The Planter's Prospect

by John Michael Vlach

"When nineteenth-century artists painted plantation scenes, they usually began with preparatory sketches made while standing in front of a planter's house or somewhere slightly below it. From either position, notes John Vlach, their gaze - and that of anyone who looked at the finished paintings - was necessarily directed upward. Instead of following the common compositional rule for landscape painting that called for a view from above, an outlook that fostered a feeling of mastery in the viewer, artists rendering plantation vistas employed a perspective that echoed the deference and...

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