At the Fogg Museum there is on view a showing of landscapes in prints covering five centuries. Landscapes have always been closely associated with prints and have given an incentive to the most varied techniques and talents.

Landscape in etching has a fairly definite starting point. That is Durer's plate known as "The Cannon," shown in a fine impression. Remarkable in every way, it stands as the first pure landscape print, as an achievement in panoramic composition, as his last etching. It is all in line, individual strokes that build up the texture of the earth, even the tone of the sky.

It was not strange that such a penetration into a new field inspired other ventures in landscape. There comes Hendrik Goltzins, the engraver, whose two woodcut prints in great boldness of line, alone of all the early examples could be safely hung beside the strength of the "Cannon." There also was Augustin Hirschvogel, the etcher, whose print betrays the limited grasp of landscape forms in his day and there is Lautensack who loses himself in the struggle to record the whole tangle of a forest.

Still in the same linear method, but with constantly growing understanding of its limits, are the early Dutchmen, Zeeman and van Velde, who introduced the water of canals and the texture of buildings. Much better is Jacob Ruysdael, who brought into etching his mastery of tree forms and fields. Pure landscape, however, in line etching, seems finally attained by Claude Lorrain.