Two Landscapes by Paul Sandby

In 1794 Paul Sandby painted two landscape pictures,“A View of Vinters at Boxley”and “Morning”. The picturesque movement was in the great vogue in 1790’s,and Uvedale Price and R.P.Knight published their most important works theorizing their picturesque gardening policy in the same year with Sandby.The style, especially the composition,of Sandby’s two pictures is typical of the picturesque landscapes,the prototype of which is an ideal Italian landscape drawn by Claude Lorrain. However a close examination of the two pictures reveals that they are not nostalgic rustic landscapes based on the Claudian idyllic scenery but they include various elements described within the archetypal picturesque composition－the significant results of the Industrial and Agricultural Revolutions, the factory building owned by the client as a focal point, the impacts of the war against France, emblems of the nationalism of the age, thriving local industries, the germination of the modern biological science,and so forth.My conclusion is that these landscape paintings by Sandby tell us even in 1790’s the picturesque had grown out of a manneristic formalism into a rather versatile artistic style reflecting the circumstances.