Landschap met figuren onder een boom op een klif 1845

This landscape with figures under a tree on a cliff was made by Alexandre Calame using etching. It's a romantic scene which captures the kind of sublime experience that we often associate with landscape painting. The image is interesting for what it tells us about how places become scenery. Calame was Swiss, and he painted this in the first half of the 19th century. That was a time of increasing tourism, when artists and writers and other cultural figures were busy creating interest in picturesque places. Etchings like this one were popular because they could be printed and sold in large numbers as souvenirs. The cultural politics of landscape imagery can be complex. On the one hand, landscape art can foster appreciation for nature, and on the other, it can encourage tourism and development that end up spoiling the very thing that made a place attractive in the first place. The history of art is full of this kind of paradox. To understand it better, researchers could consult historical travel guides and other printed ephemera to see how these landscapes figured in people's experiences at the time.