Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein,
Goethe in the Roman Campagna, 1787.

Oil on canvas, 164 x 206 cm.

Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt.

 

 

This prepossession, its striving for the discipline and simplicity of Greek art, its delight in the formulation of theories and aesthetic demands can be seen not only as an effect of science on art but also as a lack of originality. If art, however, was created essentially with reason, it often comes across as academic and formal. It was hoped that this danger could be avoided by following the other path, by which artists sought to get close to nature. This path, too, was followed in the 18th century as artists began to concern themselves with the nature of their homelands, which appeared significant or interesting. Old bridges, castles and churches exerted an irresistible power of attraction over the artists. This movement flourished as it began to incorporate poetry and literature. In addition, artists found themselves attracted not just to their nations’ history but also to the nature unique to their region. Charming villages, babbling brooks, dark forests, towering cliffs, awe-inspiring, majestic sunrises and sunsets, and clear moonlit nights provided an endless stream of inspiration to the imagination, which appealed to the heart and offered the artists new subject matter that was both admired and sought after by the public. If the emotion and the enthusiasm which was now being shown for all this was at first directed exclusively towards the concrete, it nevertheless led gradually to a detailed observation of reality and thus to a really intimate relationship with nature, or at least with the landscape.