Man's Hand in the Land Around the World

            Landscapes forever reside in our visual archives, all of which portray some artistic variation of the elements of land, sky, and—maybe—water. Occasionally, these landscapes challenge the “rule,” so to speak, of needing to incorporate all three, creating landscapes of just land and no sky or water, only water and sky, or only land and sky, which is most common. We, of course, vaguely realize this every time we discover another landscape, whether in photographs found in our scrolling through Instagram or in antique prints (rarely actual paintings unless we find Paint-by-Numbers) that we find in strolling through Goodwill or an antique market. But one element of landscapes tends to escape us: the presence of man’s hand in the land depicted in each landscape.

            All the landscapes I have chosen below portray man’s hand in the land through various kinds of media in various cultures from the 13^th century up to only a half century ago. Beginning with the Chinese Windswept Lakeshore (attributed to Xia Gui) and ending with the German Anselm Kiefer’s A Ship Will Come, we see first man working the land, living in the land, contemplating the land, and then perceiving the appearance of the land. From ink to oil paint to watercolor, gouache, and ballpoint pen, Xia Gui, Dosso Dossi, Kim Su-Gyu, Caspar David Friedrich, Sanford Robinson Gifford, Claude Monet, and Anselm Kiefer each heighten our own awareness of man in their landscapes through their temporally cultural styles.

Windswept Lakeshore, Attributed to Xia Gui, 13^th c., Chinese, 10 ¼ x 10 5/8 in.

Fan mounted as an album leaf; ink on silk, Ascension Number: 1973.121.11

            Xia Gui, if he did indeed produce this artwork, strove against the Northern Song tradition of painting “a hundred peaks and ten thousand trees,” creating his own tradition of painting merely a couple of trees with a single hill or cliff hanging in nothingness with sharp jots of ink atop an ink wash. But Xia does not forget the three miniscule figures working the land in the midst of the mystique-filled landscape, the three dependent on the land in their tininess while simultaneously subduing it.

The Three Ages of Humans, Dossa Dossi (Giovanni de Lutero) (1486-1541/42), Italian, 30 ½ x 44 in.

Oil on canvas, Ascension Number: 26.83

            Influenced by the Italian tradition of narrative painting, Dosso Dossi conceals his personal workmanship in the luscious seaside landscape where six figures portray in three huddled pairs childhood, adolescence/adulthood, and old age, with a pair of goats apparently watching the lovers. Despite the concealment of human workmanship by Dossi, mankind’s aging within nature clearly commands our attention in this originally pastoral landscape (Dossi only having later added the old men in the background), which clearly portrays the continuing presence of man in nature as a child, as a lover, and finally strolling in nature to relive those memories.

Rainy Landscape, Kim Su-Kyu, late 18^th c. Korean, 10 x 13 ¾ in.

Album leaf mounted as a hanging scroll; ink and color on bast fiber

Ascension Number: 2006.104

            Kim Su-Gyu’s Rainy Landscape, reminiscent of Xia’s Windswept Lakeshore above due to the use of bold strokes of ink and soft color wash, defers from Xia and his Northern Song traditional counterparts by painting a handful of mountains with treeage and a river. A little village nestles itself among these hills and trees on the right-hand side, softly telling of the presence of man. And then in the bottom left-hand corner, directly below the manmade inscription alongside Kim’s own signatures (both in Hanja): “Rain clears and brightens a thousand mountains, / Men in straw hats return with fishing rods,” we see the little men walking along the bridge they perhaps built across the river.

Eastern Coast of Rügen Island with Shepherd, Caspar David Friedrich, 1805-6, German, 24 ¼ x 39 in.

Pen and sepia colored ink, brush and sepia colored wash, white gouache and graphite on off-white wove paper; 2002.260

            A little later than Kim Su-Gyu and partway around the world in Germany, Caspar David Friedrich uses the similar material of ink in his own landscape drawing, utilizing only the sepia tones of his pens, ink, brush, and wash while incorporating what gouache and graphite for highlights on the water of this romantic Baltic pastoral scene. Here, as well as in other works of his, Friedrich, in keeping with his romanticist side, intentionally includes a man contemplating the scenic nature around him as he keeps his sheep, but, additionally, through Friedrich’s use of an unnatural color overlaying his highly naturalistic drawing, brings purposeful attention to his personal involvement in the construction of this view of nature with contemplating man in its midst, something Xia and Kim detracted from their works with illuminating inscriptions.

A Gorge in the Mountains (Kauterskill Clove), Sanford Robinson Gifford, 1862, American, 48 x 39 7/8 in.

Oil on canvas, Ascension Number: 15.30.62

            Across the pond from Europe, one of the early members of the Hudson River School of American landscapes around the Catskill Mountains, Sanford Robinson Gifford produced over 700 works by his death in 1880. In each one he emphasized the light and atmosphere of the Catskills through the tiniest of brushstrokes to evoke a highly naturalistic and romantic view of his surroundings (since he was the only member of the Hudson River School to actually live in the area). In A Gorge in the Mountains (Kauterskill Clove), the colors of the trees and forested gorge boost the ethereal haze of the sun hovering over the far-off mountains. But at the same time, this color initially hides the tiny figure of a hiker climbing the rocks in the bottom left-hand corner as he attempts to conquer the feat of climbing to the top with his dog.

Morning on the Seine near Giverny, Claude Monet, 1897, French, 32 1/8 x 36 5/8 in.

Oil on canvas, Ascension Number: 56.135.4

            At the end of the 19^th century, back across the Atlantic in Paris, Monet took a novel approach to landscape painting, using oil painting in an impressionistic way to paint only what he perceived nature to be rather than what it was, like Gifford portrayed in his hundreds of paintings. This attempt to paint only what he perceived resulted in several series of the same point of view, including this series of Mornings on the Seine near Giverny. Being the first artist in this collection to omit portraying man in his landscape, Monet brings attention to his own presence in the painting through his gestural strokes on the trees, river, and even the sky as he gives us a glimpse of what he sees and wants us to see in nature.

A Ship Will Come, Anselm Kiefer, 1974, German, 9 ½ x 7 7/8 in.

Watercolor, gouache, and ballpoint pen on paper, Ascension Number: 2000.96.

            Skipping forward to ‘70s Germany, Anselm Kiefer, who was in his youth during World War II and in 1974 lived amid the unease of a split Germany, half occupied by the U.S.S.R. and half allowed to live with greater freedom and prosperity, he journeyed to Norway to collect postcards and photos to later create watercolors from, resulting in this watercolor of the summer midnight sun just beyond a glacier and steamer. Even quicker than Monet’s paintings of the Seine above, Kiefer, also not portraying man, leaves a stark mark of his hand in the painting and drawing process, even writing the words “A Ship Will Come” in German to give added meaning to his work just like Kim in Rainy Landscape above, while the white manmade ship stands out against the dark blue glacial cliffs behind.