Landschap met bomen en een wandelaar 1786 - 1790

Edward Edwards created this landscape with trees and a walker using etching, sometime in the late 18th century. It reflects a broader cultural interest in the aesthetics of nature. The picturesque qualities of the scene, the arrangement of trees, and the figure on a winding path evoke a sense of idealized rural life. Edwards was working within a British art world that was becoming more organized, with institutions like the Royal Academy shaping artistic taste. Edwards himself was a professor of perspective at the Royal Academy. This artwork is seemingly conservative because it doesn’t explicitly critique social structures. Yet, its emphasis on the individual's experience of nature might be seen as a subtle commentary on the changing social landscape of England, where enclosure movements and industrialization were reshaping the countryside and displacing rural populations. To understand this artwork better, it is important to explore the writings on aesthetics from the period, study the institutional histories of academies, and look at broader social and economic changes.