No genre of art has defined Britain like landscape. Emerging at the very dawn of the Industrial Revolution, British landscape painters not only integrated the earlier stylistic conventions of the continental schools of the genre but aesthetically reimagined the world under the ethos of scientific empirical discovery and the profoundly felt and conceptualized sublime power of nature. We will examine many of the most prominent, though now often unfamiliar names in the field. While also placing more familiar artists like JMW Turner, John Constable and Samuel Palmer, within the broader context of a movement that changed the very way people saw the world.
- Ackroyd, Peter. (2006) Turner, Vintage, ISBN 9780099287285
- Ashfield, Andrew and de Bolla, Peter. (1996) The Sublime: A Reader in British Eighteenth-Century Aesthetic Theory, Cambrisge University Press, ISBN 0 521 39582 8
- Bailey, Anthony. (2006) John Constable: A Kingdom of His Own, Chatto and Windus, ISBN 0 7011 7884 1
- Campbell-Johnston, Rachel. (2011) The Life and Work of Samuel Palmer, Bloomsbury, ISBN 978 0 7475 9587 8
- Klonk, Charlotte. (1996) Science and the Perception of Nature: British Landscape Art in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries, Yale University Press, ISBN 0 300 06950 2
- Cormack, Malcolm. (1989) Bonington, Phaidon Press, ISBN 0 7148 25182
- Linnell, David. (2010) Blake, Palmer, Linnell & Co., Antique Collectors Club, ISBN 13: 9780863329173
- Lockett, Richard. (1985) Samuel Prout, B.T. Batsford, ISBN 0 134 3491 0
- Luijten, Ger. (2020) True to Nature: Open-air Painting in Europe 1780-1870, Paul Holberton Publishing, ISBN 978 1 911300 78 6
- Pointon, Marcia. (1985) Bonington, Francia and Wyld, B.T. Batsford, ISBN 0 7134 1818 4
- Postle, Martin and Simon, Robin. (2014) Richard Wilson and the Transformation of European Landscape Painting, Yale University Press, ISBN 978 0 300 20385 1
- Sim, Catherine. (1984) David Roberts R.A. 1796-1864: A Biography, Quartet Books, ISBN 0 7043 2371 0
- Walpole, Josephine. (1997) Art and Artists of the Norwich School, Antique Collectors Club, ISBN 1 85149 261 5
- Vaughan, William. (2005) Samuel Palmer: Vision and Landscape, The British Museum Press, ISBN-13: 978 0 7141 2641 8
- Francesco Zuccarelli and Richard Wilson: We will examine how the European classical landscape tradition was both embraced and reimagined by British artists. We will see how this set the stage for the beginnings of a new pictorial vision for British landscape painting.
- Turner and Constable: We will compare Turner’s broad macro-vision of nature with Constable’s localised depiction of the English landscape. We will also critique the modern tendency to isolate these two great painters of the English school from their highly accomplished artistic contemporaries.
- Samuel Prout and Richard Parkes Bonington: With the end of the Napoleonic Wars, transcontinental travel became the commercially-driven norm for a group of British landscape painters. We will examine two artists who profoundly encapsulate the “poetic topography” of early nineteenth century British landscape painting.
- The Norwich School of Painters: One of the rare occasions of a regional school of painting emerging in Britain. We will examine this group of landscape painters - originating with artists such as John Crome and James Stark - that flourished within the first three decades of the nineteenth century.
- John Linnell and Samuel Palmer: We will investigate how the work of two Masters of British pastoral landscape that were culturally juxtaposed against a world in the flux of industrialization and a changing traditional agrarian identity.
- William Wyld and David Roberts: We will explore the work of two artists who were not only leading proponents of the topographical landscape tradition but ventured further afield, to the countries of North Africa and Western Asia. We will conclude with an examination of David Roberts’ immensely influential depictions of the Orient, published in book form, as a series of coloured lithographic prints.
By the end of this course, student should be able to:
- Gain an overarching narrative of the development of British landscape painting between c. 1750 to c. 1850.
- Understand the social and cultural influences upon the art of landscape, such as the Industrial Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, continental travel and global exploration, scientific discovery and aesthetic theory.
- Identify stylistic changes, derivations and developments between artists of the period.
