LANDSCAPES WITHOUT PEASANTS

As nature has been humanized-the land settled and modern landscapes cr eated thanks to agricultural techniques-mankind's place in pictures of nature has shrunk over the centuries to the point of disappearing sin ce Impressionism. This has happened less because peasants have physica lly vanished from the real landscape (in fact, they were never as pres ent as during the second half of the 19th century in France) than beca use their symbolic role as mankind's special intermediary with nature, men and, in the past, with the religious sphere has waned. Whether in the plastic arts or literature, artistic representations often preced e historical events: in this case, the fact that peasants were no long er in the field of vision before disappearing from the fields.