| http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; | | | | has removed them physically from the natural |
| charset=utf-8"> | | | | world that produces these images, landscape |
| People like landscapes. Since the first cave | | | | painting is a vital way of staying in touch with the |
| dwellers looked out of the first cave mouths at | | | | power and grandeur of the earth. The four walls |
| the vistas surrounding them, and felt that familiar | | | | of a flat or house distinctly keep out the views |
| connection to the world — its seasons, its | | | | that remind the soul of its connection with the |
| emotions, the peace of natural spaces — | | | | wider world: landscape painting is the only way |
| humanity has found an affinity with framed views | | | | those views can be reinstated. And without the |
| of the world outside its windows. That affinity has | | | | views, the older soul — the |
| remained undiminished through the ages, with | | | | common racial soul of all humanity — dies. |
| representational (and, latterly, even | | | | That’s probably why landscape painting has |
| non-representational) art paying homage to the | | | | traditionally been so popular in Western art, or the |
| depth of feeling all people experience in | | | | art of civilised peoples. Representational |
| conjunction with views of their planet’s | | | | landscape painting doesn’t occur in the art |
| outside places. Landscape painting, from the | | | | of tribespeople, or most Eastern societies |
| trompe l’oeil frescoes of 15th century | | | | — the one notable exception being Japan, |
| Italian villas to the awe-inspiring openness of a | | | | whose fusion of nature and civilisation made it |
| simple Rothko, speaks to the heart of man in | | | | famous for centuries before upstart Western |
| ways that no other images can. | | | | societies got in on the act. Aside from the |
| Landscape painting captures more than trees, | | | | rule-proving exception of the Japanese, who |
| horizons, seas and mountains. Landscape painting | | | | never really removed themselves from nature: |
| distils the feelings these views engender. With a | | | | landscape painting occurs en masse in cultures |
| mountain range or open desert framed and placed | | | | where the business of living has left the natural |
| on a wall, people can carry those feelings into | | | | world behind. Small wonder, then, that landscape |
| their homes. The serenity of a Scottish dawn, or | | | | painting has always been such a popular choice for |
| the violence of a heaving sea, carries the | | | | decorating Western homes. There’s |
| observer in moments of reflection to the plane of | | | | nothing more unnatural than a brick box whose |
| emotion with which it is associated: awe, wonder, | | | | sides are mostly designed to keep the world out |
| beauty. | | | | — landscape painting became the Western |
| For Westerners, whose increasing modernisation | | | | way of letting that world back in. |