The history of admiring landscapes

[alfred russel]

I don't know if there is an answer to this, but I thought if there is one, someone on Languish will know...

It is generally thought that certain types of landscapes and features are beautiful and worth making an effort to see (though perhaps not among the misanthropes here). For example, the Grand Canyon, the Alps, the Patagonian deserts / glaciers, the volcanic areas of Iceland, etc.

Is this a new phenomena? When Lewis and Clark first saw the Rocky Mountains, did they think "wow, how beautiful, our country is blessed to have these" or "god damn it, we have to walk across those things, we've never seen a more wretched site".

Maybe Lewis and Clark are too recent, being post romantic movement. Would they think of natural features differently than the conquistadors?

[Syt]

A lot of 18th/19th century landscaping was about bringing order to chaotic nature, thus enhancing it, so my guess is: possibly.

[Eddie Teach]

I don't think so, I'm sure travelers in ancient times felt a sense of wonder akin to modern ones.

[alfred russel]

A lot of 18th/19th century landscaping was about bringing order to chaotic nature, thus enhancing it, so my guess is: possibly.

But isn't landscaping an opposite form of beauty? It brings order to nature, and 18th/19th century landscaping is still considered beautiful today. But the landscapes we admire: mountain ranges, glaciers, rough desert terrain, rainforests, etc, are the harshest parts of the natural world left untamed.

[garbon]

Landscape painting was very popular with the Dutch by the 17th century - increasingly fictional landscapes.

[Slargos]

Hitler liked painting landscapes. 

[alfred russel]

Landscape painting was very popular with the Dutch by the 17th century - increasingly fictional landscapes.

The precursor to Tim's alt history maps?

To clarify the more ambiguous thread title, I'm really interested in the perspectives on harsh landscapes, not landscapes of fields of wheat, or the rural countryside.

[Oexmelin]

There are a number of related questions in there.

Admiring landscapes is certainly historically situated. In other words, some landscapes which appeared beautiful to the western eye (I have no idea how this translates in the East) in the 19th c., were deemed horrible only two centuries earlier. Forests, for instance, were places of danger and darkness for much of the early-modern period; places deserted (i.e., deemed to be devoid of life) were generally feared or without much interest.

Simplifying, the early romantic interest in dangerous grandeur (storms, volcanoes, waterfalls) slowly morphed into an interest with seemingly untouched beauty - i.e., Lewis and Clark being moved at being "first" - whereas of course these places had been much visited, seen, and transformed before. Witnessing landscapes became an introspective moment. This, increased with mass movement, colonisation, and tourism, led to the sort of "exploit-seeking" of the late 19th c. 

That being said, early-modern explorers seemed to have been moved by strange colours and exotic birds and trees - they do comment much less on that than on the human realities.

As for gardening and artificial landscapes, this is a related, though distinct question.

A somewhat good intro to the topic might be Simon Schama's Landscape and Memory.

[Malthus]

Landscape painting was very popular with the Dutch by the 17th century - increasingly fictional landscapes.

The precursor to Tim's alt history maps?

To clarify the more ambiguous thread title, I'm really interested in the perspectives on harsh landscapes, not landscapes of fields of wheat, or the rural countryside.

Seems what you are asking is if the essentially romantic outlook towards natural beauty existed prior to romanticism.

The answer is "yes".

Consider, for example, Taoist landscape painting. The main theme is what would later be called 'romantic": wild nature, with the works of man tiny and unobtrusive, dwarfed by towering mountains of incredible ruggedness.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landscape_painting#East_Asian_tradition

See for example:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/37/Kuo_Hsi_001.jpg

[alfred russel]

Oex and Malthus, thanks for the info.

So combining and summarizing your posts, if I was trying to hawk pictures of waterfalls in Brazilian rainforests in Europe around 1000 AD, I would have a tough time making sales as locals wouldn't see such a landscape as attractive. In China I might have more luck.

My appreciation of such sights is almost certainly a culturally determined response, rather than some innate human appreciation.

[Jacob]

Yeah, Malthus beat me to it....

It sounds like you're asking about romanticising untamed landscapes. If we look to visual art, the subject has held interest for quite a while.

As Malthus said, Chinese landscape painting has a long history and traditionally the mountains in the mist ink paintings were considered the most prestitiguous form.

So depicting the beauty of the wilderness is definitely not new.

I'd venture that some of the earlier natural-phenomena-as-divinity impulses came from something akin to appreciation for the beauty of the wildnerness as well.

[Razgovory]

I feel more informed, now that I read this thread.

[Razgovory]

Hitler liked painting landscapes. 

So did Churchill.

[Malthus]

Oex and Malthus, thanks for the info.

So combining and summarizing your posts, if I was trying to hawk pictures of waterfalls in Brazilian rainforests in Europe around 1000 AD, I would have a tough time making sales as locals wouldn't see such a landscape as attractive. In China I might have more luck.

My appreciation of such sights is almost certainly a culturally determined response, rather than some innate human appreciation.

I'd say that appreciation of the beauty of nature is pretty innate, but the forms of nature which are appreciated is culturally determined.

In the Western tradition, there is a much longer history of appreciation of nature in the form of a garden - this is very old (the term "paradise" comes from a Persian term for a formal garden). The original impulse is possibly religious - the garden of Eden, which is a trope that predates Judeo-Christianity.

In the Chinese tradition, taoism is clearly the inspiration for an essentially romantic view of nature as beautiful when rugged and untamed.

[Jacob]

I think most impulses of appreciation and awe were intermingled with religion. Seems to me that when people were impressed with something enough they explained it through some sort of spiritual/religious vocabulary.