As art and cultural historian Simon Schama has explained, the term “landscape” originated from Dutch and German etymology – literally speaking of shaping the land as a cultural activity. It is gratifying to see this term being rehabilitated after decades of substitution for the term “environment”.
A notable example of this is the exhibition Another View: Landscapes by Women Artists at the Lady Lever Gallery in Liverpool. This offers a rare opportunity to see works by female artists taken from National Museums Liverpool’s archives that depict the landscape in a multitude of ways.
The first room, “from amateur to artist”, features the lady amateur perspective. These “leisure artists” were women from well-to-do backgrounds, often aristocratic, thereby having the means to engage with painting as a leisure activity. A much-loved medium here is watercolour, suitable for sketching excursions.
