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Seeing Landscape through Artistic Practice

In See and Seen I focus on a model of landscape that was adopted in 18th century Britain, especially the practice of building both public and private parks to mimic the 17th century “Ideal Landscape”. The term “Ideal Landscape” is used to label the painted landscapes made in Rome during the 17th century by artists like Nicolas Poussin (c. 1594-1665) and Claude12  This was a way of seeing that included painting, poetry, fiction, travel literature, and landscape gardening. Maybe the most peculiar (for modern eyes) expression of this gaze took the form of an activity undertaken by members of the upper classes, “The Search for the Picturesque”, whereby they travelled to look for landscapes that reminded them of paintings. 13  The model for this “Picturesque” was found in the Ideal Landscapes, as well as descriptions of Arcadian landscapes from Roman pastoral poetry. Beginning in the 17th century, the sons of the European as well as the British elite made their Grand Tour to Italy, following “… a humanist education based on reading ancient Latin and Greek texts, and by the uniformity of itineraries as laid out by guidebooks.” 14  It was through the Grand Tour that the tourist gaze was formed at a time when travel was seen chiefly as an educational tool. Malcolm Andrews 15  points out that this eye that came to form the Search for the Picturesque was filled with paradoxes: these travellers wanted to find nature untouched by man, and to improve it at the same time. It was made by “men of class” with a cosmopolitan ideal who, for example, set off for Naples to look for Virgil’s tomb, to look for the perfect view of Vesuvius, and to discover the newly unearthed Pompeii and Herculaneum. At the same time, they were shocked that this “paradise” was inhabited by “devils”, the “noisy barefoot inhabitants” living in the centre of “the chaotic city” of Naples – the place the Grand Tourists returned to in the evenings. 16 


Back in Britain, analytic models and compositional theories were developed in order to explain how Ideal Landscapes were created and where they could be found in their national countryside. Malcolm Andrews writes: “The Picturesque tourist is typically a gentleman or a gentlewoman engaged in an experiment in controlled aesthetic responses to a range of new and often intimidating visual experiences”, 17  feelings the local national landscapes were expected to offer. The tourist developed a special vocabulary for the Picturesque and became highly skilled at capturing quickly the image they desired in drawing and painting with watercolour. One of the ideologists, William Gilpin (1724-1804), writes about the Picturesque gaze: “But the picturesque eye is not merely restricted to nature. It ranges through the limits of art. The picture, the statue, and the garden are all the objects of its attention.” 18 

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Annotations | Images | Index

26: Installation view, Royal College of Art, London, Matts Leiderstam, Provenance, 2006, installation.
Photo: Royal College of Art


27: Detail, "After Galvin Hamilton (1723-1798, The 8th Duke of Hamilton with Dr. John and Ensign Moore, 1775-77", Matts Leiderstam, Grand Tour, 1997-2006, installation, Magasin 3 Stockholm Konsthall.
Photo: Mattias Givell

12 See Margaretha Rossholm Lagerlöf, Ideal Landscape, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1990, pp. 17-21.

13 See Malcolm Andrews, The Search for the Picturesque, Scolar Press, Aldershot, 1989.

14 Melissa Calaresu, "Looking for Virgil’s Tomb", from Voyages & Visions, Towards a Cultural History of Travel, ed. Jas Elsner and Joan-Pau Rubiés, Reaktion Books, London 1999, p. 140.

15 See Malcolm Andrews, The Search for the Picturesque, Scolar Press, Aldershot, 1989.

16 Melissa Calaresu, Looking for Virgil’s Tomb, p. 138.

17 Malcolm Andrews, The Search for the Picturesque, p. 67. Andrew describes how the picturesque tourist’s search was analogous to the sport of hunting. ”There is something of the big-game hunter in these tourists, boasting of their encounters with savage landscapes, ’capturing’ wild scenes, and ’fixing’ them as pictorial trophies in order to sell them or hang them up in frames on their drawing-room walls”, p. 67.

18 William Gilpin, from Three Essays on Picturesque Beauty, 2nd edition (1794). Essay II, "On Picturesque Travel", here found on a website from University of Alberta, Canada: www.ualberta.ca/~dmiall/Travel...

