Mozaikok a tájfestészet és a geográfia kapcsolatából

At the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, natural sciences supported and drove economic development in a previously not experienced way. Europe created a new “mental image” of nature, scientific ideas with a newly emerging confidence while combining theoretical and practical researches. The Age of Enlightenment is best characterized by A. Humboldt’s discovery travels. The utilitarian approach of the age radically changed the relationship between landscape and people, first in the English speaking countries. This study endeavours to present the interrelations of men and landscape through the changes in landscape painting at the beginning of the 19th century while emphasizing the earlier definition of the geographic environment and indicating geography as an heir of the landscape painting. John Constable broke with the tradition of academic painting and found the idyllic landscape in rural England. In the New World, landscape painting used the European traditions, exemplified by the works of Thomas Cole, the first major American landscape painter. His iconic painting ’Oxbow’ followed the patterns of the traditional European landscape imaging, indicating ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful of Poussin’ works.