i find it very interesting that you qualify this reading of these paintings as ‘antihuman’ and ‘antinatural’. why? why is this style of painting and representing nature so fundamentally human, in your eyes, that any criticism of it is against those things. We take our understanding of nature and humanity for granted, and forget that our way is not the only way of understanding things. This is is very clearly shown in this article, as we see that portraying nature as these artists did is not unbiased either, and directly contradicts other cultures view of what it means to be human, what is nature, and what it means to be in relationship with nature. I don’t think that indigenous ways of understanding and being, and pointing out that british artists do not speak for all humans on this matter, is antihuman and antinatural.

I’m sorry you found this article so negative. I must agree with you in that I have a strong interest in exposing colonial undertones wherever I may find them, and so the purpose of this particular post is to bring them to the fore. It is a tricky one for me though, as I personally find many of these paintings (as part of the wider excoticism genre) strikingly beautiful, and extremely well painted. However I found it important to peel back the beauty of these works and dig a little deeper into their purpose and the artists’ own preconceptions. I shall try harder to highlight the beauty, alongside any negative undertones in future!