Åsberg, Stig
Page: 20(a.)

after-image
Page: 5, 5(a.), 26, 32, 34, 40, 48, 49, 55, 56

Akerman, Chantal
Page: 3, 3(a.), 57(a.)

Alberti, Leon Battista
Page: 27

Angelo Giorgio, Cardinal
Page: 19, 19(a.)

Armitage, John
Page: 51(a.)

Art Institute of Chicago
Page: 32

Arvidsson, Kristoffer
Page: 35(a.)

Ashburton, Lord
Page: 19(a.)

Augé, Marc
Page: 53, 53(a.)

Bätschmann, Oskar
Page: 33(a.)

Bal, Mieke
Page: 8(a.)

Barton, Judy (character in Vertigo by Alfred Hitchcock)
Page: 30

Baudelaire, Charles
Page: 44

beat, the
Page: 44

Beckett, Samuel
Page: 39

Bellini, workshop of Giovanni
Page: 28

Bierstadt, Albert
Page: 17

Bjurström, Per
Page: 19, 19(a.), 33, 57, 57(a.)

Blaugrund, Annette
Page: 17(a.)

Böttcher, Ann
Page: 7, 7(a.)

Bonaparte, Lucien
Page: 19(a.), 41(a.)

Bosch, Hieronymous
Page: 40

Brealey, John
Page: 19, 19(a.)

British Museum, London
Page: 22, 22(a.)

Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York
Page: 45

Bryson, Norman
Page: 2, 2(a.), 8, 8(a.), 27(a.), 44(a.)

Butler, Judith
Page: 48, 48(a.), 49

Calaresu, Melissa
Page: 9(a.)

Calefato, Patrizia
Page: 43, 43(a.)

Cavalli-Björkman, Görel
Page: 19(a.)

Cederström, Gustaf
Page: 46, 46(a.)

Certeau, Michel de
Page: 53

Cézanne, Paul
Page: 39

Church, Fredric Edwin
Page: 17, 17(a.)

Claude Glasses
Page: 5, 12, 18, 51, 54

Claude Lorrain Mirror
Page: 10

Claude Mirror
Page: 5, 10, 11, 18

Claudian
Page: 11, 14, 14(a.), 15, 17, 41, 41(a.), 53, 56

Claudian gaze
Page: 17

Claudian light
Page: 14

Claudian model
Page: 14, 14(a.), 15, 41(a.)

Cohen, Ernst
Page: 8(a.)

Constable, John
Page: 25(a.), 41(a.)

copy
Page: 4, 4(a.), 5, 5(a.), 20, 22, 25, 26, 30(a.), 31, 32, 32(a.), 34, 38, 40, 41, 41(a.), 42, 42(a.), 44, 48, 51, 55, 57

copying, act of -
Page: 31, 51

copyist
Page: 26, 32, 34, 40, 41, 42, 44

Courbet, Gustave
Page: 34(a.)

Crary, Jonathan
Page: 13, 13(a.)

cruising
Page: 8, 35, 35(a.), 44, 44(a.), 49

Dahlbäck, Bengt
Page: 20(a.)

Degas, Edgar
Page: 44

Dercon, Chris
Page: 51(a.)

Duchamp, Marcel
Page: 2, 45

Düsseldorf School
Page: 15

Dughet, Gaspard
Page: 27

Dunwell, Frances F.
Page: 16(a.), 17(a.)

El Greco
Page: 2

Elster, Madeleine (character in Vertigo by Alfred Hitchcock)
Page: 30, 31, 34, 38, 44

Fabiani, Bardo
Page: 43(a.)

Fahlcrantz, Carl Johan
Page: 14, 15

Ferguson, John "Scottie" (character in Vertigo by Alfred Hitchcock)
Page: 30, 31

Ferrier, Maïten de
Page: 32

Field, Cyrus
Page: 17(a.)

framing
Page: 7, 33, 35, 51, 54

Fraser, Andrea
Page: 40(a.)

Fredlund, Björn
Page: 8(a.), 19(a.)

Fried, Michael
Page: 28(a.)

