Brief
Find examples of 18th and 19th-century landscape paintings and list the commonalities. Find examples of landscape photographs from any era that conform and that break those conventions.
18th and 19th-century landscape paintings
Artist: Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788) British
Title: Cornard Wood, near Sudbury, Suffolk (1748)
Size: 122 x 155 cm
Why painted: Painted on spec and sold to a private collector
Artist: John Constable (1776 -1837) British
Title: Stratford Mill (1820)
Size: 127 x 182.9 cm
Why painted: Painted on spec and sold to a private collector
Artist: Thomas Cole (1801-1848) American
Title: A Pic-Nic Party (1846)
Size: 122 x 137 cm
Why painted: Private commission
Features shared by the above paintings
- Co-existence of nature and civilisation
- Hints of mortality with cut, dead trees in the foreground
- Dramatic skies
- People at work or play
- Animals
- Distant buildings
- Horizon lines in the middle third of the painting
- Albertian perspective
- Water
- Peaceful, idealised bucolic scenes
- Use of light and shadows to lead to distant buildings or mountain
- Painted for commercial reasons – either on spec to be sold at exhibition or for a private commission
Landscape Photographs that conform to these conventions
Artist: Luigi Ghirri (1943-1992) Italian
Title: Alpe di Siusi (1979)
Why created: Commercial
Artist: Stephen Shore (1947) American
Title: Merced River, Yosemite National Park, California (1979)
Why created: Photobook
Landscape Photographs that do not conform to these conventions
Artist: Peter Kostrum (1979) Slovinian
Title: The End (2007)
Why created: Self-publised photobookbook. Edition of 20.
Artist: Alec Soth (1969) American
Title: The Farm, Angola State Prison, Angola, Louisiana (2002)
Why created: Photobook
Artist: Robert Frank (1924-2019) Swiss
Title: View from Hotel Room, Butte, Montana (1956)
Why created: Guggenheim Fellowship funded project
Artist: Walker Evans (1903-1975) American
Title: Birmingham Steel Mill and Workers’ Houses (1936)
Why created: FSA funded project
Artist: Stephen Shore (1947) American
Title: Proton Avenue, Gull Lake, Sask. (1974)
Why created: Photobook
Artist: Hiroshi Sugimoto (1948) Japanese
Title: Boden Sea, Uttwil (1993)
Why created: Commercial project
Artist: Ben Horne, American
Title: ‘Open Horizon’ Death Valley National Park (2011)
Why created: Commercial project
Artist: Helen Sear, British
Title: ‘Rice Fields’ Milan, Italy (2011)
Why created: Commercial project
