Jane Wilson

THE ECLIPSE OF LANDSCAPE
by Donald Kuspit

In the 19th century, much ado was made about landscape painting. Writing about the landscape painting in the Salon of 1852, Edmond and Jules Goncourt noted the decline of historical and religious painting and the rise of landscape painting. Looking at Charles Daubigny’s Harvest, they declared it “a masterpiece, in spite of his neglect of the background.” “Is not a landscape, as our artists understand it, the greatest glory of the modern paintbrush?” they added. Similarly, reviewing the Salon of 1855, they rhetorically asked, “Will landscape become a resurrection, the Easter of the eyes?”

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