Göteborgs Konstmuseum, Gothenburg
Page: 8(a.), 19, 19(a.), 46, 46(a.)

Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence
Page: 24

Gallerie Brunner, Paris
Page: 19(a.)

Gardner, Jack
Page: 29(a.)

gay
Page: 8, 35, 35(a.), 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 48(a.)

gaze
Page: 4, 5(a.), 8, 9, 13, 17, 20, 23, 24, 26, 27(a.), 28, 29, 30, 31, 34, 35, 36, 42, 44, 44(a.), 45, 47, 48, 49, 50, 52, 54

gender
Page: 30, 43, 48(a.), 49

Georgel, Chantal
Page: 24(a.)

Getty, Paul
Page: 19, 19(a.)

Gilpin, William
Page: 9, 9(a.), 12, 12(a.), 16, 16(a.)

Giori, Cardinale
Page: 22

Goldfarb, Hilliard T.
Page: 28(a.), 29(a.)

Gombrich, Ernst Hans
Page: 25(a.), 48(a.)

Gordon, Douglas
Page: 30(a.)

Grünewald, Matthias
Page: 2

Grammel, Sören
Page: 30(a.)

Granath, Olle
Page: 4(a.)

Grand Tour
Page: 9, 14, 32, 35(a.)

Grate, Pontus
Page: 37(a.), 41(a.)

Gray Mirror
Page: 10

Great Chain Overlook, The
Page: 5

grid
Page: 24, 25, 25(a.), 26, 37, 38, 44, 46, 47, 49

Guerrilla Girls
Page: 40(a.)

Gustaf Adolf VI of Sweden, King
Page: 18

Hansen, Constantin
Page: 8(a.)

Harriss, Joseph A.
Page: 32(a.), 40(a.)

Hedén, Karl-Gustaf
Page: 8(a.), 19, 19(a.)

Herrmann, Bernard
Page: 30(a.)

heterosexual
Page: 48, 49

Hidaka, Ritsuko
Page: 24, 24(a.)

history
Page: 1, 7, 15, 18, 19, 20(a.), 21, 24, 26,32(a.), 35, 41(a.), 44, 46, 47, 48, 55, 56

Hitchcock, Alfred
Page: 30

Hockney, David
Page: 11(a.)

Holger, Lena
Page: 46(a.)

horizon
Page: 25, 27, 35, 38(a.), 41, 52, 53, 54, 56

Hudson River Highlands
Page: 16, 16(a.), 17(a.)

Hudson River School
Page: 17, 17(a.)

Hudson Valley
Page: 17, 18

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston
Page: 28, 29(a.)

Isakson, Karl
Page: 39

Kennedy, Randy
Page: 45(a.)

Kitson, Michael
Page: 22(a.)

Købke, Christian
Page: 8(a.)

Konstantin Konstantinovich of Russia, Grand Duke
Page: 46, 46(a.)

Kopp, Céline
Page: 42(a.)

Krauss, Rosalind
Page: 25, 25(a.)

Kulick, Don
Page: 44, 44(a.), 49

Kunstverein München, Munich
Page: 30(a.)

landscape, Arcadian -
Page: 9, 35

landscape, cultivated -
Page: 16

landscape, designed -
Page: 10

landscape, Dutch -
Page: 10

landscape, lost -
Page: 16

landscape, national -
Page: 9, 14, 15

landscape, Nordic -
Page: 15

landscape, pastoral -
Page: 21, 34, 35

landscape,pictorial
Page: 14

landscape, Roman -
Page: 11

landscape, Romantic -
Page: 52

landscape, Swedish -
Page: 14, 15

landscape painter
Page: 5, 14, 17, 19(a.)

landscape painting
Page: 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 11, 11(a.), 14, 15, 53

Landscapes, Ideal -
Page: 9, 9(a.), 22(a.), 33(a.), 35, 40, 41(a.)

Landscapes, Imperial -
Page: 14, 14(a.)

Langdon, Helen
Page: 11(a.), 33, 33(a.), 57(a.)

Lawler, Louise
Page: 40(a.)

Lefebvre, Henri
Page: 27

Lenbach, Franz von
Page: 30(a.)

