Abstract Archibald Geikie was interested in art and produced c. 700 images in various media. Geikie’s drawings and watercolours evolved in relation to the tradition of links between geology and fine art. This tradition is important in considering Geikie’s visual output. His work in the Highlands and Lowlands of Scotland, in England and in France both related to that tradition and responded to differing visual codes of representation in these locations at the time he worked. Specifically, Geikie utilized a Romantic aesthetic while painting in the Scottish Highlands and adopted a more Realist approach in the Lowlands. In France and in England, his visual language can be related to well-established contemporary modes of expression. The significance of these adaptations is discussed.

Abstract Sir Archibald Geikie’s uncle, Walter Geikie (1795–1837), was one of the most remarkable artists working in Edinburgh in the early nineteenth century. During childhood he had contracted a fever that left him unable to hear or speak. Yet this lifelong disability did not prevent him from pursuing an artistic career. He became a prolific and highly-regarded professional artist, and ultimately was elected as a member of the Scottish Academy. Working as a draughtsman, printmaker and painter, Walter Geikie focused on the portrayal of Edinburgh’s poor and working classes, and the depiction of their local environments. His genre studies are full of empathy and wit, while his topographical work is strikingly detailed. Geikie’s scenes of ordinary Scottish life avoided the nineteenth-century tendency towards lofty moralizing or grotesque caricature. Instead, his images of pedlars, fisherfolk, markets and fairgrounds convey a profound sense of honesty. This chapter traces the life and career of Walter Geikie, from the struggles of his early childhood to the extraordinary achievements of his maturity. His distinctive artistic style is discussed and his legacy is analysed.

Abstract The career of the Austrian-born landscape painter Eugene von Guérard (1811–1901) was defined by his travels, which took him to Italy and Germany in the 1830s and 1840s and to Australia and New Zealand between 1852 and 1882. Today he is recognized as one of Australia’s greatest nineteenth-century landscape painters. His formative years coincided with the emergence of geology as an independent scientific discipline and a growing awareness in the wider community of the role played by volcanic activity and other geological processes in the formation of the Earth’s geomorphology. This new understanding was particularly pertinent to landscape painters, whose very subject was the form of the land; in Germany, where von Guérard trained and worked between 1838 and 1852, its relevance for landscape painters was emphasized by the influential natural scientist Alexander von Humboldt and the scientist, landscape painter and art theorist Carl Gustav Carus. They argued that the artist should paint from a geologically informed perspective. Von Guérard’s interest in volcanic geology was sparked by his experiences in southern Italy, consolidated in Germany on expeditions through the Harz and Eifel regions and then fully realized in response to the landscapes of southeastern Australia. Through his informed portrayal of sites of geological significance in each hemisphere and through the cultural value invested in them as a consequence of his depiction of them, von Guérard epitomized that recently conceived construct: the geotourist.

Abstract The first evidence of tourism on the Dutch coast can be found in drawings and etchings from the end of the sixteenth century. In this period Holland developed into one of the most urbanized regions of Europe. The interest in landscape originated in the towns. The first scenes depicted are those of mass tourism on the beach: sensation-mongers drawn to the beach by whales, sailing cars and departing kings and queens. Somewhat later the dune landscape became a main recreational focus, in which the physical aspects of the landscape were also appreciated. Around the town of Haarlem, individuals and small groups of people started exploring the dune landscape. In the wake of this new interest, landscape painting developed as an artistic genre. It became the most popular genre in the first half of the seventeenth century, and Haarlem developed as a centre for landscape painters. This paper discusses geomorphological features and geotourism engagement as depicted in several of the early etchings and landscape paintings.

Steno’s life was punctuated by two conversions: (1) from anatomy and medicine to geology, and (2) from Lutheran to Roman Catholic confession. Why was Steno (1638–1686) motivated to solve geological problems soon after he entered the Tuscan region of Italy? Was there any link between his scientific conversion and the religious one, which occurred almost simultaneously and produced a revolution in his life? The origin of marine fossils found in mountains had been debated in Italy for one and a half centuries. Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) had already given a modern scientific explanation for the problem. Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522–1605) later tackled the problem with an experimental-taxonomic approach (his famous museum and studio), and it was he who coined the word “geology” in 1603. Italy provided spectacular exposures of rocky outcrops that must have impressed the Danish scientist who had lived in the forested north European lowlands. Since the time of Giotto and his successors, such as Mantegna, Pollaiolo, Leonardo, and Bellini, the imposing Italian landscape had stimulated the visualization of geology. Inevitably, science and art merged perfectly in the work of painter and paleontologist Agostino Scilla (1629–1700). Steno was methodologically skilled and intellectually curious and was thus open to the stimuli that Italy had to offer in order to unwittingly rediscover, after Leonardo, the principles of geology and to solve the problem of fossils. Steno’s inclination to detailed “anatomical” observation of natural objects and processes as well as his religious conversion were influenced by his acquaintance with the circle of Galileo Galilei’s (1564–1647) disciples who formed the Accademia del Cimento. They were firm Roman Catholic believers. To the inductive mild rationalist and open-minded Steno, this connection could not be dismissed, and it prepared him for changing his paradigms for the sake of consistency. This occurred when a Corpus Domini procession triggered a revelation and led to his religious conversion.