Description

As a genre, landscape painting has a long and well-documented history, spanning across centuries and multiple cultures. From the beginnings of human civilization individuals have sought to visually depict their surroundings, documenting the sights and scenery of their everyday experience in a variety of ways. In a European context, the flowering of painting and the decorative arts in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries that we commonly refer to as the Renaissance brought forth the emergence of a commercial culture of artistic patronage and the new concept of ‘art for art’s sake’, in which landscape paintings would become a popular and highly collectible commodity.

Today, the legacy of this history and the variety of styles that artists have adopted over the years appears in different guises within the work of contemporary landscape painters. Within a Caribbean context, the history of landscape painting in Europe is but one strand of influence, to which elements of African, Latin American and indigenous cultural traditions also feature prominently. In Cayman, the tradition of landscape painting is likewise very much a product of this mixing of cultural and artistic influences, which we can discern in the works exhibited in Tropical Visions and more broadly in the National Gallery’s permanent collection. This lecture will look to trace the broader history of landscape painting as a genre and examine in greater detail some of the artistic precursors, both in Europe and within the Caribbean, that have influenced artists here in Cayman, while also exploring in greater detail some of the highlights from the National Gallery’s current exhibition.