French landscape
In 1800, following the publication of Eléments de perspective pratique (Elements in practical perspective) and with the founding of his school, Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes, the "David of landscape", became the uncontested master of genre.
According to the ideas propounded by the Academy of Fine Arts, merely illustrating nature could not be sufficient in itself: landscape should be used as a foil on which to evoke edifying scenes often borrowed from mythology and biblical history. The creation of the Prix de Rome for historical landscape painting confirms this predilection. The first prize went to one of Valenciennes' students, Michallon in 1817. Being awarded this prize opened doors to the French Academy in Rome and to the Grand Tour in Italy.
The picturesque Roman countryside, a world of ancient ruins, of ancestral spirits and gods, was indeed the favourite place for painters who returned again and again in search for poetic or realistic inspiration.
During the Romantic Movement and up until the 1870s, landscape became the most popular genre among artists. The development of regionalism (also evoked in literature [see George Sand]) plus the new focus on nature contributed to a concept of landscape painting from which man and history are ever less present.
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