The Art and Science of Changing Landscapes

A recent article in The New York Times, What Did the Hudson River School Painters See? explores the way in which scientists are using landscape paintings to explore the ecological changes in our environment. 

The author of the article, art historian Kim Beil, based at Stanford University, followed the Hudson River School Art Trail, to compare the works of artists who painted the pastoral landscapes 150 years ago with the way in which the landscapes look today.

“Being able to see the past helps scientists, as well as the general public, escape what’s known in ecology as “shifting baseline syndrome” — the tendency of each new generation to accept the current state of the environment as normal.” Beil wrote.

Both scientists and art historians, contributed to the research study, titled. An interdisciplinary framework for evaluating 19th century landscape paintings for ecological research. 

An advantage of using artwork, rather than just appraising current conditions of an area, according to Dr. Dana Warren, the lead author of the study, is that many of the paintings done about 150 years ago show what had been the complete structure of an area.

The overview of the paper explains, “As we contemplate the future of forest landscapes under changing climate conditions and land-use demands, there is increasing value in studying historic forest conditions and how these landscapes have changed following past disturbances. Historic landscape paintings are a potential source of data on preindustrial forests with highly detailed, full-color depictions of overstory and understory environments. They display key details about forest community composition, microhabitat features, and structural complexity from a time well before the advent of color photography.”

Artists can interpret a landscape and not paint a precise, or scientific interpretation, of an area. Their vision is still valuable, especially when viewed through the lens of changing environments, cultural mores and societal shifts.

Even more modern and contemporary artists, like Thomas Hart Benton, Anthony Thieme and Wolf Kahn, can give us a sense of time and place.

“You have to be able to see the past,’ Dr. Warren said, ”in order to understand where you stand today.”

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