Landscape Painting is undoubtedly one of the most adorned painting genre. The art genre is loved so much so that every art collector, at least has one landscape painting in his collection. Moreover, people love embracing the walls of their spaces with famous landscape paintings of water bodies, sun or flora, fauna.
Hence, this blog post will acquaint you with the tits and bits of the origin, history of landscape paintings, how they evolved and how artists find these landscapes. Take a look!
Origin and History
For tracing the origin of landscape paintings, one would need to take themselves back to China. On the contrary, it is believed that the first ever landscape painting was made by Leonardo da Vinci somewhere around 1473. However, this is not true. The landscape paintings were first seen in Chinese art where the painting didn’t have just an element of nature in a particular painting but the whole painting was a depiction of nature. Consequently, many of these paintings became famous landscape paintings in the 9th century. Thus, the era was popularly known as ‘The Great Age of Chinese art’. Thereafter, it wasn’t until the Renaissance era that painters began taking landscape as a subject often for their canvases. Moreover, it was only then that the western world had their first set of famous landscape paintings. The initial one was the Albrecht Altdorfer’s ‘landscape with footbridge’ which he made in between 1518 and 1520.
The 20th and 21st century is of contemporary art and landscape paintings have got more and more abstract and creative now.
INSPIRATION
As obvious as it is, all that it takes from an artist’s end to make a mind-blowing landscape painting is his artistic ability, knowledge of colors and brushes. Landscape paintings don’t utilize the creative and imaginative ability of artists to the full potential.
An artist can find the next inspiring landscape view outside his living space or when he is travelling to some exotic destination. They can paint their canvases with an urban, rural or natural scene. Prior to the advent of the contemporary art form, the artists used to paint exactly what they used to see, but now, contemporary landscape paintings have emerged. This painting style gives an artist the freedom to play with colors, shapes, and sizes so that they can give their touch to the paintings they make. This makes the painting all the more interesting and intriguing. Clearly, an artist can find inspiration for making eye-catching and famous landscape paintings, anywhere and everywhere around him.
In brief, landscape paintings are ageless and an all-time favorite. The reasons for their wide-spread popularity are many, the major being that they are highly recognizable and beautiful. Therefore, knowing a bit about them was quintessential. Hopefully, this would have added to your horizons of knowledge regarding the landscape paintings.