Archibald Alison, landscape painting, nature poetry and the landscape of the mind

Abstract

The subject of this article is the landscape of the mind. At the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in landscape painting and in nature poetry, the surrounding nature became an insignificant element of the artist’s or poet’s work, acting only as a trigger for introspection. In landscape painting, nature was supposed to express emotional states. The viewer was to embark on a mood suggested by the painting and immerse himself/herself in contemplation of his or her internal states. In nature poetry, such as William Wordsworth’s Prelude, the vision of nature was subjective: its colouring was an effect of projection of the emotions of the speaker in the poem, it was a reflection of the landscape of his mind. The theoretical context to be used in this essay for the discussion of the landscape of the mind in landscape painting and nature poetry is the aesthetic theory of Archibald Alison.