WordNet
n. a genre of art dealing with the depiction of natural scenery [syn: landscape]
Wikipedia
Landscape painting, also known as landscape art, is the depiction in art of landscapes – natural scenery such as mountains, valleys, trees, rivers, and forests, especially where the main subject is a wide view – with its elements arranged into a coherent composition. In other works, landscape backgrounds for figures can still form an important part of the work. Sky is almost always included in the view, and weather is often an element of the composition. Detailed landscapes as a distinct subject are not found in all artistic traditions, and develop when there is already a sophisticated tradition of representing other subjects.
The two main traditions spring from Western painting and Chinese art, going back well over a thousand years in both cases. The recognition of a spiritual element in landscape art is present from its beginnings in East Asian art, drawing on Daoism and other philosophical traditions, but in the West only becomes explicit with Romanticism.
Landscape views in art may be entirely imaginary, or copied from reality with varying degrees of accuracy. If the primary purpose of a picture is to depict an actual, specific place, especially including buildings prominently, it is called a topographical view. Such views, extremely common as prints in the West, are often seen as inferior to fine art landscapes, although the distinction is not always meaningful; similar prejudices existed in Chinese art, where literati painting usually depicted imaginary views, while professional court artists painted real views, often including palaces and cities.
The word "landscape" entered the modern English language as landskip (variously spelt), an anglicization of the Dutch landschap, around the start of the 17th century, purely as a term for works of art, with its first use as a word for a painting in 1598. Within a few decades it was used to describe vistas in poetry, and eventually as a term for real views. However the cognate term landscaef or landskipe for a cleared patch of land had existed in Old English, though it is not recorded from Middle English.
Usage examples of "landscape painting".
But the geometry of the thing was funny, borrowing some suprarealistic tricks from classical Chinese landscape painting.
Because of nostalgia, perhaps, an unconscious yearning for a countryside not damned by pollution and development, landscape painting began to be taken seriously for the first time since the Great Depression.
It reminded him of a murky landscape painting he had once seen a long time ago, though he could not immediately recall when or where that had been.
Today we recognize in Seurat one of the supreme masters of what may be called mystical landscape painting.
The room which Cadmus Geary had used as his sanctum had been as comprehensively trashed as the sickroom and the lobby, but two items had been left untouched by the assault: the landscape painting on the wall and a large leather armchair.
Perhaps that landscape painting of a Roman ruin that was in the gallery.
The other is most notably represented in the unsurpassed tradition of Chinese and Japanese landscape painting.
The woman, all in black, in semi-shadow, stands leaning by the fireplace, beneath a landscape painting, cigarette in one upraised hand, pensive.