AMICO Assignment Set:
Find and Compare Exercises for Modern European Art, 1780-1900
Exercise: Rise of the Landscape

Student Instructions:

1. Read all the instructions below before beginning the exercise.
   
2. Using the AMICO Library, choose a landscape painting, watercolor, or drawing made in a European country between about 1800 and about 1850.
   
3. Using the AMICO Library, choose a second landscape painting, watercolor, or drawing made in a different European country between about 1800 and about 1850.
   
4. In a 250-word essay, compare the two artworks, considering one of more of the following questions:
• How do these works reflect or ignore the taste and style of their period and nations?
  
• Does each artist depict the landscape literally or as a symbol of something else?
  
• In what ways, stylistically, are these works alike or unalike?
  
• What were the social, political, and economic conditions in each country when the work was created?
  
• What attitudes towards nature do the works represent?
  
• Do the works express a feeling about the nations they depict?
  
• In earlier centuries, landscape was usually considered a minor art form. Do the artists of these works conform to or depart from this attitude?
5. Save the images and related data in your essay.
   
6. Your essay will be judged on the following criteria:

• Did you correctly follow instructions for the exercise?
  
• Did you make a good choice of images?
  
• How does your essay reflect your knowledge of the period, its political history, and its art?
  

Sample Images:

Copyright The Metropolitan Museum of Art		Copyright Museum of Fine Arts,† Boston, 1998
John Constable		Pierre Etienne Théodore Rousseau (French)
Salisbury Cathedral from the Bishop's Grounds, ca. 1825		Pool in the Forest, Early 1850's
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York, USA, MMA_.50.145.8		Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Boston, Massachusetts, USA, BMFA.17.3241
View the complete AMICO record		View the complete AMICO record

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