10 Postcards from Luscious Landscapes

1. Grant Wood, Young Corn, 1931

When I first think of landscape, I think green. And what a lush cornucopia of green we have for our first postcard! This painting has a deliciously rural feel—rolling hills, stylized trees and hedges, and the fresh growth of crops on patchwork fields. The promise of a future harvest is tantalizing, and an idyllic homestead is tucked into the edge of the painting. The artist, Grant Wood, is known for his work about rural communities in America, and this painting style was known as “Regionalism.” You probably know Wood better for his iconic work American Gothic.

2. Lucas van Valckenborch, Winter Landscape with Snowfall, 1575

Meanwhile in 16th-century Flanders, it is snowing! This painting has the feel of a Where’s Wally book—just look at how much is going on! In art history, this is known as the Wimmelbilder style, meaning a painting teeming with life. Lucas van Valckenborch was known for his detailed paintings of everyday life, and pioneered the genre of winter landscapes. I could look at this masterpiece for hours and still find new stories.

3. Maynard Dixon, The Cloud World, 1925

Moving from lots of people to almost no people, this vast cloudscape is in a very different location! If you look closely at the bottom edge, you can see the red buttes and dry desert of the American West, complete with two tiny figures on horseback. But dominating this painting are those sharp, geometric clouds. I’m thinking of popcorn, or marshmallows! It is by artist Maynard Dixon, and belongs to the Precisionism art movement. You can lose yourself in the grandeur of this astonishing, expansive landscape.

4. Akseli Gallen-Kallela, Lake Keitele, 1905

From the clouds falls the rain, into the lakes, rivers and seas. And so we move onto this almost abstract painting of Lake Keitele in Finland. The artist Akseli Gallen-Kallela, is best known for his illustrations for the Finnish mythic saga, the Kalevala. The blue grey tones give this image a meditative stillness. The zig zag patterns across the surface of the water, and the ripples in the foreground show us the movement of the light and the wind across the lake. Magical!

5. Edvard Munch, The Sun, 1910

One of my favourite paintings is Moonlight by Edvard Munch. And now I find out that he also painted sunlight! The setting is Norway, and a brilliant orb, sending out glittering rays, rises above a lake and mountain range. Feel the light and warmth reach out to you. Painted as part of a series for the University of Oslo, it represents enlightenment. Using bold, vibrant, radiant colors, this painting has quite a different mood to his most famous work The Scream. Majestic isn’t it?

6. Caspar David Friedrich, The Monk by the Sea, 1808

From the sun to the murky gloom of a cloudy beach. This painting calls you to lean in, to squint and look deep into the canvas. We see the tiny figure of a monk, a mere speck within the vastness of the sea and sky before him. German Caspar David Friedrich changed the nature of landscape painting with his focus on using landscape to evoke intense emotion and spiritualism. This style would be called Romanticism.

7. Dorrit Black, The Bridge, 1930

We are staying with the sea, but let’s not forget that landscape can include architecture, and industrial man-made objects. Artist Dorrit Black gives the building of Sydney Harbour the blocky, geometric Cubist treatment—in fact this is considered Australia’s first ever Cubist landscape painting. Cubism shows us multiple viewpoints in one painting, so if you are new to it, give it time. Black was a trailblazer in modern Australian art and her jewel-like colors here are mesmerizing.

8. Clarice Beckett, Evening Landscape, 1925

Staying with our Antipodean sisters, have you heard of Clarice Beckett? Her misty paintings of suburban and coastal Melbourne deserve a wider audience. Evocative and playing beautifully with tone, color, light, and shade, they whisk you away to the Southern hemisphere through the 1920s and 1930s. The diffused light dissolves the boundaries between land, sea, and sky. Utterly charming!

9. Claude Monet, Grainstacks, 1890

Ah, the sun is setting and we are down to our last two postcards. Claude Monet painted 25 (yes, 25!) versions of these haystacks. Leaving behind 2,000 paintings,  Claude Monet was a key figure in the French Impressionist movement. And yes, you would probably recognize loads of those paintings! Impressionist painters used vivid, natural colors and loose brushstrokes, often working outdoors. The light in this painting is captivating!

10. Winter Night in the Mountains, 1914

And so goodnight! Our last postcard is from Norway. Obsessed with mountains, Harald Sohlberg, was a lonely, melancholic artist. In this winter scene, we can really feel the mountain air cooling as darkness falls. Cobalt blues dominate the work, with blankets of snow under a cloudless sky. A single bright star twinkles between the two mountains. Majestic! This painting was actually chosen by a public audience as “The National Painting of Norway,” but Sohlberg is sadly not well-known outside of his own country.

How did you enjoy our 10 images? Our Landscapes postcard set showcases stunning reproductions of landscape masterpieces from across art history. The collection captures the beauty and diversity of natural scenes from around the world. Pin them up, frame them, send them to loved ones, use them as creative writing prompts or just keep them to hand for inspiration! You can order them here.