Landschap c. 1850 - 1950

Monogrammist DS made this landscape with graphite on paper some time after 1873. In the nineteenth century, artists looked to capture the sublime experience of nature in painting, photography, and drawing. What did the institutions of art value about nature? This work, an image of a rural landscape, seems to conform to certain expectations about the beauty of the natural world. It uses visual codes of the picturesque: the land is structured by a river, fields, and groupings of trees. But notice that it is also a rather bleak image, with a flat horizon line and storm clouds massing above. The lack of identifying information makes the cultural context difficult to reconstruct. It seems to be self-consciously conservative in its appeal to established landscape traditions. Yet the roughness of the sketch also suggests an artist who is willing to push the boundaries of taste. To better understand the work, we need to conduct more research into the artist and their position in the art world of their time. Only then can we understand how the social conditions shaped the production of this image.