In addition to the introduction, this study is divided into two major parts which are subdivided into four extensive chapters. The first part ‘Discover-ing Nature’ provides the theoretical background, start‘Discover-ing with the relevant discoveries made in the natural sciences from the late eighteenth century.
Continuing, it describes certain aspects of landscape painting in Dresden that proved to be relevant for landscape painting in Düsseldorf. The sec-ond part, ‘From Düsseldorf to the World’, introduces landscape painting in Düsseldorf with its different variations, as well as its meaning for Finnish landscape painting.
Chapter two discusses the development of geology and geog-raphy, meteorology and botany in general, highlighting major steps tak-en from the tak-end of the eightetak-enth ctak-entury until the 1860s. As Alexander von Humboldt acts as a connecting figure between the scientific world and landscape painting, his career and ideas will be stressed in particular.
Furthermore, the major developments in the field of natural sciences in Finland and Norway will be outlined in order to create a bigger picture of the temporal context.
Chapter three opens with a brief introduction to the history of outdoor painting. Since travelling and outdoor painting are closely related, it explores further the earlier tradition of artistic expeditions by discussing picturesque travelling and illustrated travel accounts. Moreover, it exam-ines not only earlier landscape aesthetics in Germany, but also the basic features of Humboldt’s landscape aesthetics. In this context, the history of the aesthetic concepts of the picturesque, the sublime and the beauti
ful, as presented in Britain, will be covered briefly. Also Humboldt’s role as a source of inspiration for artists to travel and participate in expeditions to faraway places will be examined. As to the discovery of the Norwegian mountains as an artistic motif, it is important to discuss what had hap-pened in Dresden before Düsseldorf, in fact, and in this context the role of Carl Gustav Carus as a link between art and the natural sciences has to be considered.
Chapter four is devoted to the meaning of Düsseldorf as an art scene as well as its tradition of landscape painting. It presents the most important features of Schirmer and Lessing’s outdoor painting as indicat-ed by their artworks. By focusing on popular motifs and places, both in
51 I N T r O D U c T I O N
Düsseldorf and elsewhere in Germany, artworks by Finnish and Norwegian artists are combined with the œuvre of Schirmer and Lessing, and thus with the prevailing trends in the city.
Chapter five focuses on Finnish landscapes composed by Finn-ish artists, bringing together the results of the earlier chapters. It illustrates how these artists concentrated on certain themes while walking and painting in Finland, but at the same time drawing on the influences from Germany. Here the artworks are also combined with the ideas of Topelius, whose impact on the selection of motifs cannot be underestimated.
In my pursuit of Humboldt’s ideas I have familiarised myself with his writings in their original language where possible. For direct quo-tations from his work, Cosmos, I have used the translation by E. C. Otté from the year 1852. The original quotations in German are given in the footnotes.
In order to have some idea of the artists’ thinking, I have also read a num-ber of their letters in their original language. The quotations from these let-ters I have translated myself, but the original texts are provided in the foot-notes. As for Carl Gustav Carus and his Neun Briefe über Landschaftsmalerei, geschrieben in den Jahren 1815–1824, I have used the English translation by David Britt published by the Getty Research Institute in 2002.
PART I
D I S CO V E R I N G N AT U R E
2
T R AC I N G T H E D E V E LO PM E N TS O F N AT U R A L H I S TO RY A N D T H E N AT U R A L S C I E N C E S
In the course of the nineteenth century, new methods of empirical research and analysis were introduced, which included the study of the physical structures and processes of the planet based on empirical observation us-ing scientific instruments, as well as quantification. Natural history evolved into different fields of the natural sciences. At the same time, science be-came more and more involved with industry and government, which led to the expansion and specialisation of the scientific community. In order to understand how the change from natural history into different and more specific fields of the natural sciences took place at the turn of the eight-eenth and nineteight-eenth centuries and how this development continued, this chapter explores the most important discoveries in the fields of geology, geography, botany and meteorology relating to the point of view of this study. What is important here is the historio-social and temporal context, and how the general awareness of ideas concerning nature and develop-ments related to the history of nature changed. These changes created a mental and intellectual background for society. Therefore I believe that artists were aware of the developments in the natural sciences – just as they are today – since the topics under discussion were groundbreaking and were also discussed in the newspapers. Because it is difficult to know what artists’ intentions were in the nineteenth century, I aim to examine and discuss their art using contemporary points of view.
