The Evolving Landscape

The word "landscape," which comes from the Dutch "landschap," was first used in the context of a specific art genre in the early 17th century.

- Sarah Gianelli

When the Dutch Republic declared independence from Spain in 1588, the growth of capitalism and the country's wealth revolutionized painting and ushered in a new era now called the Dutch Golden Age, which lasted until 1672. It was during this time that the genre was flourishing in the Netherlands, where pure landscape paintings were appreciated and accepted as fine art, centuries before the rest of the Western art world would follow suit.

In other parts of Europe, until the 19th century, landscapes served as the backdrop for narrative paintings-often religious or mythical in nature and in which figures were the main subject. These types of pictures were especially popular in Italy and France; while in England, landscapes more often formed the background for portraits, especially of wealthy landowners.

After the Renaissance, religious art slowly fell out of favor, in part due to the Protestant Reformation, which shifted artists' focus to more secular themes and patrons. This trend continued throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, as a new romanticism emphasizing subjectivity, individualism and an appreciation for nature took hold of the collective imagination-eventually elevating landscape painting to the highly regarded, autonomous genre it is today.

Artists on both sides of the Atlantic were responsible for radically shifting the widely held perception of landscape painting as a secondary art form. French painters in the Barbizon School were establishing a landscape tradition that by the late 1860s would blossom into one of the most influential movements of the century impressionism.