Idealized landscapes were common subjects for fresco decoration in Roman villas.
Landscape painting (as exemplified by a Chinese landscape scroll by Ku K'ai-chih dating from the 4th century) was an established tradition in the Far East, where themes such as the seasons and the elements held a spiritual significance.
In Europe, imaginary landscapes decorated 15th-century Books of Hours. The first naturalistic landscapes were painted by
Durer and
Bruegel. Landscapes appeared in most
Renaissance paintings, however, only as settings to portraits and figure compositions.
It was not until the 17th-century Dutch and Flemish schools of
Rembrandt, Jacob van Ruisdael, Meindert Hobbema,
Aelbert Cuyp,
Rubens and Hercules Seghers - that they were accepted in the West as independent subjects.
The most significant developments in 19th-century painting, however, were made through the landscapes of the
Impressionists and the Post-Impressionists. Styles in landscape painting range from the tranquil, classically idealized world of
Poussin and Claude, the precise, canal topography of
Francesco Guardi and
Canaletto and the structural analyses of
Cezanne to the poetic romanticism of Samuel Palmer and the later
Constable's and Turner's and the exultant pantheism of
Rubens and
Van Gogh.
Modern landscapes vary in approach from the
Expressionism of Oskar Kokoschka's cities and rivers, Maurice de Vlaminck's wintry countrysides, and John Marin's crystalline seascapes to the metaphysical country of Ernst,
Dali, and Rene Magritte.
