Field Work: Landscape Painting in Britain - HOA00101I

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Module summary

This module foregrounds the contested history of landscape painting in Britain, with a particular focus on the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries – a period that encompasses the work of some of the most canonical of all British artists, including Thomas Gainsborough, John Constable and JMW Turner. It asks how changing attitudes towards art, nature and society were negotiated visually through images of the countryside produced in an era of urbanisation, industrialisation, and prolonged war overseas.

Module will run

Occurrence	Teaching period
A	Semester 2 2024-25

Module aims

We will examine the conflicting art-historical narratives that have helped to shape modern landscape studies, where questions of style and the aesthetics of landscape have been set against the social, cultural and environmental implications of representing rural Britain. How can these two ways of looking – the aesthetic and the social – be brought together in constructive ways?

In a temporal twist, we will also examine the enduring legacy of this ostensible ‘golden age’ of British painting: to consider, for example, how a painting as well-known as The Hay Wain by John Constable is repeatedly invoked in our own time: by contemporary artists, in the media, by politicians and pressure groups, and by the art market. Students will be encouraged to look and think critically at their own relationship with the landscape.

Weekly seminars may include the following broad themes: the temporality of landscape; landscape and technology; the landscape in ruins; littoral landscapes; cloudscapes; landscape and property; field work.

Module learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should have acquired:

• a good knowledge of the principal makers, techniques and motifs of landscape painting in Britain.
• the ability to articulate and respond critically and creatively to different art-historical approaches to the subject.
• an understanding of key art-historical concepts associated with landscape, including naturalism, the picturesque and the sublime.
• a critical awareness of how the art of the past continues to inspire political and cultural debate.

Indicative assessment

Task	% of module mark
Essay/coursework	100

Special assessment rules

None

Indicative reassessment

Task	% of module mark
Essay/coursework	100

Module feedback

You will receive feedback on assessed work within the timeframes set out by the University - please check the Guide to Assessment, Standards, Marking and Feedback for more information.

The purpose of feedback is to help you to improve your future work. If you do not understand your feedback or want to talk about your ideas further, you are warmly encouraged to meet your Tutor and/or Supervisor during their office hours.

Indicative reading

• Andrews, Malcom. Landscape and Western Art. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
• Clark, Kenneth, ‘The Worship of Nature’, episode 11 from Civilisation, BBC TV documentary, 1969
• Cosgrove, Denis and Stephen Daniels, eds. The Iconography of Landscape: Essays on the Symbolic Representation, Design and Use of Past Environments. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
• Ingold, Tim. The Perception of the Environment. London: Routledge, 2000. Ch. 11 (“The Temporality of the Landscape”).
• Johns, Richard. “From the Nore: Turner at the Mouth of the Thames.” In Visual Culture and the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, edited by Satish Padiyar, Philip Shaw and Philippa Simpson, 87-101. London: Routledge, 2016.
• Lyles, Anne, ed. Constable: The Great Landscapes, exh. cat. London: Tate, 2006.
• Pih, Darren, ed. Radical Landscapes: Art, Identity and Activism, exh. cat. London: Tate, 2022.
• Ware, Vron. Return of a Native: Learning from the Land. London: Repeater Books, 2022.
• Williams, Raymond. Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society, revised edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983. (esp. entries for ‘Country’, ‘Naturalism’ and ‘Nature’)