AMERICAN ART

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AMERICAN ART
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Background pre-1825

• Portraiture
• European influence
• American Naive style
• Flat design, spare painting (Ammi Phillips,
  1788-1865)

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European influence

• John Singleton Copley, Paul Revere, 1768

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Naïve style

• Ammi Phillips, Portrait of Harriet Campbell, 1815

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Naïve style

• Edward Hicks, The Peaceable Kingdom (1834)

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AMERICAN ROMANTICISM

• AFTER STYLE OF EUROPEAN ROMANTICS
• IDEALISTIC VISION OF AMERICA NEW GARDEN OF EDEN
• NOSTALGIA FOR PRE-ROMANTIC DAYS
• LANDSCAPES
• EXPANSION WESTWARD
• TRANSCENDENTALISM

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Formal Principles of New Landscapes

• Not merely topographic but interpretive and
  poetic views of nature
• Depictions of harmony in nature

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Subjects of New Landscapes

• Home in the Wilderness
• Juncture of civilization and wilderness
  Wilderness on the doorstep
• Incursions of civilization and progress

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EMERSON THOUGHTS ON ART

• ARTISTS SHOULD PRODUCE WORKS OF ART FOR ALL MEN
  AND PAINTING SHOULD BE A VEHICLE THROUGH WHICH
  THE UNIVERSAL MIND COULD REACH THE MIND OF
  MANKIND. ART IS NOT THE EXPRESSION OF THE
  ARTISTS OWN FEELINGS.

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Thomas Cole, The Hunters Return (1845)
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Thomas Cole, Home in the Woods (1847)
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Thomas Cole, Daniel Boone Sitting at the Door of
his Cabin on the Great Osage Lake, Kentucky, 1826
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Style

• Juxtaposition of elements
• Use of panoramic views and small human figures to
  show immensity of nature and insignificance of
  human beings
• Distant or elevated perspective for the viewer
• Symbolic use of light and darkness
• Contrast of diverse elements to show the unity of
  nature

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Thomas Cole, Scene from Last of the Mohicans
Cora Kneeling at the Feet of Tamenund (1827)
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Thomas Cole, The Clove, Catskills (1827)
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Sublime, Beautiful, Picturesque

• Longinus, On the Sublime (AD 50)
• Resulting from spirit--a spark from writer to
  reader--rather than technique
• Edmund Burke, Philosophical Inquiry into the
  Origins of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful
  (1757-1759)
• Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment (1790)
• Beauty is finite the sublime is infinite

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Thomas Moran, The Grand Canyon of the
Yellowstone, 1872
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Albert Bierstadt, A Storm in the Rocky Mountains
(1866)
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The Hudson River School

• Thomas Cole (1801-1848)
• Asher B. Durand (1796-1886)
• Thomas Doughty (1793-1856)
• John William Casilear

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Thomas Cole (1801-1848)

• The subject of art should
• be pure and lofty . . .a moral,
• religious, or poetic effect
• must be produced on the mind.

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Thomas Cole, The Ox-Bow (1836)
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Asher B. Durand (1796-1886)

• Began as an engraver turned to painting
• Letters on Landscape Painting (1855) in The
  Crayon
• Go first to nature to learn to paint landscape.

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Asher B. Durand, Kindred Spirits (1849)

• Thomas Cole and William Cullen Bryant
• See Bryants To Cole, the Painter, Departing for
  Europe.

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Panoramists and Luminists

• Second Generation of Hudson River school
• Style of Hudson River painters applied to other
  regions
• Rocky Mountains
• South America

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Practitioners

• Jasper Cropsey (1823-1900)
• Frederic E. Church (1826-1900)
• John Frederick Kensett (1816-1873)
• George Inness (1825-1894)
• Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902)

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Frederick Edwin Church

• Thomas Coles major pupil
• Full-length showpiece landscapes
• Falls of Niagara (1857)
• Heart of the Andes (1859)
• Landscape as symbol of divine
• American continent as new Eden
• Painted from nature, not notes and sketches

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Frederick Edwin Church, Falls of Niagara (1857)
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Twilight in the Wilderness (1860)
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CHURCH, COTOPAXI
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Albert Bierstadt, A Storm in the Rocky Mountains
(1866)
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Albert Bierstadt, Yosemite Valley (1875)
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WESTERN EXPANSION BINGHAM