Liber Veritatis
Page: 21, 22, 22(a.)

linguistic matrix
Page: 25

Lorrain, Claude
Page: 2, 4, 4(a.), 5, 8, 8(a.), 9, 10, 11, 11(a.), 12, 12(a.), 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 18(a.), 19, 19(a.), 20, 21, 21(a.), 22, 22(a.), 23, 25, 25(a.), 26, 27, 28, 33, 33(a.), 34, 34(a.), 35, 36, 36(a.), 38, 38(a.), 41, 41(a.), 42(a.), 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 57(a.)

Louvre, Paris
Page: 24, 32, 32(a.), 40, 44, 44(a.)

Lyberg, Louise
Page: 32(a.)

Magasin 3 Stockholm Konsthall, Stockholm
Page: 35(a.)

Maillet, Arnaud
Page: 12(a.)

Malsch, Friedemann
Page: 28(a.)

Manson & Woods, London
Page: 8(a.)

Martin, Elias
Page: 14, 14(a.)

Matisse, Henri
Page: 39

memory
Page: 7, 11, 17(a.), 20, 30(a.), 31, 35(a.), 41, 41(a.), 43, 51

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice
Page: 24, 24(a.), 27, 27(a.), 39, 39(a.), 55, 55(a.)

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Page: 17(a.), 24

Metz, Philip
Page: 30(a.)

mimicry
Page: 5, 6, 34, 40, 47, 49, 51

Mitchell, W.J.T.
Page: 11(a.), 14, 14(a.), 28(a.), 38(a.), 48(a.)

Moderna Museet, Stockholm
Page: 20, 40(a.)

Molvidson, Martin
Page: 46(a.)

Mulvey, Laura
Page: 30, 30(a.), 31

Musée Fesch, Ajaccio, Corsica
Page: 41, 41(a.)

museum
Page: 4, 4(a.), 5, 8,18, 19, 20, 20(a.), 23, 24, 24(a.), 25,26, 27, 28,29, 29(a.), 30, 30(a.), 31, 32, 32(a.), 33, 34, 36,38, 40, 40(a.),42, 42(a.), 43, 44, 44(a.), 45, 46, 46(a.), 47,49, 50, 51

Museum of Modern Art, New York
Page: 45, 45(a.)

National Gallery, London
Page: 24, 41(a.)

Nationalmuseum, Stockholm
Page: 4, 4(a.), 5, 8(a.), 18, 19, 19(a.), 20, 20(a.), 24, 27, 32, 32(a.), 37, 38, 41(a.), 46, 47, 48(a.), 55, 57(a.)

nature
Page: 7, 9, 12, 13, 17, 18, 24, 33, 34, 39, 43, 47, 48, 51, 57

Newman, Michael
Page: 51, 51(a.), 52, 52(a.)

New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans
Page: 8

new viewer
Page: 45, 54

Nilsson, Håkan
Page: 48, 48(a.)

non-place
Page: 53, 53(a.)

Nordic Light
Page: 15

Nordqvist, Per
Page: 14

Novak, Kim (actor in Vertigo by Alfred Hitchcock)
Page: 30

original
Page: 4(a.), 5, 5(a.), 8, 14, 18(a.), 19(a.), 20, 22, 25, 25(a.), 26, 29(a.), 32, 33, 34, 39, 40, 41, 41(a.), 42, 46, 46(a.), 47, 48, 48(a.), 49

painting, historical -
Page: 6, 24, 30, 35, 41(a.)

painting, landscape
Page: 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 11, 11(a.), 14, 15, 53

painting, lost -
Page: 26

painting, process of -
Page: 39, 57

Palazzo Riccardi, Florence
Page: 19(a.)

Pehrson, Mathias
Page: 18(a.)

perspective
Page: 11, 18, 27, 27(a.), 33, 44

Persson, Helena
Page: 8(a.)

Petterson, Åke
Page: 18(a.)

Phelan, Peggy
Page: 5, 39, 39(a.)

Phillips, Tony
Page: 27(a.)

