Gerrit van Battem (1636-1684), A landscape with traveller, c.1670, gouache

Landscape as an autonomous subject developed relatively late in the history of European art, first flourishing in the years around 1600. Before then artists employed landscape simply as a setting for their narrative subjects, or in the case of Leonardo da Vinci as a vehicle for his personal preoccupations, such as his enigmatic Deluge (no. 6).

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Italian landscape developed in two distinct strands: an atmosphere of classical calm and balance often used for subjects from mythology, exemplified by Claude's Apulian Shepherd (no. 33); and the romanticism of sweeping panoramas and sudden shifts of scale seen in Guercino's Landscape with a bridge (no. 32).

Many finished drawings were produced for the collectors' market rather than as studies for paintings - Canaletto's View on the Grand Canal (no. 52) was one of scores of seductive depictions of Venice purchased by George III. Eighteenth-century Britain saw the rise of watercolour as an independent art form, and at the forefront of this movement were the Sandby brothers, Thomas and Paul, exemplified by their View of the St Paul's Cathedral from an idealised bridge (no. 57) and Windsor Castle on a rejoicing night (no. 58).