A Sense of Place... Location/Inspiration

The primary concern of landscape painting is, according to the Oxford Companion of Western Art, "the depiction of natural scenery." Landscape became a distinct genre of painting in the seventeenth century when realistically painted country scenes became highly desirable to prosperous Dutch patrons. In the eighteenth century, wealthy British collectors wanted reminders of their "grand tours" through Italy and France, creating a market for the works of Boucher and Fragonard. Landscape became the most dominant mode of painting in the nineteenth century as artists left the studio to work en plein air. The Impressionists took the genre to new levels of acceptance with their sunny and cheerful renderings of the French countryside.