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Landscape Painting in Britain c. 1750–1850

This module foregrounds the art of landscape and coastal painting in Britain during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, with a particular emphasis on the half-century or so marked by two iconic images of rural England: Thomas Gainsborough’s The Harvest Wagon (c.1767) and John Constable’s The Hay Wain (1821). Seminars will balance the close study of individual works of art with a critical reading of selected texts as we consider how changing notions of art, nature and society were negotiated visually around the image of the land and coast. Throughout the semester we will examine the various and often conflicting art-historical approaches that have enlivened landscape studies over the past four decades, as questions of style and the aesthetics of landscape have been set against the social and cultural implications of representing rural Britain in an era of urbanisation, industrialisation, and prolonged war overseas. As well as developing a deeper understanding of the work of some of the most celebrated of all British artists (including Richard Wilson, Gainsborough, Constable and J.M.W. Turner), we will examine the ways in which an ostensible ‘golden age’ of British landscape continues to be invoked in the modern era: by contemporary artists, in the popular media, by politicians and pressure groups, and by the art market.

George Robert Lewis, Hereford, Dynedor and the Malvern Hills, from the Haywood Lodge, Harvest Scene, Afternoon (1815), Tate

Module information

  • Module title
    Landscape Painting in Britain c. 1750–1850
  • Module number
    HOA00067M
  • Convenor
    Richard Johns

For postgraduates