53 T r Ac I N G T H E D E V E lO P M E N TS O f N AT U r A l H I S TO rY A N D T H E N AT U r A l S c I E N c E S
In this context, the significant role that Alexander von Humboldt played in Germany cannot be over-emphasised, although most of the dis-coveries or inventions in the nineteenth century, were not made by a sin-gle person only. Instead, they are usually the results of work accomplished in different countries by various naturalists or scientists over a longer peri-od of time.123 Actually, Germany became the leading country in the natural sciences in the course of the nineteenth century, partly due to the fame of Humboldt’s publications and the impact they had. Humboldt’s life work il-luminates all the areas under discussion and also provides us with suitable tools to examine the artworks. Although there is no written evidence that any of the artists examined here would have read Humboldt’s works, his ideas and theories were widely known, and they bear such obvious simi-larities to the landscape paintings concerned that we can at least assume that these artists were aware of his publications.124 Moreover, the Austrian artist Eugène von Guérard, who was Hans Gude’s colleague and studied in Düsseldorf in 1840–52, set out on an expedition to Australia, where he participated in scientific expeditions. It is also very likely that von Guérard’s artist colleagues in Düsseldorf must have known about his undertakings.
In addition, Humboldt’s Finnish contemporary Zacharias Topelius believed that geography and landscape painting were closely related.125 That said, it is crucial to discuss the developments on a more general level, too.
frOM NATUrAl HISTOrY TO THE NATUrAl ScIENcES
The notion of positivistic science was articulated by the French philoso-pher Auguste Comte (1798–1857) in his Cours de philosophie positive (Posi
tive Philosophy, initiated in 1826, published 1830–42). According to Comte, knowledge forms the most reliable basis we have for action in the world, and scientific researchers tried to discover facts or laws of features in the eighteenth century, but the term ‘science’, as we understand it nowa-days, achieved its modern meaning only in the nineteenth century. It was the British scientist and philosopher William Whewell (1794–1866) who launched the concept in 1840.126 Before that time, people dealing with scientific questions were called, to a great extent, philosophers or natural-ists, as was for instance Alexander von Humboldt.127 In this study, the term
‘science’ is used to refer both to the earlier natural history, which concerns the multidisciplinary description of nature before the nineteenth century,
123 For this see, Latour 1988 [1984], 15. As Latour has stated, ‘To convince some-one that an experiment has succeed-ed, that a technique is effective, that a proof is truly decisive, there must be more than one actor.’
124 We have no record of books read at the Kunstakademie before 1872, be-cause the building burnt down in March 1872. There is a drawing by Theodor von Eckenbrecher illustrat-ing the fire. Mai 1979, 36; for the illus-tration, see Blank 1965, 24.
125 Tiitta 1994, 307.
126 Bowler & Morus 2005, 4. For the con-cept of science, see also Klonk 1996, 154, footnote 1.
127 Today historians of science would not necessarily talk about the Scientific Revolution in the seventeenth cen-tury nor use the term ‘science’ in this context. In fact, natural philosophers, as they called themselves, and other seventeenth-century men of science, participated in activities that do not all correspond with our modern com-prehension and notions of science.
Bowler & Morus 2005, 24.
and to its development into the different fields of the natural sciences;
that is to say, meteorology, geology, geography and botany.128 Due to the vagueness of this development, however, it is difficult to make a clear dis-tinction between, for example, geology and geography. Therefore, both concepts are used, and sometimes they overlap, especially at the turn of centuries. It is also noteworthy that scientists started organising and establishing different societies in order to promote the status of science during the nineteenth century.129 The separation of different fields of sci-ence took place gradually, and the scientists, in fact, worked in several fields, as did Humboldt.
In terms of producing knowledge today, we are inclined to think that art invents and science discovers; hence art is bound with imagina-tion, whereas science deals with facts. The separation of art and science into two distinctive fields took place only in the late nineteenth century, but a lively discussion developed around the question of whether art had distinguishable goals from science even earlier in the century.130 In the conduct of natural sciences, the production of knowledge was confined to depicting objects and connected with the idea of objectivity. A good example of this is presented by Peter Galison who states how scientists aimed at rendering the natural world ‘objectively’ when representing the basic species of an investigation in the nineteenth century. This search for a ‘true’ picture of nature, or pictorial objectivity, was not a new phenom-enon in the nineteenth century. At the turn of the eighteenth and nine-teenth centuries, there had been a struggle to reach an inner or hidden reality, the ideal, which represented the true hidden picture behind the visible in the sense of the Goethean Urpflanze.131 Galison refers to a meta
physical image that existed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and that was held to be ‘true to nature’ as it aimed at revealing the essence behind the appearance. The metaphysical image was produced by a ge-nius. In the nineteenth century, this was replaced by a mechanical image, which was produced by a scientist, and was thus considered to represent
‘objectivity’. There was a third shift in this development at the beginning of the twentieth century, when the mechanical image changed into the interpreted image, which was bound up with judgement. The interpreted image is produced by self-confident experts with a trained eye.132
There was, nonetheless, a change in the pictorial representations of nature and the persona of the natural philosopher around 1830. Instead
128 Bowler and Morus state that most historians of science find it difficult to accept that there would have ex-isted one, unique method of science.
