Landscapes from Brueghel to Kandinsky

Landscape paintings are as diverse as the landscapes painters live in. Northern Europe gave rise to both the wide, atmospheric spaces of Brueghel's morality tales and to the moody, dramatic depictions of nature found in Jacob Ruisdael's canvases. The 18th century produced idyllic landscapes like Lorrain's that were heavily influenced by courtly ideals, as well as heroic typographies from the New World by Heade and Church. Constable's and Courbet's scenes revealed a conscious, realistic return to nature, while Monet painted her in all her light-infused, impressionistic glory. Thick swirls of emotional isolation and individualism wind around the fields and night skies of Van Gogh's canvases while colorful patterns delineate the Tahitian waters and beaches where Gauguin searched for purity. Outstanding works by Watteau, Canaletto, Picasso, Nolde, and Kirchner cover even more ground. More than 500 years of landscape paintings create the territories that wind their way through this lushly illustrated book, reflecting changes in the way landscapes have been depicted but also understood, as places we not only live in and colonize but also dream about, abandon, transform, and return to--and as places that exist without us as well.