page_title: Landscape painting
section_title: Landscape art movements
hierarchical_section_title: Landscape painting / Landscape art movements
context_page_description: Landscape painting, also known as landscape art, is the depiction of landscapes in art—natural scenery such as mountains, valleys, trees, rivers, and forests, especially where the main subject is a wide view—with its elements arranged into a coherent composition. In other works, landscape backgrounds for figures can still form an important part of the work. Sky is almost always included in the view, and weather is often an element of the composition. Detailed landscapes as a distinct subject are not found in all artistic traditions, and develop when there is already a sophisticated tradition of representing other subjects.
  The two main traditions spring from Western painting and Chinese art, going back well over a thousand years in both cases.
  The recognition of a spiritual element in landscape art is present from its beginnings in East Asian art, drawing on Daoism and other philosophical traditions, but in the West only becomes explicit with Romanticism.
  Landscape views in art may be entirely imaginary, or copied from reality with varying degrees of accuracy.
caption: Albrecht Altdorfer (c.1480–1538), Danube landscape near Regensburg c. 1528, one of the earliest Western pure landscapes. He was the leader of the Danube School in southern Germany.
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