Paradigms and Paradoxes

Abstract

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, as nature began to be regarded as a positive presence, rather than an alien force, landscape art in England and America was based on several well-established aesthetic concepts.¹ The beautiful was seen as the tranquillity of “smooth” nature that led the viewer to a meditative state, removed from the complexities of life. The sublime, as articulated by Edmund Burke, referred to the spiritual uplift beyond rational understanding that came from untamed nature and its overwhelming forces, such as thunderstorms or waterfalls. The picturesque, a category developed by Thomas Gilpin, pertained to the “satisfaction of viewing the complexity and continuous change of nature.”

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Susan Platt

SUSAN PLATT is associate professor of art history at the University of North Texas. She it writing a book on art criticism in the 1930s.