Introductory description

This module aims to introduce students to the variety of issues involved in interpreting landscape.

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

Poussin, Claude and the Historical Landscape
The Romantic landscape: the earthly and the divine
The Pre-Raphaelite landscape: colour
The Pre-Raphaelite landscape: the city
The Impressionist landscape: painting in the open air
The Impressionist landscape: the motif and the view
The Post-Impressionist landscape: absorption and correspondence
Landscape in the C20th?

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• Analyse landscape paintings in their historical context
• Deploy knowledge on landscape aesthetics
• Analyse the techniques employed in landscape painting
• Present an argument, initiate and sustain group discussion through intelligent questioning and debate at an appropriate level
• Ability to undertake research and to write up the results in the form of a well-structured argument at an appropriate level
• Familiarity with essential ICT skills
• Ability to collaborate effectively with others
• Show understanding of diverse viewpoints
• Ability to find, select, organize and synthesize evidence
• Ability to formulate a sustained argument
• Think conceptually and independently at an appropriate level
• Demonstrate sophisticated visual analysis
• Demonstrate bibliographical skills at an appropriate level
• Demonstrate critical analysis of cultural artefacts in their context

Indicative reading list

Malcolm Andrews, Landscape and Western Art (Oxford University Press, 2000)
Richard Brettell, Pissarro and Pontoise; the Painter in a Landscape (Yale University Press, 1990).
Steven Adams and Anna Gruetzner Robins (eds.), Gendering Landscape Art (Manchester University Press, 2000)
John Barrell, The Dark Side of the Landscape: The Rural Poor in English Painting, 1730-1840 (Cambridge University Press, 1983).
Anne Birmingham, The State and Estate of Nature: Landscape and Ideology (Thames and Hudson, 1987) .
Robert L. Herbert, Monet on the Normandy Coast: Tourism and Painting, 1867-1886 (Yale University Press, 1994).
John House, Impressionism: Paint and Politics (Yale, 2005).
Salim Kemal and Iwan Gaskell, Landscape, Natural Beauty, and the Arts (Cambridge University Press, 1995).
Michael Rosenthal, Constable: the Painter in his Landscape (Yale University Press, 1983).
Allen Staley, The Pre-Raphaelite Landscape (Yale University Press, 2001).
Paul Tucker, Monet at Argenteuil (Yale Univesrity Press, 1984).
Richard Wollheim, Painting as an Art (Thames & Hudson, 1987).

View reading list on Talis Aspire

Subject specific skills

• Analyse landscape paintings in their historical context
• Deploy knowledge on landscape aesthetics
• Analyse the techniques employed in landscape painting
• Demonstrate sophisticated visual analysis
• Demonstrate critical analysis of cultural artefacts in their context

Transferable skills

• present an argument, initiate and sustain group discussion through intelligent questioning and debate at an appropriate level
• ability to undertake research and to write up the results in the form of a well-structured argument at an appropriate level
• familiarity with essential ICT skills
• ability to collaborate effectively with others
• show understanding of diverse viewpoints
• ability to find, select, organize and synthesize evidence
• ability to formulate a sustained argument
• think conceptually and independently at an appropriate level
• Demonstrate bibliographical skills at an appropriate level