Update
Show Summary Details

Page of

PRINTED FROM OXFORD REFERENCE (www.oxfordreference.com). (c) Copyright Oxford University Press, 2023. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single entry from a reference work in OR for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

date: 11 February 2025

aerial perspective (atmospheric perspective) 

Source:
The Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists
Author(s):

Ian Chilvers

A term applied to (i) the atmospheric effect whereby distant landscape features look more hazy and bluish than near ones, and (ii) the imitation of this effect in painting. Dust and moisture particles in the atmosphere cause some scattering of light as it passes through it, the amount of scattering depending on the wavelength (hence colour) of the light. Short wavelength (blue) light is scattered most and long wavelength (red) is scattered least. This is the reason why the sky is blue and why distant dark objects appear to lie behind a veil of blue. The term ‘aerial perspective’ (... ...

Access to the complete content on Oxford Reference requires a subscription or purchase. Public users are able to search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter without a subscription.

Please subscribe or login to access full text content.

If you have purchased a print title that contains an access token, please see the token for information about how to register your code.

For questions on access or troubleshooting, please check our FAQs, and if you can''t find the answer there, please contact us.