Academy in 1806, and the twelve following years, and died in 1821 when
the pictures of Constable were attracting unusual attention; indeed, it
may be said that by his exhibitions at the Royal Academy, Constable
inaugurated modern landscape painting, which is a most important feature
of art in this century.

Not forgetting the splendid landscapes of the Dutch masters, of the early
Italians, of Claude and Wilson, the claim that landscape painting was
perfected only in the nineteenth century, and then largely as the result
of the works of English artists, seems to me to be well founded. To this
excellence Turner, contemporary with Constable, David Cox, De Wint,
Bonington, and numerous others gloriously contributed.

The English landscapes exhibited at the French Salon in the third decade
of the century produced a remarkable effect, and emphasized the interest
in landscape painting already growing in France, and later so splendidly
developed by Rousseau, Corot, Millet, and their celebrated
contemporaries. In Germany the Achenbachs, Lessing, and many other
artists were active in this movement, while in America, Innes, A. H.
Wyant, and Homer Martin, with numerous followers, were raising landscape
art to an eminence before unknown.

Formerly landscapes had been used as backgrounds, oftentimes attractive
and beautiful, while the real purpose of the pictures centred in the
human figures. The distinctive feature of nineteenth-century landscape is
the representation of Nature alone, and the variety of method used and
the differing aims of the artists cover the entire gamut between absolute
Realism and the most pronounced Impressionism.

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