Piaggi, Anna
Page: 43, 43(a.)

pictorial space
Page: 24, 25

pictures journey
Page: 8

Picturesque
Page: 5, 9, 9(a.), 10, 10(a.), 11, 11(a.), 12, 12(a.), 14, 16, 17, 18

Pollock, Jackson
Page: 48(a.)

Pordenone, Bernardino Licinio da
Page: 28(a.)

Poussin, Nicolas
Page: 9, 27, 33, 33(a.), 40(a.), 41(a.)

Prado Museum, Madrid
Page: 41(a.), 53

queer
Page: 4, 43

Röthlisberger, Marcel
Page: 8(a.), 19, 19(a.), 21, 21(a.), 22(a.), 34(a.), 35, 35(a.), 36, 36(a.), 37, 38(a.), 41, 41(a.), 42, 42(a.)

Rørbye, Martinus
Page: 8(a.)

Raphael
Page: 36

Rebekah
Page: 4(a.), 5, 15, 16, 18, 19, 19(a.), 20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 25(a.), 26, 28, 32, 33, 35, 36, 37, 37(a.), 38, 40, 41, 42, 47, 55, 57

recognition
Page: 2, 8, 28, 38, 39, 40

Rembrandt van Rijn
Page: 19(a.)

repetition
Page: 5, 39, 40

restorer
Page: 18, 19, 19(a.), 20, 21

Roman campagna
Page: 8(a.), 34

Rossholm Lagerlöf, Margaretha
Page: 9(a.), 22(a.), 33, 33(a.), 34, 34(a.), 41(a.)

Rubens, Peter Paul
Page: 41(a.)

Ruiz, Raúl
Page: 40, 40(a.)

Sandberg, Ragnar
Page: 39, 39(a.)

Sandrart, Joachim von
Page: 36, 57

Sarto, Andrea del
Page: 30(a.)

See and Seen
Page: 1, 4, 5, 6, 9, 29(a.), 44, 47, 49, 50, 54

seeing, act of -
Page: 27, 43, 49, 54

seeing, moment of
Page: 21, 48, 54

seeing, process of -
Page: 5, 26

seeing, way of -
Page: 7, 9, 14, 18, 39, 51

shepherd
Page: 4(a.), 19(a.), 22, 33, 35, 42

Shiner, Larry
Page: 40(a.)

spectator
Page: 11, 11(a.), 13, 29, 29(a.), 30, 33, 38(a.), 41, 43, 44, 50, 53

Stewart, James (actor in Vertigo by Alfred Hitchcock))
Page: 30

Stewart Gardner, Isabella
Page: 28, 29, 29(a.), 49

Storrie, Calum
Page: 44, 44(a.)

tourist
Page: 5, 7, 9, 9(a.), 10, 13, 18, 54

translate
Page: 2(a.), 11, 19(a.), 26, 39, 46

translation
Page: 1, 18(a.), 19(a.), 27(a.), 39(a.), 55(a.), 57(a.)

traveller
Page: 9, 10, 14, 53

Turner, J.M.W.
Page: 11

US Military Academy at West Point, New York State
Page: 5, 16, 17, 18, 54

vanishing point
Page: 11, 27, 51, 52

Vertigo
Page: 30, 30(a.), 31, 38, 44

Victoria & Albert Museum, London
Page: 43

viewer
Page: 2, 4, 5, 7, 13, 17, 18, 21, 23, 24, 24(a.), 26, 27, 28, 29, 29(a.), 30, 33, 34, 38, 40, 41(a.), 43, 44, 45, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 54

viewing, act of -
Page: 13

viewing, conditions of -
Page: 44

viewing, modes of -
Page: 13

viewing aids / instruments
Page: 10, 13, 48

viewing point
Page: 13, 52

Virgil
Page: 9, 9(a.)

Virilio, Paul
Page: 51, 52

Warner, Deborah Jean
Page: 10, 10(a.), 12, 12(a.)

Williams, Raymond
Page: 7, 7(a.), 10, 10(a.)

Wittgenstein
Page: 48(a.)

Wood, Marjorie 'Midge' (character in Vertigo by Alfred Hitchcock)
Page: 31

X-ray
Page: 18(a.), 19, 19(a.), 55, 56

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