UTOPIA

The concept for an ideal society was outlined by Thomas More in his 1516 text Utopia, which described an island nation inhabited by a frugal and democratic society. Agricultural duties were shared among the citizens and even the highest elected officials lived without ostentation. Useful crafts and trades were taught to all, and the oversight of masters assured that everyone worked hard.[1] More was provided with models for his self-governed utopia by accounts from the New World of native societies living communally and close to nature.

Earlier traditions of a primordial “Golden Age” of peace and prosperity were inherited from the Greek poets. The site of this idyllic paradise was said to be Arcadia, a wild area of Greece inhabited by pastoralists living in harmony with nature. During the Renaissance, the interest in classical Greek culture revived the concept of Arcadia, which aligned with the Christian Garden of Eden. Works such as Aegidius Saedler’s sixteenth-century etching of a pastoral scene depicted rural tranquillity, with resting herders in a landscape of gnarled trees, gushing streams, and rustic villages.

The French artist Claude Lorrain brought a new naturalism to the idyllic landscape genre, refined by his practice of sketching outdoors. His work focused on evanescent light effects on sky and water, and subtle atmospheric perspective, reinforced by dark foreground shadows. His scenes are situated in particular passing moments—a shade-dappled morning or luminous sunset—but the effect is one of suspended time, where the viewer is afloat in a dissolving mist of light and shadow.

A colonial version of Arcadia appears in Joseph Lycett’s serene landscape The Sugar Loaf Mountain, near Newcastle, NSW (1824). The vegetation is neither European nor Australian, but a tropical invention, while the native inhabitants in the shadowed foreground find their paradise invaded by huntsmen and their hounds. 

A more contemporary version of utopia is suggested in Sally Robinson’s Beach Crossing (1975), where a family on holiday crosses the road after a beach visit. The transition is marked by pedestrian crossing stripes and marshalling signposts: a fleeting immersion in a sunstruck idyll.

(A.T.)

[1] “16th Century Dreams: Thomas More,” British Library: Learning: Dreamers and Dissenters, http://www.bl.uk/learning/histcitizen/21cc/utopia/more1/moreutopia.html.