Artistic Achievements

1
Artistic Achievements

• Americas Cultural Identity and a growing sense
  of Nationalism

2
Cultural Identity and Nationalism

• Early American writers and artists mimicked
  Europeans
• Many American artists trained and worked in
  Europe
• Americans were too interested in building up the
  country to waste time in the arts
• Puritanism discouraged time spent on the arts
  such as theater, painting, and novels it was
  considered a waste of time because it was not
  producing anything tangible.
• The outpouring and growth of national pride after
  the War of 1812 was reflected by new forms of
  art, architecture, and literature that celebrated
  a unique American character different from the
  Old World.

3
Painting

• Portraits
• Gilbert Stuart painted patriotic portraits of
  founding fathers
• Charles Wilson Peale painted 60 portraits of
  Washington
• John Trumbull painted Revolutionary War scenes
• Americas frontier preoccupation with survival
  and Puritan attitudes that art was a waste of
  time limited artistic development in early
  America
• Many of Americas artists trained and practiced
  in Europe where they could get work

4
Lewis and Clark by Charles Wilson Peale

5
John Trumbull Declaration of Independence
Signing
6
Hudson River School

• Nationalistic upsurge after War of 1812 led to
  American artists toward romantic landscape scenes
  like this one by Thomas Cole

7
Hudson River school of painting
8
National Literature

• Most literary writers came from the north (Mass
  and NY)
• Knickerbocker Group New York writers
• - Washington Irving (The Sketch Book, Rip Van
  Winkle, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow) Dutch
  Folktales
• - James Fenimore Cooper (Leatherstocking Tales,
  Last of the Mohicans)- adventure tales of
  American frontier heroes
• - William Cullen Bryant (Thanatopsis) - Poet

9
James Fenimore Cooper
Washington Irving
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
Rip Van Winkel
10
Transcendentalism

• Based on doctrines of Individualism,
  self-reliance and nature.
• Rejected the theory that all knowledge comes
  through the senses. Feelings are important and
  transcends rational thought
• Dignity of the individual was stepping stone to
  humanitarian reforms of the mid 19th century.
• Many transcendentalists were active in
  abolitionism and other reforms.

11
Transcendentalists

• Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Scholar) Essayists
  and speaker urged American writers to abandon
  European themes and write about America.
• Henry David Thoreau (Walden Or Life in the
  Woods, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience)
  influenced Gandhi and MLK
• Walt Whitman (Leaves of Grass) Poetry was
  celebration of democracy, American patriotism,
  American frontiersman, romantic and emotional

12
Transcendentalists

• Emerson Thoreau Whitman

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Other Literary Notables

• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Poet (Song of
  Hiawatha, Evangeline, The Courtship of Miles
  Standish) based on American themes
• John Greenleaf Whittier Poet whose work had
  great social influences that called for reforms
  against inhumanity, injustice and intolerance.
• Oliver Wendell Holmes Poet
• Louisa May Alcott Writer (Little Women)
• Emily Dickinson Poet

14
Literary Dissenters

• Edgar Allan Poe Short stories (The Raven, Fall
  of the House of Usher, Tell Tale Heart)
• Nathaniel Hawthorne (The Scarlet Letter) themes
  of good vs. evil, critic of Calvinism or
  Puritanism
• Herman Melville (Moby Dick) also themes of good
  vs. evil

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Nathaniel Hawthorne
Edgar Allen Poe