PITTORESKE PROSPEKTER: Landskab ifølge gentlemen anno 1800

Abstract

Kirsten Jørgensen: Picturesque Prospects.

Landscape According to Gentlemen

Anno 1800

The idea of picturesque landscape, which

emerged in Britain in the 18th century and

reached its peak of popularity in the decades

around 1800, is based on an appropriation of

wildemess to the norms of landscape art.

The highly valued picturesque prospects

were those which especially reminded the

viewer of Italian landscape paintings from

the 17th century. The present article

addresses itself to the question of how on

earth the British traveller was able to

enframe a picturesque prospect in open air,

surrounded as he was by multiple, unframed

motifs. The idea of the picturesque

landscape is first approached through an

analysis of the two other contemporary

categories of landscape, analytically

designated as the monotonous and the

cultivated landscape, to which the

picturesque cognitively is defined and to

which it is enframed in opposition. Second,

the idea of the picturesque landscape is itself

analysed. It is argued that rather than any

inherent properties of the viewed country

being decisive in the definition of the

picturesque landscape, it is the gaze of the

viewer, the picturesque eye as a contemporary

calls it, and the cultivated mind of the

viewer which make the appropriation of wild

nature to the norms of art possible.and thus it

is the travelling gentleman who evokes the

picturesque prospect and calls into being.