Landscape Painting

landscape painting, the depiction of natural scenery in art. Landscape paintings may capture mountains, valleys, bodies of water, fields, forests, and coasts and may or may not include man-made structures as well as people. Although paintings from the earliest ancient and Classical periods included natural scenic elements, landscape as an independent genre did not emerge in the Western tradition until the Renaissance in the 16th century. In the Eastern tradition, the genre can be traced back to 4th-century-ce China.

The following article treats only the Western tradition. For further information on other landscape painting traditions, search by country or region—e.g., Chinese painting, Japanese art, South Asian arts: Visual arts.