Chase starts off with an interesting depiction of how we conceive sceneries, listing out some characteristics that we unconsciously register in our heads such as “because of dust particles in the air, mountains in the distance appear blue or lavender against the sky”. She goes on to compare how different artists from different regions characterized common sceneries, starting off with the Egyptian. The Egyptian’s perception of his world is very geometric – the pool is rectangular, ripples are zigzag lines, and every species has a distint look that differentiates one from another. The Assyrian painter also shows things in profile – trees and shrubs are shown in silhouettes, and people are featured in the scenery as well. Greek artists, unlike the Egyptians and Assyrians, seem to center their paintings around human figures, and not nature. The purpose of rocks and mountains was to provide a setting for the people, unlike the former two paintings, where nature was the subject of the paintings. Ancient Romans, not unlike the Greeks, used the landscape to depict the power and authority of humans. The Chinese, however, considered the landscape to be the most important subject of paintings because it “suggested both the moods of man and the infinity of God”. These landscapes were often accompanied with poems and were strictly black and white.

In Italy, landscape was only featured as a background for people and the story they told, but for some, such as Hubert van Eyck, the background was just as important as the story it held. In these cases, the story itself is very impressive, but the landscape around it makes it even more so. To Pieter Bruegel, the human figure was only something that had stumbled upon the landscape and the beauty that it held. Soon, starting with the Dutch, painters became obsessed with the sky and the luminous effects the light had on the rest of the world. Artists soon wondered if they could paint a scenery, incorporating the light so it looked like the real thing. Later on, color and atmosphere came into attention. John Constable used a “fresher color, expressing a sense of moisture, of the possibility of growth in grass and trees”. This method of painting was soon brought over to America, where until then, landscape was just a backdrop for the human figures that acted on it. The pioneers of the Wild West did not need any more reminding of the beauty of the outdoor scenery. However, soon Americans dived into the beauty of the countryside and painted the Connecticut River Valley, the Hudson, the Adirondacks, the prairies, and the Rocky Mountains.

Then, artists began to express their emotions onto the canvas – not what they saw, but felt. Artists like Vincent van Gogh painted whirling stars and flame-like cypresses, and Cezanne painted a scenery which, in person, looks very dull.

The next chapter starts out with how light is so tricky to preserve – shadows and silhouettes blot out the subject in interest, and makes the whole scene look unnatural if not posed the right way. Artists have tried to catch the light in numerous ways – they made the human figure into a map, such as the Egyptians and Mesopotamians, flattening the human figure into two-dimensional profiles that overlap each other at times. The Greek, although not unlike the Egyptians, used profiles but expanded their knowledge of light to three-dimensions, though still slightly unnatural. The artists of the Middle Ages used lines and planes to portray light and how the human eye views it, and in the fifteenth century, artists began to study vision scientifically, “searching for the laws that govern the relations of sizes and shapes as they appear in space.” As time went on and as artists experimented with light, three dimensional shapes sprang to life and paintings became more realistic.