Visionary Views: The British Landscape Tradition in Prints, Drawings, and Watercolors

This selection from the Museum’s collections complements the special exhibition Pastures Green and Dark Satanic Mills: The British Passion for Landscape (on view through April 24). A love of landscape, long an important feature of British culture, became particularly
pronounced with the onset of the Industrial Revolution in the late eighteenth century.Britain was the first country to begin the project of industrialization, and the public soon realized its great costs, including the loss of open countryside and the movement of people from villages and rural areas to burgeoning urban centers. Reactions against industrialization began to build and were eloquently expressed in literary and artistic movements influenced by the Enlightenment and Romanticism, both of which called for spending time outdoors—for empirical observation and for spiritual fulfillment, respectively. 

Such preoccupations resulted in inspired invocations—both verbal and visual—of local scenery. Examples abound in literature, as in the Romantic poetry of William Wordsworth, who wrote in “Lines Left upon a Seat in a Yew-Tree” (1795) of a man who, despairing of humankind, found consolation in sitting in the titular tree and feeding on “visionary views” of nature until his death there. In his notes, Wordsworth describes having loved the view from that same spot, on the Lake of Esthwaite, since he was a boy. 

British landscape production, with its focus on specific sites, was also indirectly inspired by the Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815). It was customary for members of the British upper classes to make a Grand Tour of continental Europe as a capstone to their education; however, the outbreak of war across the continent prevented travel abroad. Still wanting to travel, Britons turned to their own terrain, looking at the land as a source of newfound inspiration and national pride. Tourism extended across all corners of Britain, with crowds flocking to destinations in search of the picturesque view. As demonstrated in these examples from the early eighteenth through the early twentieth century, British artists described both the natural landscape—from pastoral fields to sublime rock formations—and the built environment—from picturesque ruins to scenes of modern life.

Mairead Carney Horton, Class of 2017
Joseph F. McCrindle Intern
 

J. M. W. Turner’s Liber Studiorum
J. M. W. Turner (1775–1851) started production of the Liber Studiorum (Book of Studies) in 1807, with the goal of publishing one hundred prints of land- and seascapes in order to disseminate his work to a broader audience. This enterprise was likely inspired by the Liber Veritatis (Book of Truth), a series of finished pen and wash drawings Claude Lorrain had made in the seventeenth century as a catalogue of his own paintings. Although Turner ended the project in 1819 after releasing only seventy prints, this number was more than enough to make Liber Studiorum the most personal and comprehensive documentation of Turner’s early work. Turner based some of the prints on his existing paintings and watercolors, but he largely produced new designs specifically to be made into prints for Liber Studiorum. He created monochromatic brown wash drawings on the scale of the prints. After Turner etched the outlines of the composition onto the copper plates, the tonal effects produced by mezzotint and aquatint were added by professional engravers whom Turner closely supervised.
The Liber Studiorum represents both real and imaginary scenes, with this selection focusing on actual places across Britain. Turner illustrated the many facets of the British landscape, categorizing his prints into Architectural (A), Historical (H), Marine (M), Mountainous (M), Pastoral (P or E.P.). This last category is divided into P and E.P. in order to differentiate the Pastoral—scenes of the modern, everyday countryside—from the Elegant or Elevated Pastoral—classical, idealized landscapes in the mode of Claude. Each print’s category is indicated in the upper margin. The widely varying scenes are united by Turner’s use of monochromatic wash and his fascination with capturing the effects of light and atmosphere.