| A multitude of notable landscape painters in the West frequently directed their themes and styles towards a particular notion, that is, the idea of solitude. The earnest undertaking to represent solitude, both as a state of mind and a physical setting, has evolved into a distinct genre in landscape painting with its corresponding iconography and iconology. Traditional style analysis tends to overlook this phenomenon. The dissertation introduces the concept of the Landscape of Solitude to investigate images of isolation, silence, and contemplation that were recurrent occurrences throughout the history of landscape painting. The landscape of solitude offers a new way of access for both the artist and the viewer to the realm of ideas, linking more directly the eye and the mind, the real and the ideal. It represents a vital development that transformed landscape from an art that tended to be topographical to one that could be a medium for human thoughts and sentiments.; The dissertation traces the origin of the role of solitude in art to Arcadia of the Golden Age and Eden, and a presentation of the genre, examining the continuum of artists from Venetian Renaissance to the Claudian pastoral and up to the nineteenth century. Artists discussed include Claude Lorrain, Corot, Richard Wilson, Joseph Wright, Gainsborough, Constable, and Friedrich, and others who have contributed significantly to the fundamental structure of landscape paintings of solitude. It attempts to relate their selected works to both the iconologies and the iconography of landscapes of solitude, as well as with a general evolution of the genre due to the refinement and redefining of previous styles. In presenting its iconography, characteristics of melancholia, nostalgia, and loneliness are discussed, as well as the representative components, both organic and man-made, deliberately inserted and deliberately removed in landscapes of solitude. It sheds a historical, cultural, and political lens on the artworks, illuminating their role in varying the stylistic approach to portraying solitude. For artists and critics, this implies a new appreciation of the relationship between landscape painting and the ever-growing fascination with solitude. |
