Romantic Landscapes

About Romantic Landscapes

Seeing romantic landscape paintings of sublime, ancient abandoned buildings in their natural environments first made me realize just how evocative visual art can be.

I was in middle school at the time, and I remember the wonder I felt upon seeing images of the luminous landscape paintings of Bierstadt, Cole, Church, and others of the Hudson River School. The feeling has never left me, and my attempts to emulate the qualities of romanticism and luminism in my own color and black and white photographs has been a life-long passion.

My favorite quality of romantic landscapes is how they beautifully dramatize the courtship of light, land, water, and the presence of man on that courtship. Such scenes tell tales about Man’s adapting nature to his needs, and sometimes how nature defeats those very intentions. I find such tales speak volumes about our tenuous relationship with nature in all its forms.

Read my article on what it takes to create romantic landscapes in the luminism style.

J Riley Stewart

Landscapes full of light, and shadow, and human story.