Art: Under the Open Sky

Landscape painting, like abstract art, goes on forever. Today abstractionism is the height of fashion, but thousands of housewives and businessmen amuse themselves by painting surprisingly competent pictures of vacation scenes. A century ago, landscapes were all the rage with the professionals—but then the hobbyists mainly contented themselves with abstractions such as hooked rugs and patchwork quilts, or semi-abstractions such as duck decoys. Last week the Currier Gallery of Art in Manchester, N.H. staged a 19th-century landscape exhibition called "Artists in the White Mountains" that was bound to draw praise from contemporary...