View of Box Hill, Surrey
1733
Oil on canvas
Purchased 1951
N05981
Lambert was one of the pioneers of landscape painting in early eighteenth-century Britain.
his painting presents the landscape without the sorts of buildings –palaces or an aristocratic estate – which traditionally featured in such views. Is this evidence of a new appreciation of nature for its own sake? Certainly, landscape became the focus for discussions about the relationship between painting and poetry, and aesthetic ideas such as beauty and the sublime.