Kenneth Clarke (1903–1983) was an English art historian, lecturer, eminent specialist in the field of Renaissance art, and the youngest ever director of London's National Gallery, holding the post from 1934 to 1945. Clarke's popularity was not limited to academia. He became widely known for the documentary series Civilization (1969), produced by the BBC and soon broadcast around the world. In 1946, Clark received an honorary professorship at the Slade School of Fine Art, Oxford. The lectures he gave to school students formed the basis of the book “Landscape in Art,” first published in 1949. Here the characteristic features of his author’s style were fully revealed: incredible erudition and a masterly ability for large-scale generalizations, thanks to which processes of immense magnitude presented in the form of a series of vivid and illustrative examples, correctness in handling the material, which from the first sentences reveals a great scientist, and gentle academic humor. And of course, the fascinating conviction that art is an integral part of life, a material manifestation of the greatness of the human spirit, which all the cataclysms that have shaken and are shaking humanity are powerless to break.