ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on two Dutch artists who bring together the visual arts with natural history: Willem Roelofs and Vincent van Gogh. It attempts to recognize a new category of art historical inquiry, one predicated on shifting artistic responses to the natural world that were beginning to be seen in the nineteenth century, responses that challenged rather than upheld dominant anthropocentric discourses. The chapter argues for the recognition of the boundary-breaking figure of an “artist-natural scientist-environmentalist,” putting forth both visual works and the thus expanded role of the artist as central considerations. Roelofs’s landscapes were appreciated by many, including aspiring young artists such as Vincent van Gogh, who shared Roelofs’s love of the natural world, a fascination that included its entomological inhabitants. Van Gogh’s engagement with nature predated his artistic ambitions, however, and was evident from an early age.
