Landscape with Waterfall 1745 - 1821

Friedrich Wilhelm Gmelin made this landscape with pen and black ink in the late eighteenth century. It shows a waterfall and grotto, and three figures in what appears to be traditional dress. The appeal of landscape at this time was tied to the burgeoning of Romanticism. Nature became more than just a backdrop, it was a source of sublime feeling, spiritual experience and national identity. It might be fruitful to ask whether this new emotional investment in nature democratized landscape or whether the aestheticization of places like this was part of a broader project of social division, where refined feeling became the property of the educated elite. We might also consider that this is a very particular kind of landscape. It's not wild, untouched nature. Rather, its picturesque qualities rely on a long tradition of garden design, with its constructed grottoes and carefully positioned trees. To understand these nuances fully we can look at the design and travel guides that helped shape the landscapes, both real and imagined, of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.