Landscape Painting and the Romantic Movement
Year of lecture:
Abstract:
"In this lecture I propose to deal then with some aspects of the romantic movement and landscape painting. Landscape painting, like most other forms of art, experienced a profound change during the last years of the 18th century and during the first quarter of the nineteenth century. Yet just what did happen, I feel, has never been adequately explained. I propose, then, to suggest a line of approach which is in some respects a novel one—and for this reason I should hope that you will adopt a critical and cautious attitude to what I have to say, rather than accept it out of hand.
"Artists have often sight to render some aspect, some segment of the visible world as truthfully as possible, just as the philosophers — I use the term in its wider sense — have sought to tell us the truth about the nature of the universe. But neither the artists nor the philosophers have, of course, wholly succeeded in their task. Absolute naturalism is a goal just as unattainable for the artist as a complete truth is for the scientists and philosopher. The artist’s vision and perception is circumscribed by his knowledge of the world. We see what we know, and we try to see what we are trying to know. Whenever we use the word naturalism in art we should be aware that we may be begging a question. For there is no such thing as pure naturalism in art. The little girl who, when asked how she drew, replied, ‘First I think, then I draw a line around my think’ was stating quite a general truth about the nature of art. The line of thought is drawn around all art, bit it is sometimes very difficult to distinguish."
