From Dürer to Katz - Famous Artists of Landscape Painting

Nature and architecture have fascinated and inspired painters since the Renaissance. Over the centuries, landscape painting has evolved into a diverse genre with a wide variety of motifs. Natural landscapes like mountains, forests, or fields are as much a part of it as parks or gardens. Seascapes, such as the sea, beach scenes, harbours, or lakes, also fall under this genre.

Human-made cultural landscapes, such as towns and villages, as well as individual buildings such as churches, castles, or factories, are included too. Humans, however, play no or a very subordinate role. Individual people or small groups serve at best as staffage, complementing nature and buildings.

The genre of landscape painting has constantly evolved over the centuries, with each epoch finding its own interpretations. Painters from all styles have landscape paintings in their portfolios. Well-known landscape painters include Albrecht Dürer, Caspar David Friedrich, Claude Monet, Edvard Munch, Gabriele Münter and Alex Katz.

The Development of Landscape Painting and Its Artists

It took some time for landscape to establish itself as an independent genre in Europe: The history of landscape painting begins in antiquity. Mural paintings depicting plants and topographies are known from the Roman Empire and ancient Greece. However, for a long time, landscape depictions in painting served solely as a frame or background for scenes centred on people.

It was not until the 15th century that some painters began to focus solely on nature and architecture in their paintings. Landscape painting made significant progress towards becoming an independent subject from the 17th century onwards. During the Romantic epoch, artists turned the landscape into a mirror of their inner lives. They painted dramatic and opulent scenes imbued with symbolic meaning. Famous landscape painters of this time included William Turner, Caspar David Friedrich, and John Constable.

At the beginning of the 20th century, interest in landscape painting remained high. Among the expressionists were many famous landscape painters such as Emil Nolde, Franz Marc, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, and Paula Modersohn-Becker.

After World War II, abstraction in painting became prevalent. Concrete subjects no longer played a role in this style, resulting in landscape painting losing some of its importance for a short time. Even in Pop Art, landscape depictions were rather rare. However, in contemporary art, they are once again part of the permanent repertoire of many painters.

Six Famous Artists of Landscape Painting

From the Renaissance and Romanticism to Modernism and contemporary art - landscape painting has produced numerous significant names. Here, we introduce you to six famous landscape painters, highlighting the unique aspects of their artistic expression.

Albrecht Dürer: Pioneer of European Landscape Painting

One of the pioneers of landscape painting in Europe was the Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528). The German painter, draughtsman, and engraver is known for his highly detailed studies of animals and plants as well as realistic portraits. His most famous works include "Praying Hands" and "Young Hare".

However, he was also a renowned landscape painter, devoting himself intensively to depicting nature and architecture. Even in his portraits, he placed great importance on realistically depicting the landscape in the background. Even if these were only small sections of the picture, he worked extremely meticulously - for example in his "Self-Portrait at the Age of 26" from 1498.

Inspired by his numerous travels through Germany and Europe, Dürer increasingly created paintings and engravings solely depicting landscapes. He focussed on city views and individual pictures, for example:

• "Courtyard of the Former Castle in Innsbruck" (c. 1495),
• "Trento, View from the North" (1495),
• "View of Trento Castle".

He also created pure nature scenes such as "Pond in the Forest" (c. 1495) and "Willow Mill" (c. 1506). While Dürer's landscape paintings might not be as well known today as many of his other works, his pioneering spirit in this genre proved to be very significant for art history.

Peak of Romanticism: The Famous Landscape Painter Caspar David Friedrich

The paintings of the German painter Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) have become the epitome of romantic painting. His landscape paintings are characterised by great detail and breathtaking atmosphere. Friedrich was able to express the ideas of his epoch directly in his works. His works tell of spirituality and mysticism, but also melancholy and longing.

The famous landscape painter also contributed significantly to the further evolution of the genre. He painted numerous pure landscape paintings, such as:

• "The Sea of Ice",
• "The Morning",
• "The Watzmann".

Today, however, he is best known for his characteristic way of including people in natural scenes, typically showing them from behind or the side. In this way, the people never distract from the landscape. The best examples include:

• The famous "Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog",
• "Chalk Cliffs on Rügen",
• "Two Men Contemplating the Moon".

