsianov (1780-1847), one of the first which showed the charm of the dim nature of the Central Russian strip.

And graphics, which is the terrain, natural or transformed by man.

Depending on the main subject of the image and the nature of nature, within the landscape genre they distinguish: rural and urban landscapes; architectural and industrial landscapes; sea ​​and river landscapes.

Why do artists paint landscapes when it’s so easy to take and photograph the natural landscape you like? What is the difference between a picturesque landscape and a photograph of an area?
If a portrait painter depicts a person not only from the external, so to speak, physical side, but also his inner world, then in the landscape he depicts his internal state, your soul. That is, a picturesque landscape is not only a picture of nature, it is a picture inner world artist. And in this sense, landscape differs from photography. When we come to an exhibition, we look at the soul of another person. Looking at a landscape, we see the world through the eyes of an artist.

Ivan Shishkin, for example, painted his landscapes before the smallest details, so you can’t tell it from a photograph. However, this is not the main thing, but the fact that his soul chose this particular view, this state of nature. Therefore, landscape painting is an image of views of nature conveying the mood evoked by their contemplation.

How many exciting revelations we know related to this genre. Let's take only our domestic names - K. Savrasov, K. Korovin, A. Rylov, N. Krymov, A. Plastov, A. Kuindzhi, N. Roerich, I. Aivazovsky and others. They created a wonderful tradition of Russian landscape painting.

Landscape is a direct echo of a person’s soul, a mirror of his inner world. Sometimes he solves major problems and embodies the subtlest spiritual conflicts. For example, the impressionists set themselves rather narrow goals - to convey air, light, and capture the flickering of silhouettes. The Russian landscape in its best incarnations has always been, first of all, a concentration of deep experiences and sharp philosophical ideas.

In Russian landscape painting there are works whose significance in the history of our culture is extremely great! We often say: “Levitanovsky autumn”, “Shishkinsky forest” or “Polenovsky pond”. Images of nature excite all people, giving them similar moods, experiences and thoughts.

Who among us is not close to the landscapes of Russian painters: “The Rooks Have Arrived” by A.K. Savrasov, “The Thaw” by F.A. Vasilyev, “Rye” by I.M. Shishkin, “Night on the Dnieper” by A.I. Kuindzhi, “Moscow courtyard" by V. D. Polenov, "Above Eternal Peace" by I. V. Levitan? We involuntarily begin to look at the world through the eyes of artists who have revealed the poetic beauty of nature. The ability to create an image in a landscape, to convey the most characteristic thing in a natural phenomenon, is a quality that is distinctive for the Russian landscape school. This quality, perhaps, determines its place in the history of world painting. Russian landscape painters have always set themselves the task of creating a landscape - a painting that is not inferior to a multi-figure composition in terms of the depth of concept, the power of emotional impact and the amount of “material” for reflection.

Landscape artists saw and conveyed nature each in their own way. Aivazovsky I.K. also had his favorite motifs, depicting various states of the sea, ships and people struggling with the elements. His canvases are characterized by a subtle gradation of chiaroscuro, lighting effect, emotional elation, and a tendency towards heroism and pathos.

Nature, the image of which is presented in the paintings of Russian landscape painters, has nothing in common with an indifferently and thoughtlessly reproduced piece of a field, forest or river for the sake of the “beauty” of one or another motif. The artist himself is always present in them, his feelings, thoughts, his clearly expressed attitude towards what he depicts. Taking real objects of the surrounding nature, the landscape painter uses both composition and their color characteristics, enhancing one, muting the other, in order to create a certain

(from the French paysage - country, locality) - a genre of fine art in which the main subject of the image is nature.
Landscape appeared as an independent genre already in the 6th century in Chinese art. The traditions of Chinese landscape painting had a great influence on Japanese art.
In Europe, landscape as a separate genre appeared much later than in China and Japan. During the Middle Ages, when only religious compositions had the right to exist, the landscape was interpreted by painters as an image of the characters’ habitat.
Gradually, landscape went beyond other artistic genres. This was facilitated by the development easel painting. The masters of the Venetian school played a major role in the creation of the landscape genre at the beginning of the 16th century.
In Russian art, landscape as a genre of painting appeared at the end of the 18th century. Semyon Shchedrin (1745-1804) is considered to be the founder of Russian landscape.
The rise of landscape painting was marked by the development of the plein air landscape, associated with the invention in the 19th century of the method of producing tube paints.