Friday, August 19, 2016

European Landscape Paintings - 18th century

Richard Wilson
Stormy Landscape
1760s
Victoria & Albert Museum

One way to look at this group of 18th-century landscape paintings from Europe is to divide them into two camps. One camp heralds the future, the era of the Romantic and of Revolution. Richard Wilson (above), represents these revolutionaries, as do Loutherbourg, Pillement, and Britton.

Michele Pagano (immediately below) leads the classical opposition, representatives of the fantasy of stability (as entertained by the ancien regime). Other traditionalists and venerators of the past are Vanvitelli, Giaquinto and Gore.

Michele Pagano
Landscape
early 18th century
Prado

Claude Joseph Vernet
Italian Landscape
c1745-50
Prado

Gaspare Vanvitelli
Palaces at Posillipo
ca. 1725
Prado

Gaspare Vanvitell
Grotto at Posillipo
ca. 1725
Prado

Jean Pillement
Shipwreck Survivors
1790s
Prado

Alexandre Pau de Saint-Martin
Watermill
ca. 1789
Victoria & Albert Museum

Ange-Denis Maquin
Porte de Cornillon, Meaux
1796
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Philippe Jacques de Loutherbourg
Falls of the Rhine
1788
Victoria & Albert Museum

Philippe Jacques de Loutherbourg
The Deluge
ca. 1770
Victoria & Albert Museum

Corrado Giaquinto
Landscape with Hunters
1750s
Prado

Corrado Giaquinto
Landscape with Waterfall
1750s
Prado

Charles Gore
Tomb of Theron, Agrigento
1777
British Museum

John Britton
Standing Stones
late 18th century
British Museum