The Path							Pine Wood		Houses in Jounieh
Blue Shadows							The Olive Tree in the Storm		Red Window
Village of Zouk							Kfar Sama		Terraces
Mystic Tree							Summer Sunlight		Apparition
Harvest							Spring		Joy of Living
The Witness of a Tree							Meditation		Imprint of the Sun
Old Stone House in the Country							Furrows		House in Aramoun

Originally the landscape was only an accessory in art, forming a background for portraits, as in La Joconde, the Mona Lisa, or making up scenery for a composition. It was only in the 16th century that it became independent and in the 17th and 18th that it took on importance, with the English and French painters who worked in the open air. Landscape is Nature created in a human dimension through the creative artist, the man added to Nature.

In Lebanon, Joseph Matar made a revolutionary use of it through his choice and execution of motifs. In point of fact, the real motif is the artist himself, who picks on the Lebanese countryside going from the seashore up to the mountain summits, with the villages, the highly individual houses, the trees each having their particular character, the undergrowth, the plains, and the work in the fields, above all with its scenes of harvest time and the distant horizons.

Major elements are the light and color. In the landscape it is the light which is painted and which leaps out from the work. The true sun is the soul of the artist, while the paint models the forms and flows abundantly into furrows, the earth and volume. The rocks impose their presence, as do the yellowish or greenish skies, with quivering touches and movement. The storm, the spring, the seasons, the almond trees, the olive trees, the carob trees, all are expression and presence. The finished work is independent of its creator, having its own life and destiny and adorers.

The reproductions and postcards are something outside, as is the topography. Some landscapes have been done from memory.

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