Of Fields and Feelings: A Brief History of Landscape Art
Camille Pissarro, Autumn Path through the Woods, oil on canvas, 81×65 cm. Private Collection
For most of history, landscapes have not mattered. At least not in themselves. In the East, they did not mimetically represent—or imitate—reality; they embodied the spiritual order of the universe, the Dao. During the Renaissance, they did not have intrinsic meaning; they were mere backgrounds, framing the narrative where the figures were the true focus. With the rise of German Romanticism, landscapes were once again something beyond themselves. They evoked the sublime—capturing vast, awe-inspiring scenes that stirred feelings of national pride and reflected the political hopes and tensions of their time. It was only with the Barbizon School—and, later, the Impressionists—that landscapes were at last seen for what they were, landscapes.
Active between the 1830s and 1870s, the Barbizon School exchanged the Académie des Beaux-Arts’ highly idealised historical or mythological compositions, the so-called history paintings, for everyday scenes. Depicting rivers and streams, meadows and fields, they sought to portray the natural world in its purest form, emphasizing the serene beauty of rural life and the subtle effects of light and atmosphere on the landscape. Many were set in the Forest of Fontainebleau, just outside the village of Barbizon, giving the movement its name. The forest’s diverse landscapes, with its winding paths, towering trees, and shifting light, provided endless inspiration, encouraging the artists to paint directly from nature—and in nature, en plein air. Thus, for the first time, landscape was not symbolic or sublime; but a tangible, lived experience.
Jean-François Millet, Autumn Landscape with a Flock of Turkeys, 1872-1873, oil on canvas. New York City, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
You could even step into it. In Jean-François Millet’s Autumn Landscape with a Flock of Turkeys, for example, the viewer is invited to enter the composition and follow the turkeys up the hillock and onto the autumnal landscape. Everything has been marred by the fall: the grass has lost its vibrancy, and the single tree is, as Millet himself observed, “almost bare of leaves, and which I have tried to place far back into the picture.” Instead of sun, the scene is haloed by clouds, their swirling movement echoed by the scattered leaves drifting to the right.
The woman’s clothing, too, testifies to the season: veiled against the cold, she continues her labor, shielding herself from the dropping temperature while still attending to the season’s tasks. The hay bales on the right continue this narrative: they mark the closing of the agricultural cycle as nature prepares for the cold of winter. Through such subtle compositional cues, Millet and other Barbizon painters—Théodore Rousseau, Charles-François Daubigny, and Constant Troyon—expressed not just nature, but life itself, in its reality. At last, landscape had intrinsic meaning, and its elements—the impact of weather, light, and atmosphere—guided our perception of it. Their focus on light, texture, and the intricate details of nature laid the groundwork for Impressionism, which treated the landscape as a distinct subject for artistic exploration.
But Impressionists went further than this, elevating landscape painting to unprecedented heights. In the footsteps of their Barbizon predecessors, they suggested that the reality of landscapes was two fold. On one hand, landscapes were still a reflection of external, physical reality, as their predecessors had shown. On the other, they became a canvas for the expression of internal, personal, and psychological realities. Or, in the words of their associate, the French writer and critic Emile Zola, “art is no more nor less than a corner of nature seen through a temperament.” This duality—the landscape as both a physical and emotional space—became the cornerstone of their revolutionary approach.
Claude Monet, Autumn Effect at Argenteuil, 1873, oil on canvas. London, The Courtauld Gallery
In Autumn Effect at Argenteuil, Claude Monet echoed the visual language of the Barbizon School, letting light, clouds, and trees dissolve into the reflective surface of the water. His dabbing brushwork turns these forms into fluid impressions, almost like drops in the river. But while such atmospheric effects evoke the physical reality of the scene, it is not physicality alone that he captures. The blurriness, the flickering brushstrokes, and the dissolving forms create the impression of a fleeting moment as it was felt by the artist, not just seen. Drawn into the scene, both painter and viewer feel the tingle of the autumn air and hear the fall breeze brushing through the yellowing trees and guiding the river beyond the picture frame. They are enveloped in movement, sense, and sound, standing on the riverbank, watching the light shift, and feeling the season changing.
But there is another undercurrent, too: painted from Monet’s studio-boat in a rapidly industrialising suburb of Argenteuil, the painting records his psychological response to a world in flux. Paris looms in the background—a recurring motif in Impressionism—where factory chimneys rise beside the river, and the rhythm of life quickens. Because of this, the painting’s sense of movement is no longer driven solely by nature; it now reflects the accelerating rhythm of urban life, which—unlike the seasonal rhythm of agricultural work in Millet’s paintings—does not slow with the coming of fall. Amidst this, only the artist and viewer remain still, observing the movement of nature and, in the distance, the bustle of the city. This restless movement—and sense of impermanence—transforms Monet’s landscape into more than an autumnal scene; it becomes a reflection of the modern world rushing forward, where stillness is no more than a fleeting impression.
Through paintings like these–and many others, including Millet’s Haystacks: Autumn, Camille Pissarro’s Autumn, Path through the Woods, and Vincent van Gogh’s Autumnal Landscape–, landscape painting finally achieved the renown it deserved. What had once been a backdrop or a symbolic representation became a quest to capture the natural world in its purest form—and then turn it into an impression, sealing a fleeting season and sensation, mood and moment into memory. For these artists, the landscape was no longer just a scene to observe, but a lived experience that could express both the physical reality of the world and the transient emotions stirred by it. And in the autumn, when nature verges on a moment of transition, these artists found the perfect subject to reflect impermanence and evoke shifting sensations of life itself.