Travel Reference
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of reality or a commensurate shard of a place
tourists believe to exist as they comprehend it -
the host country and community.
Similarly, just as photographs are not ideo-
logically free (matter included or excluded is the
statement), so painting also implies a choice of
the matter depicted and of structural qualities
and modes of depiction. In fact, painting presses
on one step further by allowing full rein to cre-
ativity and its very own nature is an admonition
to viewers that they are seeing through artistic
eyes and perspectives and in accordance with
the singular aesthetic-ideological framework
adopted by the painter. In that respect, painting
may be rendered less deceitful than photogra-
phy for the viewer is warned by the very sub-
stance of this medium as to the subjective
imprint left by the artist - his imagination and
creativity and thus painting - art at large (Sho-
hat and Stam, 2002) - may also prove to be a
perception-mediating device shaping reality
visually.
Modernist art was imbued by underpin-
ning how 'medium is message'; it therefore
remains an open issue to establish the message
construed by painting in its link with travel. This
though, is beyond the scope of this chapter.
Addressing this argument as to the most suitable
academic fi eld is not envisaged within the scope
of this essay as it focuses on matter represented
rather than on the painterly qualities of the
medium even if these might be mentioned,
especially when coming into play as part of the
message (Mitchell, 2002, provides ample dis-
cussion on the art/non-art argument).
Painting has over time, before and along-
side photography, contributed to shaping per-
spectives of the world as working and living
environments transformable into alluring spaces
of travel and leisure. This is especially true from
the 18th and 19th centuries onwards when
landscape and rural-related scenes came to fi g-
ure pre-eminently in Western painting thus fos-
tering a development in the link between art
(the aesthetic experience) and landscape/nature.
Once regarded as an inferior art form, land-
scape painting became infl uential and owner-
ship of landscape painting became associated
with affl uence and good taste (Aitchison et al .,
2002). Along with other less-known painters,
Turner and Constable contributed to the crystal-
lization of nature scenes associated with an
English love of nature and fostered an apprecia-
tion through art itself. Romanticism through its
focus on a healing nature determined the con-
sumption of landscape, which developed into a
prized commodity even as its importance as a
labour environment steadily declined. There is
an evident link between artistic mediation and
tourist consumption of place/space which led,
for example, to the designing of cultural maps
by the British Tourist Authority and to the estab-
lishment of a literary mode of tourism (Scotland,
Lake District, Hardy country; Aitchison et al .,
2002). The unmistakable indebtedness of
tourism to the art world is far more reaching
than present-day mass consumers of place can
acknowledge or even recall:
In the last quarter of the eighteenth century, the
aesthetic of the Picturesque became a fashion-
able way of contemplating the actuality of
scenery, consciously derived from painters'
compositions. Hitherto, art could imitate
landscape. Now, a landscape could imitate art.
The major infl uences included Claude, Ruisdael
and other members of the Dutch school, as well
as the quintessentially English landscapes of
Thomas Gainsborough, whose rustic scenes
such as The Woodcutter's Return (1773) and
The Watering Place (1777) portrayed a deep
countryside, untouched by the agricultural
improvements and enclosures which were by
now changing the face of much of the Midlands
and Eastern England.
(Aitchison et al ., 2002, p. 35)
The art-tourism link can be found in the habits
of travellers embarking on their Grand Tours
(sketching, reading literary texts related to cer-
tain landscapes, notably Byron's, or even get-
ting portrayed within a classical monument
scene by Panini) and modern tourists alike (the
latter, and depending upon their pocketbook,
driven not so much by art acquisition but by
taking delight in art appreciation).
The impressionist involvement with land
and seascapes - and with a space described as
picture sque, a word stressing the picture-like
quality of place - cannot be overlooked for the
considerable magnitude of nature-related set-
tings they portray, the leisure moments they
reveal or even the means of transport taken as
their compositional themes. The ineffable lumi-
nous quality of impressionist painting - resulting
from outdoor work - is the same as that to be
 
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