Landscapes Through The Ages By Claude Lorrain s Seaport...

Landscaping Landscapes: Exploring the Creation of Landscapes since the 17th century to the Modern Era From the 1600s to present day, landscapes have evolved in color and style. As the Baroque era incorporated stories and modern landscape photography focuses on color and subject, landscape artistry has changed as new movements of art and history occur. A proposed exhibition of landscapes includes Claude Lorrain’s Seaport with the Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba, Van Gogh’s Long Grass with Butterflies, Paul Nash’s Totes Meer (Dead Sea), and Ainsley Bennett’s Binary Haze. The works could be used in order to understand of how the portrayal of landscapes has changed from the 1600s to the modern day. Through the proposed exhibition, â€Å"Landscapes through the Ages,† one can follow the theme of how the historical context of different centuries has influenced the creation of landscape art. In Claude Lorrain’s Seaport with the Embarkation of the Queen of Sheba (1648), Lorrain depicts the biblical story of the Queen of Sheba visiting King Solomo n (Figure 1). Although painted in 1648 during the Baroque era, Seaport is a unique painting for the time. Choosing to paint landscapes over portraiture, Lorrain was considered an unconventional artist. Seen in Seaport is an example of his atypical style through his incorporation of a ‘classical’ style in the architecture of his paintings (Langdon). Although offbeat, Lorrain still followed the pattern of incorporating a biblical