Celebrated Landscape Paintings

Up until the late seventeenth century, little landscape painting was produced that was devoid of narrative. This was due to the influence of Academic art, that ranked landscapes low on the hierarchy of genres, according to the traditions of the Italian Renaissance. Here is our selected list of the best landscape paintings, including scenic views of countryside, seascapes and townscapes by Old Masters and later famous artists.

View of Delft (1660-1) by Jan Vermeer.

Sixteenth Century

Giorgione/Giorgio Barbarelli: The Tempest (c.1506); Joachim Patinir: Landscape with St Jerome (1515-24); Albrecht Altdorfer: Landscape with a Footbridge (c.1520); Albrecht Durer: Watercolours of his journey to Italy (1490s); Pieter Bruegel The Elder: Landscape with the Fall of Icarus (c.1558) and Hunters in the Snow (1565); El Greco: View of Toledo (c.1597).

Seventeenth Century

Salomon van Ruysdael: Wooded River Landscape (c.1640); Claude Lorrain: Landscape with the marriage of Issac and Rebekah (1648); Aelbert Cuyp: Dordrecht from the North (1650); Jacob van Ruisdael: A Waterfall in a Rocky Landscape (c.1660), An Extensive Landscape with a Ruined Castle and a Village Church (c.1670); Jan Vermeer: View of Delft (1661).

Ville d'Avray (1867) by Jean-Baptiste
Corot, the French master landscape
artist.

Eighteenth Century

Jean-Antoine Watteau: A Journey to Cythera (1717); Giovanni Antonio Canaletto: The Basin of St Marco on Ascension Day (1740); Bernardo Bellotto: Entrance to the Grand Canal, Venice (1741); Thomas Gainsborough: John Campbell, 4th Duke of Argyll (1767); Richard Wilson: The Destruction of Niobe's Children (1760); William Marlowe: The Pont du Gard Nimes (1767); Jean-Honore Fragonard: The Swing (1767); Francesco Zuccarelli: An Italianate River Landscape; Bernardo Bellotto: View of Warsaw from the Royal Castle (1772); Giovanni Panini: Ruins with Figures; Francesco Guardi: Landscape with Ruins (1775); John Robert Cozens: London From Greenwich Hill (1791); Thomas Girtin: The White House Chelsea (1799).

Nocturne: Blue And Silver Chelsea
(1871) by James McNeil Whistler

Nineteenth Century

The English School of landscape artists and the advent of French Impressionism in the last quarter of the century each boosted the quality and appeal of landscape painting. The Barbizon School led to a mini-Renaissance of plein-air landscapes across Europe, as far as the Wanderers Movement in Russia.

Among the most celebrated landscape paintings of the 19th century are the following:John Sell Cotman: Chirk Aquaduct (1804); David Friedrich: Winter Landscape (1811); John Constable: Boat-building Near Flatford Mill (1815), The Hay Wain (1821).

JMW Turner: Hannibal and His Army Crossing the Alps (1812), The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons (1835), The Fighting Temeraire (1839), The Dawn of Christianity; Theodore Rousseau: Sunset in the Auvergne (1830), Paysage Panoramique (1830-40), Forest in Boisremond (1842), The Forest of Fontainebleau, Morning (1850); John Martin: The Great Day of His Wrath (1853); Camille Corot: Souvenir de Mortefontaine (1864), Ville d'Avray (1875), Rural Scene (1875); James McNeil Whistler: Harmony in Grey - Chelsea in Ice (1864) and Blue and Silver, Chelsea (1871); Claude Monet: Impression Sunrise (1873), Haystack in the Morning Snow Effect (1891); Alfred Sisley: Women Going to the Woods (1866), Snow at Louveciennes (1878), Floods at Port Marly (1890), The Moret Bridge in the Sun (1892), The Bridge at Moret (1893); Atkinson Grimshaw: Nightfall Down the Thames (1880); Edouard Vuillard: In the Garden (1894); Pierre-Auguste Renoir: Nude in the Sunlight (1876), The Bridge of the Railway at Chatou (1881); Camille Pissaro: Autumn (1870), Landscape at Chaponval (1880), Peasants Resting (1881), Foxhill: Upper Norwood (1870), Boulevard Monmartre (1897), The Tuileries Gardens, Rainy Weather (1899); Vincent Van Gogh: Cherry Tree (1888); The Old Mill (1888); The Harvest, Arles (1888); Bridge at Arles (1888); View of Arles with Irises (1888); Cypresses (1889); Cornfield with Cypresses (1889); View of Arles (Flowering Orchards) (1889); The Olive Trees (1889); Starry Night (1889); The Olive Pickers (1889); Wheat Field with Crows (1890); Starry Night (1889); Georges Seurat: A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grange Jatte (1884); Peter Severin Kroyer: Summer Evening on the Southern Beach (1893).

Twentieth Century

Paul Signac: The Papal Palace, Avignon (1900); Claude Monet: Water Lilies (1908), The Clouds (1914-18); Picasso: Blue Roofs (1901); Paul Cezanne: Montagne Sainte-Victoire with Trees and a House; La Montagne Sainte-Victoire (1904-6); Alexei von Jawlensky: Landscape, Murnau (1909); Oskar Kokoschka: View of the Thames in the Evening (1926); Max Ernst: The Entire City (1935); Paul Nash: Dead Sea (1940-41); Ben Nicholson: St Ives, Cornwall (1943-45); Andrew Wyeth: Christina's World (1948); Jack B Yeats: The Basin in Which Pilate Washed his Hands (1951); Carel Weight: Daisy in the Garden (1962).

For examples of Irish painters, see Irish Landscape Artists.

• For more about the different types of painting (portraits, landscapes, still-lifes etc) see: Painting Genres.
• For details of landscape and portraiture in Ireland, see: Irish Art Guide

• How to Update This Mini Review of Famous Landscape Paintings