What I would personally say was the most important achievement by Anibale Carracci - other than that of establishing an art academy - was the fact that he was one of the first painters in Italy to paint landscapes that were almost independent and taking over the figures almost entirely. A tradition that will achieve its peak perhaps later with Claude Lorrain.

River Landscape, 1589-90
National Gallery of Art, Washington

Fantastic Sunset by E.E.Cummings

I thank you God for this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes. 

Cross in the Mountains (Tetschen Altar), 1808

Friedrich completed the first of his major paintings in 1807, at the age of 34. The Cross in the Mountains, today known as the Tetschen Altar (Galerie Neue Meister, Dresden). The altar panel depicts the crucified Christ in profile at the top of a mountain, alone and surrounded by nature. The cross reaches the highest point in the pictorial plane but is presented from an oblique and a distant viewpoint, unusual for a crucifixion scene in Western art. Nature dominates the scene and for the first time in Christian art, an altarpiece showcases a landscape.  

The work was first exhibited on Christmas Day, 1808. Although it was generally coldly received, it was nevertheless Friedrich’s first painting to receive wide publicity. The artist’s friends publicly defended the work, while art critic Basilius von Ramdohr published a lengthy article rejecting Friedrich’s use of landscape in such a context; he wrote that it would be “a veritable presumption, if landscape painting were to sneak into the church and creep onto the altar”. Ramdohr fundamentally challenged the concept that pure landscape painting could convey explicit meaning. Friedrich responded with a programme describing his intentions. In his 1809 commentary on the painting, he compared the rays of the evening sun to the light of the Holy Father. The sinking of the sun suggests that the era when God revealed himself directly to man has passed. This statement marked the only time Friedrich recorded a detailed interpretation of his own work.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caspar_David_Friedrich]

If nothing more were known of the painter, this painting, the so-called ‘Tetschen Altar’ would command attention for its boldness in creating a devotional image from the materials of landscape. It is both the first masterpiece of one of the greatest Romantic landscape painters and a manifesto for the art of landscape itself. It exemplifies two important achievements of early Romanticism: the elevation of nature to a kind of religion, and of landscape to equal or surpass history painting.

The 34-year-old painter was inordinately proud of the work. It was the largest he had painted so far, in a medium in which he was still far from proficient, and he had designed the frame himself - a Gothic arch with the eye of God and the wheat and vine of the Eucharist. He had intended the picture as a gift to the Swedish king Adolphus IV, in recognition of his resistance to Napoleon, but was persuaded instead to sell it to Count von Thun-Hohenstein for his castle in Tetschen, Bohemia. With its splendid frame it was transformed from political gesture to religious image, but still it remained a landscape. Nature itself was imbued with religious feeling.

The painting’s carved frame is based on a concept by Friedrich, but was executed by one of his friends, the sculptor Gottlieb Christian Kühn.

[Web Gallery of Art]

Birthday to Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot born on this day in 1796 :) Corot was primarily a landscape painter although he dealt with prints as well. 

Parisian born, Jean Baptiste was one of rare painters that never had money troubles : he came from a well to do family. He was not a brilliant student and so his father made him become apprentice to a draper; having finished this apprenticeship Corot famously said : I told my father that business and I were simply incompatible, and that I was getting a divorce. Soon he turned to oil painting, landscapes being from the start his main preoccupation.

From 1825 to 1828 Corot lived in Italy; his parents financed the trip with one request : that he should paint a self portrait for them :) In Italy Corot made friends with other young French painters and spent much time with them either in cafes or in Italian countryside. Nevertheless it was a very productive period for him : he painted around 150 paintings. In these and then later ones too, many critics see the beginning of what would eventually become Impressionism : especially so his practice of painting plain-air at the time that most painters did their work inside a studio. Later Baudelaire would say that Corot was the leader in the modern school of landscape painting. Camille Pissarro, whose birthday we had a few days ago, was later one of his pupils for a while; his pupils called him Father Corot :)

Corot’s fame significantly increased as he grew older, his paintings fetching quite enormous prices. He used his wealth and influence to help other artists, whether they were still young and needed a push, or were old and poor : it is well known how Corot bought a house for old and blind Honoré Daumier who was without any money and homeless, or how he helped with significant sum Millet’s widow after his death. 

He himself died when he was 78; Claude Monet said of him There is only one master here—Corot. We are nothing compared to him, nothing.

Happy Birthday Jean-Baptiste-Camille !

For long art historians believed that, in total, there is around 600 of Rembrandt’s paintings; most of them now agree that there are actually only half of that number that were beyond doubt his. Out of these 300 there are only about 10 landscapes in oil. And yet some of those are among my favourite paintings by him. 

Landscape with a Stone Bridge, c. 1638
The Mill, c. 1650

There is nothing that special to see when looking at me. I’m a painter who paints day in day out, from morning till evening - figure pictures and landscapes, more rarely portraits.
— Gustav Klimt

Also something of a rarity, even more so than his sculptures, are his landscapes of which there is really just a few, some say only four. Perhaps there were more among his earlier work, the one he destroyed himself in great extent. These are from 1919.

We all know that the Impressionists loved to paint cityscapes and to do so in different times of day and seasons, that is - in different atmospheric conditions. Of these many will immediately remember Monet with his Rouen cathedral paintings, but we should not forget Pissaro’s efforts either :)  

Here are few examples from around The Louvre and Pont Neuf.