by Simon Schama
First published 2002
Simon Schama examines how artists have portrayed the natural world across five centuries of landscape painting. He begins with Brueghel's expansive moral allegories from Northern Europe and Ruisdael's brooding nature scenes, then moves through the courtly pastoral works of Lorrain and the heroic American vistas captured by Heade and Church. Schama shows how Constable and Courbet brought realistic observation back to landscape art, while Monet transformed nature into light and color through Impressionism. He follows Van Gogh's emotional swirls across fields and night skies, then travels to Gauguin's Tahitian paradise where the artist sought spiritual purity. Works by Watteau, Canaletto, Picasso, Nolde, and Kirchner expand the survey further. Schama argues that these paintings reveal shifting attitudes toward landscape as both physical reality and psychological space. The book offers readers a richly illustrated journey through territories we inhabit, abandon, dream about, and transform.
Genres: biography, history, non-fiction, art-history
Vibes: atmospheric, emotional, thought-provoking
Tropes: historical
Setting: Europe, Northern Europe, Tahiti
Period: 5th century, 19th century, 20th century
264 pages · Hardcover · Hatje Cantz Publishers