Types of landscape in painting

The genre of fine art, the main theme of which - a living or human-created environment, became independent later than others - the plot, still life or animal studies. Kinds of landscape began to develop with new force, when artists had the opportunity to work in the open air.

Definition

The French word "paysage" ("pays" - "country", "terrain") is close in meaning to the German "Landschaft" and the English "landscape". They all designate the spatial environment surrounding a person in the open air. This environment can consist of elements of natural origin (relief, vegetation, ponds, air atmosphere) created or transformed by man (roads, buildings, farmland, power lines , etc.).

The word "landscape" has several meanings: it's just what the person's eye stops on the outside, the nature's description in a literary work, the image of the environment by means of visual art. Almost in every work of art there are different kinds of landscapes. Photo, film, video, computer graphics and, of course, painting participate in the mapping of the surrounding world.

The variety of topics

Every true artist has his own view of the environment. To help understand this diversity are taken to distinguish some types of landscape. For preschoolers, high school students, students and fans of painting of any age, there are gradations of landscape paintings, depending on the nature of the image and its nature.

There are natural, rural and urban views of the landscape in painting. Each of them has varieties and features. By nature, the landscape is historical and heroic, epic, romantic and mood landscape.

Natural landscape

Even in the Middle Ages, the image of nature was schematic and planar. It was an auxiliary character of a supplement to religious, mythological or historical compositions. But since the Renaissance, pictures began to appear on which the subjects or figures of people were not used to express feelings and emotions, the main characters in them were the earth, forests, sky, the sea in different states.

One of the founders of the genre of "clean landscape" is the German engraver, draftsman and painter Albrecht Altdorfer (1480-1538). For the first time on the mythological canvases, the figures of the heroes were often hardly distinguishable against the backdrop of the grandiose image of the natural environment.

Marina - a picture of the sea

In the natural landscape, a special place is occupied by the images of the aquatic environment, which has always attracted the attention of artists. Types of landscape related to navigation, and marinistics (marina - a picture of marine themes) were born in countries where shipbuilding was a common thing - in Holland, England, etc. At first the sea was an integral part of the image of ships and water battles, but then the expressiveness and powerful beauty of the elements, its elusive variability began to attract the painters by themselves. The real top of the world significance is the work of the Russian seascapes painter IK Aivazovsky (1817-1900).

The image of celestial spaces, planets and stars is also referred to as a natural landscape. Types of landscape, called the cosmic or astral, have always been a genre of fantastic or futuristic art, with the beginning of regular space flights such pictures are more realistic.

Rural landscape

Since the time of idyllic pictures from the life of shepherds and pastoralists of the Rococo era, the rural landscape has always occupied an important place in the art of painting. The proximity to nature, the harmony of life on earth, peasant labor was a topic for many outstanding masters of different eras, as Peter Bruegel (1525-1569), Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665), Camille Corot (1796-1875), François Mille 1814-1875).

Russian painting of the village theme was inherent from the time of AG Venetsianov (1780-1847). Examples of the highest peaks in the rural landscape are among the brilliant Russian artists: II Levitan (1860-1900), AK Savrasov (1830-1897), VD Polenov (1844-1927), AA Plastov (1893-1972). The special poetry of rural life in the environment of Russian nature inspires and contemporary artists.

City landscape

In the XVII century in Europe became very popular genre in painting called "veduta" ("veduta" (ital.) - "view"). These were paintings, views of the landscape, the essence of which - topographically accurate and detailed image of urban buildings, streets and entire blocks. For their writing, a pinhole camera was used, a device for obtaining an exact optical image on the plane. The best examples of this genre are a photographically accurate architectural urban landscape. The views of Venice and London of the XVIII century are presented in the paintings of A. Canaletto (1697-1768), amazing skill of J. Vermeer (1632-1675) in the painting "View of Delft".

The architectural landscape shows the value of buildings as works of architecture, their relationship with each other and with the entire environment. A special kind of such a landscape is fantasy compositions, born of the artist's imagination. At one time "ruins" were very popular - views of the landscape from ancient ruins, generating thoughts about the transience of being.

One can distinguish a futurological, fantastic landscape - the types of cities of the future, the image of which changes with the course of time depending on progress, the achievements of science and technology.

Another type of urban landscape is the industrial landscape, depicting the most transformed nature of nature. The main theme of such paintings is the aesthetic impression of buildings, dams, bridges, towers, roads, transport networks, factories, etc. Among the first significant works of the industrial landscape can be mentioned the painting by Claude Monet (1840-1926) "Saint-Lazare Station ".

Separate into a separate category and the park landscape. Similar in subject matter to rural or purely natural, geographically it refers to urban.

Styles of landscape painting

Artistic work is always a creative comprehension of the world, and the landscape of a real artist is not just an image similar to reality, but an image of the surrounding natural or urban environment, the impression of it, expressed by a creative person. This comprehension very often determines the style that is characteristic of an individual person, as well as to entire communities connected by one place and one time.

The historical belonging of the master to a certain style in landscape painting is especially noticeable. "Landscape with a rainbow" P. P. Rubens (1577-1640) - a masterpiece of the Baroque and the same picture by Konstantin Somov (1869-1939) are similar in plot. They are full of the same admiration from the outside world, but by what means are these feelings transmitted!

The work of the Impressionists had a special impact on this genre. All kinds of landscape - natural, urban, rural - with the advent of the opportunity to work in the open air have undergone drastic changes. Trying to express the momentary changes and the smallest nuances of light, using the new free pictorial technique, the Impressionists opened new horizons in the landscape genre. After the masterpieces of Claude Monet (1840-1926), Camille Pissarro (1830-1903), Alfred Sisley (1839-1999) and many other Impressionists, it became impossible to look at the world with his previous eyes, not noticing his beauty, not seeing the richness of his shades.

The eternal source of inspiration

Nature has always been the main source of new feelings and impressions for this artist. Our distant ancestors tried to paint the sunrise on the wall of the cave with a piece of dried clay, the views of the landscape for preschoolers today are photographs of Mars transmitted from its surface by a space self-propelled vehicle. The common is the feeling of surprise from the infinity of the world, from the joy of life.