An exploration of shifting landscapes—both real and represented—in nineteenth-century France and the role of images in both picturing and producing those shifts   What is the relationship between land and landscape? This engaging study examines the role landscape depictions played in the formation of modern France and reveals how art and visual culture contributed to the physical and symbolic shaping of the nation. Spanning more than a century, from the post-revolutionary period through to the early twentieth century, Land into Landscape explores political and environmental shifts alongside changes in landscape representation across a variety of media, including paintings, photographs, prints, porcelain, and maps.   Through this broad and diverse set of images—by artists such as Paul Cézanne, Gustave Courbet, Théodore Rousseau, and Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, as well as lesser-known figures—Kelly Presutti contends that representational problems were also political problems, which often required drastic solutions on the part of the state. In the nineteenth century, France’s forests were replanted, its wetlands were drained, its coasts were secured, and its mountains restored. Landscapes and their inhabitants, however, could resist being co-opted as emblems of a greater ideal. The book therefore addresses the tension between a place and its representation—a matter of heightened urgency in a moment when we are once again struggling to both see and manage our environment. “A vital addition to the growing material turn in art history. . . . Presutti reveals the depth of visual, social, and environmental analysis that lies in representations of land and water while also reminding readers that neither space is ever neutral.”—Margaryta Golovchenko, CAA.reviews “Original, wide-ranging, and beautifully produced. . . . The connections that Presutti makes between representations of landscape and the rise of landscape preservation raise important questions about how the nineteenth century would later shape debates over environmental protection.”―Caroline Ford, H-Net “Original and compelling, Land into Landscape will invigorate the field of nineteenth-century French landscape studies and serve as a model for a new kind of scholarship.”—Michelle Foa, author of Georges Seurat: The Art of Vision “Bringing together ideas from multiple disciplines and recent developments in ecocriticism, Presutti’s study expands and deepens our understandings not only of art, geography, and land management in nineteenth-century France, but also of landscape art in general.”—Greg M. Thomas, author of Art and Ecology in Nineteenth-Century France: The Landscapes of Théodore Rousseau “Presutti reveals the powerful role of images in transforming the shared perception of territory and in forging national identity grounded in the land. This magisterial study will be indispensable to anyone interested in French history, art, and culture.”—Ewa Lajer-Burcharth, author of The Painter’s Touch: Boucher, Chardin, Fragonard Kelly Presutti is assistant professor of history of art and visual studies at Cornell University.