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| Willem van Mieris Landscape with ruins and nymphs bathing ca. 1730 oil on panel Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
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| Hendrik Frans van Lint Villa Madama, Rome 1748 oil on canvas Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
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| attributed to Pierre-Antoine Demachy View of Castel Sant'Angelo, Rome ca. 1750-1800 oil on canvas Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| Richard Wilson Italian river landscape with broken bridge before 1782 oil on panel Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
"The appreciation of nature for its own sake, and its choice as a specific subject for art, is a relatively recent phenomenon. Until the seventeenth century landscape was confined to the background of portraits or paintings dealing principally with religious, mythological or historical subjects. . . . In the work of the seventeenth-century painters Claude Lorraine and Nicolas Poussin the landscape background began to dominate the history subjects that were the ostensible basis for the work. Their treatment of landscape, however, was highly stylised or artificial: they tried to evoke the landscape of classical Greece and Rome and their work became known as classical landscape. At the same time Dutch landscape painters such as Jacob van Ruysdael were developing a much more naturalistic form of landscape painting, based on what they saw around them. When, also in the seventeenth century, the French Academy classified the genres of art, it placed landscape fourth in order of importance out of five genres. Nevertheless, landscape painting became increasingly popular through the eighteenth century, although the classical idea predominated. The nineteenth century, however, saw a remarkable explosion of naturalistic landscape painting, partly driven it seems by the notion that nature is a direct manifestation of God, and partly by the increasing alienation of many people from nature by growing industrialisation and urbanisation."
– curator's notes from the Tate Gallery
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| François-Xavier Fabre Joseph Allen Smith contemplating Florence across the Arno 1797 oil on canvas Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
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| Ramsay Richard Reinagle Landscape near Tivoli with part of the Claudian aqueduct before 1816 oil on canvas Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
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| Charles Lock Eastlake Panoramic view near Rome ca. 1818 oil on paper, mounted on canvas Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
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| Jean Baptiste Camille Corot View of the Convent of S. Onofrio on the Janiculum, Rome 1826 oil on paper, mounted on canvas Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
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| Richard Parkes Bonington Boccadasse, Genoa with Monte Fasce in the background 1826 oil on panel Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
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| Edward Lear The Temple of Apollo at Bassae ca. 1854-55 oil on canvas Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
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| Edgar Degas Castel Sant'Elmo from Capodimonte ca. 1856 oil on paper, mounted on canvas Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
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| Lawrence Alma-Tadema A floral bank, Rome ca. 1870-80 oil on canvas Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
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| Thorald Læssøe Inside the Baths of Caracalla before 1878 oil on canvas Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
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| Walter Sickert Venice - The Lion of St Mark ca. 1895-96 oil on canvas Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |