Localisation of the painter’s canvas: landscape paintings from the Iron Mountains (Czech Republic)

Abstract

Landscape has always been the focus of artistic interest. Landscape is also the object of research interest of geographers, and it offers a field for cooperation between art and geography. Our study focuses on landscape painting as an important source in identifying landscape changes. We focused on discovering the location where the painter placed his canvas. We used Czech landscape paintings from the end of the nineteenth century in the Iron Mountains. We have combined information about paintings and their authors with terrain analysis in GIS. We have carried out field research and consulted a painter to localise the locations where the landscapes were painted. Main map depicts the sites of selected landscape paintings from where the painters captured the image of the landscape. Our proposed combination of terrain analysis with the information about the paintings and the painters is a convenient way to identify the sites of the paintings.

Editorial: Perspectives on the contemporary art-geoscience interface

“…The other papers in this Special Issue are less concerned with creating or analysing the conditions whereby individuals from different disciplines can work together, but rather about making use of art for more scientific ends, re-purposing scientific data and products for more artistic ends, and/or exploring the sometimes blurred boundaries between what might traditionally be considered scientific imagery and visual art. Frajer and Šimáček's (2019) study investigates the use of landscape paintings as a potentially important source of information on historical landscape changes, focusing on examples of late nineteenth century paintings of the Iron Mountains in the Czech Republic. Combining information about the paintings and the artists from secondary sources (including consultations with a renowned expert on the Iron Mountains paintings) with analyses of fields of visibility using a Digital Elevation Model within a Geographical Information System (GIS), they produce a 1:40 000 scale map that identifies the sites where the paintings were undertaken.…”

“…Teams may include individual artists working alongside scientists (Nicholson et al, 2019;Shugar et al, 2019). Art-geoscience need not even involve collaboration across the art-science divide sensu stricto, for single individuals or small teams from predominantly science backgrounds may work with artistic matter to achieve scientific insights (Frajer & Šimáček, 2019) or re-purpose scientific material to create images with aesthetic appeal (Mossa et al, 2019;Mould, 2019); . the wide range of artistic practice that is applied to geoscience data and concepts to 'map' or to create other visual outputs (e.g.…”

Impact of the Cartographer’s Position and Topographic Accessibility on the Accuracy of Historical Land Use Information: Case of the Second Military Survey Maps of the Habsburg Empire

“…It would be particularly useful in reconstruction of the land use over long time [31]. Similarly, like for the landscape painters, optimal location characterized by the high visibility enabled proper landscape reconstruction [32]; we also assumed that for the cartographers verifying and updating detailed cadastral information in order to create military maps, visibility played crucial work. Although general rules of the measurements conducting [33,34], or organizational structure [35][36][37] of the Austrian military cartography is well recognized, little is known about the impact of the local landscape conditions, or human factor on the quality of their work [16].…”

Landscape Painting in the Research of Landscape Changes

“…A crucial precondition of using landscape paintings in land cover analyses is that their precise localisation and the time of their origin are known. So far, only a few studies have highlighted this precondition (Lacina & Halas, 2015;Frajer & Simacek, 2019). Another important issue is the reliability of depicting the real landscape at the time of the painting's origin.…”

“…Another important issue is the reliability of depicting the real landscape at the time of the painting's origin. Visual arts such as landscape painting were often utilised to express the relationship between humans and nature or determine perception and understanding of the environment (Frajer & Simacek, 2019). Some artworks are very realistic and capture a lot of interesting details and information.…”