However, the famous landscape painter also broke with some of the traditions of this genre in a very concrete way. He committed his greatest breaking of a taboo in 1808 with his "Cross in the Mountains". He had taken the liberty of integrating a religious motif - in this case, the crucifix - into a landscape painting. He had also depicted the Christian symbol very small and thus degraded it to a staffage.

However, Friedrich deviated even further from conventional landscape painting. His paintings do not show real landscapes, but fictitious compositions of motifs from different regions.

Claude Monet: Impressions of Landscapes Filled With Light and Colour

Impressionism in the 19th century marked a completely new chapter for landscape painting. Artists of this epoch abandoned many of the usual conventions of painting. They no longer strove for the most realistic depiction of their subjects. Instead, they wanted to capture their perception and the atmosphere of the moment in their paintings.

They paid particular attention to how light illuminated the scene and reflected off the objects. Landscapes offered perfect subjects for such depictions. Many landscape painters originated from this epoch.

An important representative of Impressionism and a famous landscape painter was Claude Monet (1840-1926). Alongside Camille Pissarro, Édouard Manet and Edgar Degas, he significantly contributed to the development of this style as a pioneer. He created numerous, now world-famous works of this genre. These include expansive panoramas such as

• "The Poppy Field near Argenteuil",
• "Impression, Sunrise",
• "Landscape at Saint-Martin".

However, he also painted smaller sections of landscapes such as "Haystacks in the Sunlight", "The Japanese Bridge in the Garden of Giverny" and numerous variations of water lilies.

Edvard Munch: The Famous Landscape Painter from Norway

Edvard Munch (1863-1944) is best known to the general public for his painting "The Scream". However, he was also an important landscape painter.

In Munch's pictures, the subjects no longer represented themselves, but were symbolically charged. To achieve this, he developed individual imagery and abandoned the realistic painting style. He simplified the entire composition, reduced the details of the subjects, and worked with few but very powerful colours. His important landscape paintings include:

• "Group of Girls on a Bridge" (1902),
• "The Garden in Asgardstrand" (1905),
• "Avenue in a Snowstorm" (1906),
• "Winter Landscape" (1915),
• "Apple Tree" (1921).

Munch's innovative technique made him a pioneer of expressionist painting and an important painter of Classical Modernism. He became a role model for many other landscape painters after him.

Gabriele Münter: A Key Figure in Expressionism

Gabriele Münter (1877-1962) is one of the most significant personalities of Expressionism during the early 20th century. The painter played an active role in developing the avant-garde in Germany. She joined the "New Munich Artists’ Association" as early as 1909. However, in 1911 she left it again and organised the legendary "First Exhibition of the Editorial Board of Der Blaue Reiter" together with Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc. She also worked on the almanac published at the same time. In the years that followed, she organised further exhibitions of contemporary art independently.

Gabriele Münter had abandoned traditional painting at an early stage. At the beginning of the 20th century, when many landscape artists were still trying to get as close as possible to nature, she had already developed an early form of expressionist painting. In doing so, she emphasised artistic expression over detail. Münter increasingly reduced the subjects of her paintings to their essential characteristics. She worked predominantly with monochrome surfaces, which she delineated with clear contours. Works such as

• "Wind and Clouds" (1910),
• "Staffelsee" (1936),
• "Three Houses in the Snow" (1933),
• "The Blue Lake" (1934),
• "View of the Mountains" (1934),

fascinate with their clarity and expressiveness.

Famous Landscape Painter: Alex Katz, the Minimalist

In the middle of the 20th century, landscape painting had lost some of its popularity. During this phase, abstract painting styles dominated, with less focus on concrete subjects. However, American painter Alex Katz, born in 1927, remained committed to figurative painting - and thus also to landscape painting. The artist from Brooklyn, New York, developed contemporary figurative imagery.

He also sometimes composes his landscape paintings using only a monochrome background and two or three tree trunks, for example in "Gold and Black II". For urban night scenes, however, he only needs the illuminated windows and the outlines of buildings ("Night House 1").

His elegant visual order made Alex Katz a famous artist of landscape painting and one of the most important American painters of the 20th and 21st centuries. Because of his minimalist imagery, he is also regarded as a key pioneer of Pop Art.