Nghệ thuật vẽ tranh phong cảnh

Tranh phong cảnh, miêu tả cảnh vật thiên nhiên trong nghệ thuật. Các bức tranh phong cảnh có thể chụp núi, thung lũng, các vùng nước, cánh đồng, rừng và bờ biển và có thể bao gồm hoặc không bao gồm các cấu trúc nhân tạo cũng như con người. Mặc dù các bức tranh từ thời cổ đại và cổ điển sớm nhất bao gồm các yếu tố phong cảnh thiên nhiên, phong cảnh như một thể loại độc lập không xuất hiện trong truyền thống phương Tây cho đến thời Phục hưng vào thế kỷ 16. Theo truyền thống phương Đông, thể loại này có nguồn gốc từ Trung Quốc thế kỷ thứ 4.

Bài viết sau đây chỉ đối xử với truyền thống phương Tây. Để biết thêm thông tin về các truyền thống vẽ tranh phong cảnh khác, hãy tìm kiếm theo quốc gia hoặc khu vực, ví dụ: hội họa Trung Quốc, nghệ thuật Nhật Bản, nghệ thuật Nam Á: Nghệ thuật thị giác.

Tranh phong cảnh vào thế kỷ 16, 17 và 18

Mặc dù tranh phong cảnh vẫn không phải là một thể loại theo đúng nghĩa của nó và được coi là thấp trong hệ thống phân cấp chủ đề cứng nhắc của học viện nghệ thuật, phong cảnh nền ngày càng trở nên chi tiết trong các tác phẩm xuất hiện ở Venice vào cuối thế kỷ 15. Phong cảnh là đáng chú ý trong các tác phẩm của Giovanni Bellini (The Agony in the Garden, c. 1465; Saint Jerome Reading in a Cảnh, c. 1480 Tiết85) và, hơi muộn hơn, trong những tác phẩm của Giorgione (The Tempest, c. 1505; của các mục tử, 1505/10). Vào giữa thế kỷ 16, các nghệ sĩ ở Bắc Âu, đặc biệt là những người thuộc trường phái Danube, như Joachim Patinir và Albrecht Altdorfer, đã tạo ra những bức tranh, mặc dù thường được vẽ bằng các nhân vật trong Kinh thánh, thực sự tôn vinh vẻ đẹp của thiên nhiên. Cuối thế kỷ 16,Nghệ sĩ Flemish, Pieter Bruegel the Elder trở thành họa sĩ vẽ phong cảnh bậc thầy, chuyên về phong cảnh phong cảnh đầy màu sắc, rất chi tiết (Phong cảnh với sự sụp đổ của Icarus, c. 1558; Hunters in the Snow, 1565; The Harvesters, 1565).

The 17th century ushered in the classical, or ideal, landscape, which set scenes in the mythic and idyllic Arcadia of ancient Greece. The leading practitioners of the classical landscape were the French-born Italy-based artists Nicolas Poussin and Claude Lorrain. With their idyllic scenes and classically ordered, harmonious compositions, Poussin and Claude attempted to elevate the reputation of the landscape genre in a variety of ways: by attaching metaphorical meaning to the natural elements of their paintings, by depicting mythological or biblical stories set in elaborate natural settings, and by emphasizing the heroic power of nature over humanity.

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The other prominent landscape tradition of the 17th century emerged from the Netherlands in the work of Dutch artists Jacob van Ruisdael, Aelbert Cuyp, and Meindert Hobbema. The sky, often ominously cloudy and filling half or more of the canvas, played a central role in setting the tone of a scene. The Dutch artists of that period infused the elements of their compositions with metaphorical meaning and made use of the visual impact of small figures in a vast landscape to express ideas on humanity and its relationship to almighty nature.

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The centre of landscape painting during the 18th-century Rococo period shifted from Italy and the Netherlands to England and France. French painters Antoine Watteau, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, and François Boucher developed lyrical and romantic outdoor scenes that, with precise detail and delicate colouring, glorified nature. Their lighthearted landscapes—called fêtes galantes—were decorative vignettes filled with beautifully dressed men and women enjoying outdoor amusements and leisure time. The English Rococo landscape tradition was led by Richard Wilson, who painted in Italy as well as in his native England. His best-known painting, Snowdon from Llyn Nantlle (c. 1765), which shows a group of three people fishing at a lake framed by mountains, exemplifies his serene style. Other English landscape painters of note include Thomas Girtin, John Robert Cozens, and Thomas Gainsborough (who was also well known for his portraiture).

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The Romantic landscape and the first half of the 19th century

Landscape artists of the 19th century embraced the wide-reaching Romantic movement and infused their compositions with passion and drama. It was in the 19th century that landscape painting finally emerged as a respectable genre within the art academies of Europe and gained a strong following in the United States as well. In England two of the foremost landscape painters were John Constable and J.M.W. Turner. Both artists worked on a grand scale to express the power of nature. They were both masters at capturing on canvas the atmospheric qualities of the weather. Constable, however, worked in a realist mode with a high level of precision in his landscapes of the English countryside, whereas Turner, particularly later in his career, produced wildly expressionistic and atmospheric seascapes that verged on abstraction.

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In Germany the Romantic landscape was epitomized in the work of Caspar David Friedrich, whose paintings were charged with emotional and religious symbolism and could be interpreted allegorically. Friedrich’s The Cross in the Mountains (c. 1808)—a painting of a crucifix illuminated by the sun’s rays at the summit of mountain—expresses a spiritual sentiment by way of the natural elements. French artists Jean-François Millet, Charles-François Daubigny, Théodore Rousseau, and others were part of the Barbizon school (1830s–70s), a group that painted in and around the Fontainebleau forest. The artists, though only loosely tied to one another, were united in their interest in capturing carefully observed nature. They eschewed the formal balanced compositions of their predecessors in preference for a truer, if less harmonious, depiction of their surroundings.

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In the United States the Hudson River school (1825–70) painters were centred in the Hudson River valley in New York. In paintings of the Catskill Mountains, the Hudson River, and the wilderness of New England and beyond, the artists captured dramatic effects of light and shade, the finest details of their subject matter, and celebrated the unique beauty of still-untouched areas of the American landscape. The group’s first members—Thomas Cole, Asher B. Durand, and Thomas Doughty—inspired numerous younger painters including Frederic Edwin Church, Fitz Henry Lane, Jasper Cropsey, Albert Bierstadt, and Martin Johnson Heade. The invention of the tin tube for paint (1841) and the invention of the portable collapsible easel (also in the mid-19th century) revolutionized the landscape genre by allowing artists to venture out of the studio and study and paint their subjects firsthand. Outdoor painting became the dominant practice of the Impressionist painters of the late 19th century.

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