Bowler & Morus 2005, 24.
129 Bowler 1997 [1992], 180, 18; Olson 2008, 1.
130 Jones & Galison 1998, 3.
131 Galison 1998, 328; For the Goethean Urpflanze, see Waenerberg 1992, 28–
34.
132 Galison 1998, 329, 353.
55 T r Ac I N G T H E D E V E lO P M E N TS O f N AT U r A l H I S TO rY A N D T H E N AT U r A l S c I E N c E S
of idealising nature or revealing the metaphysical truth with pictures, the new scientists started to record natural objects mechanically. This objectiv-ity had nothing to do with the truth, but rather with a machine idea, where the machine served as a neutral and transparent operator. Thus objectivity replaced the earlier values of the subjective, interpretive and artistic, and as a consequence, the self-abnegating scientist using automatic registration with instruments took over. This was followed by the use of photography at the end of the nineteenth and at the beginning of the twentieth centuries, whereby atlas-makers started to produce systematic images of nature.133 In comparison, this is something that Timothy F. Mitchell connects with the ever-growing knowledge of geology and correspondingly as a turn towards naturalism.134 The period from the 1850s until the end of the century was also a time when building scientific institutions reached its peak. At the same time, the persona of the scientist was changing, and the values associated with science were accuracy, precision and self-abnegation. In comparison to the eighteenth-century genius and the nineteenth-century lay ascetic, the scientist in the twentieth century was considered an expert with an expe-rienced eye who could recognise patterns where an amateur saw nothing.
Galison points out, however, that this objective image was never a mere synonym for truth, certainty or consensus, and claims that when scientists started to depict what was actually seen, it meant sacrificing the universal-ism and truth of the metaphysical image.135
In The Fontana History of the Environmental Sciences (1992), the British science historian Peter J. Bowler alludes to the emergence of natural history as one of the essential turning points in the history of environmen-tal sciences. Correspondingly, it was important that people became aware of the fact that Earth was not static, but that dynamic changes had taken place and shaped both its surface and its structure. As a consequence, Earth had a history of its own, which defined its contemporary structure.136 This awareness was created through discussions concerning the age of our planet. In fact, in just a few decades, the age of Earth expanded from 6000 years to tens of millions of years. The same discussions also challenged the role of God as the creator of Earth and the universe.137 Bowler states how natural history and geology were regarded as ‘soft sciences’, in that natu-ral history was more concerned with collecting facts rather than explain-ing observations. After all, the transition from natural history into biology and geology was a complicated process.138 Even if some developments in
133 Galison 1998, 328−329.
134 Mitchell 1993, 190.
135 Galison 1998, 337, 355.
136 Bowler 1997 [1992], 19.
137 Bowler & Morus 2005, 103.
138 Bowler 1997 [1992], 18.
science education had already occurred in the eighteenth century, major progress was made in the following century.
During the early nineteenth century, a radically different under-standing of the nature of science emerged as part of a significant move-ment in the natural sciences in the German-speaking lands. Naturphiloso
phie tried to understand nature as a whole, and assumed that humans do not derive scientific laws from nature, but impose them on it.139 In a very different way to how we understand science today, Naturphilosophie as-sumed that the considerations of science were subjective. Science, more-over, had to be fully grounded in adequate metaphysical concepts. The tendencies connected with Naturphilosophie, however, were transformed and then abandoned from the 1830s onwards, and science became more and more connected with a materialistic idea of nature that also served the needs and purposes of industrialisation.140 This new materialism was favoured by those who regarded the search for information and knowl-edge as the collection of facts from the ‘objective’ outer world, which ex-isted independently of the human mind.141 In this development, the role of experience and especially sensory experience gained more and more ground. As a consequence, the empirical approach of the time, based on scientific methods in which observation and experiments formed the core of science, was widely applied in the natural sciences, where the role of the observer was emphasised. I would suggest that we can see this develop-ment also in the arts, and hence in landscape painting.