Landscape might seem the simplest subject for art: we see it around us every day, we know what it ought to look like, it makes an easy appeal to the emotions and few intellectual demands. But no artist painting a view ever really starts with a blank canvas: expectations, aspirations, the weather and the demands of commissioning or potential clients are only the beginning.
In the eighteenth century Henry Fuseli, Professor of Painting at the Royal Academy, called landscape painting ‘the last branch of uninteresting subjects’. Yet, even as he spoke, his colleague, Richard Wilson, was sowing the seeds of a revolution in attitude and technique which within a generation would see landscape painting located instead at the very heart of all that was challenging and controversial in British art – to a point where the results sometimes seemed to bemused viewers to be about almost anything except recognisable, loveable countryside.
From the paintings of Constable and Turner to the Land Art (perhaps) of Richard Long and Andy Goldsworthy, landscape art has pushed boundaries, defied expectations and forced human beings to look long and think hard about the world and their place within it. Through the course of this day school we will be exploring the ways, and the whys, of that often extraordinary journey.
Please note: this event will close to enrolments at 23:59 BST on 16 October 2024.