WALKING IN MY DREAMS

Painting a landscape is such a joy. Landscape painting was not always as popular as it is today. Prior to the 14th century paintings were mostly of a religious theme or portraits of the wealthy and powerful. Gradually these figures were sometimes portrayed in a landscape, and by the 17th century landscape-as-setting had become an accepted genre in European painting. The landscape often became more prominent, the figures less so. However, until the 19th century landscape painting was relegated to a low position in the accepted hierarchy of genres in Western art. Gradually the old hierarchy of subjects declined throughout the rest of Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries. That fact, combined with a new Romanticism — which emphasized emotion, individualism, and the glorification of nature — promoted landscapes to the well-loved place in art which they continue to hold today.