1. V: Defining “Americaness” Part 2
4/19/2019
V: Defining “Americaness” Part 2
• Later Hudson River School: Painter as Prophet
• Edward Hicks, “The Peaceable Kingdom”
• Transcendentalism
• The Luminists: Frederick Church & etc.
4/19/2019
Dr. Nick Melczarek 2004

2. Later Hudson River School: Painter as Prophet
4/19/2019
Later Hudson River School: Painter as Prophet
Named after the Hudson River area that flowed through the Catskills (Kaaterskill) area.
A “school” of landscape artists who found the divine reflected in the natural world.
First group in American art to appreciate the American landscape for its own merits.
Each artist eventually created more fantastical allegorical landscape paintings, based on the natural world by romanticized to fit Christian teachings and sentiment.
The painter becomes a prophet of Biblical times to come, by reflecting the natural world which is a reflection of God.
American landscape as ideal or holy place.
Examples in Pohl: Cropsey (p.142) & Duncanson (p.143)
4/19/2019
Dr. Nick Melczarek 2004

3. Edward Hicks: “The Peaceable Kingdom”
Cf. Pohl. Pp , plates
Situated Biblical narrative within the American wilderness.
Inspired by particular Biblical image; see Pohl p.144
Directly quotes West and others, and alludes to Quaker history.
Sentimentalized Christian imagery through the landscape and fauna.
Question: what message would Hicks’ paintings convey to viewers? What effect does his visually spelling out Biblical narrative in American landscape have?

4. Transcendentalism (& Romanticism)
Reaction to increasing industrialization in the North -- machinery, loss of natural landscape, growing gulf between rich and poor.
: cotton gin, sewing machine, telegraph, first American “factories.”
Reformist, idealistic, humanitarian, abolitionist, highly literary.
Grew out of English Romanticism:
moral enthusiasm
faith in the individual and intuitive perception; rejected rationalism
presumed goodness of natural world over corruption of human-made society
Sought “transcendent” truths beyond human reason and senses, guided by intuition.

5. Transcendentalism cont.
The “Oversoul” -- power for goodness of which all things are a part and from which all things come.
Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Self-Reliance” (1841);humans as part of Universe’s absolute good.
Henry David Thoreau: “Civil Disobedience” (1849/66), Walden (1854); divinity in nature’s “unspotted innocence”
Importance of imagination over reason: mystical, individual, democratic. (Poe, Bryant, Longfellow, Whitman)
In art, asymmetry over symmetry; inspiration from ruins; gothicism over neoclassicism.

6. The “Luminists”: Frederick Church & etc.
Later so-named after the “luminous” quality of their work: an equally-distributed “glow.”
Little obvious use of chiaroscuro.
“Pastoral”: scenes of idyllic nature, shepherds; urban fantasies of rural life.
Smaller-sized canvases than Cole or Trumbull’s; often smaller-scale landscapes than Church’s.
Painting w/in the realm of the Transcendentalists
Mostly from the Atlantic coast & New England; reacting to increasing industrialization in the North.

7. Frederick Church ( )
Successor to Cole; more directly inspired by landscape than Cropsey, Duncanson, or Hicks.
Often used composite, or “cosmic” landscapes: vistas from different places seemlessly collected to create an overall artistic impression -- landscapes of the mind.
Least number of human inhabitants in his paintings.
Sometimes theatrically displayed his paintings, including real foliage, for added emotional impact on his paying audience.
See in Pohl To the Memory of Cole (p.147), The Heart of the Andes (p.148), Twilight in the Wilderness (p.150).

8. Church cont.
New England Scenery (1851)

9. Church cont.
Niagara (1857)
How does this representation compare/contrast to Trumbull or Cole’s (Pohl pp )?
What about the Sublime / Beautiful / Picturesque?
If allegories on America, what do they say / see?

10. Other Luminists: Lane, Kensett, Heade
Pohl p. 151, plates
Ambivalently caught between awesome power of nature, human possibility, and calm and serenity.
Set stage for further ambivalent nationalist artwork that would promote and romanticize Westward expansion during and after the Civil War.

11. “Defining ‘Americanness’ (Part 2)” themes, terms, concepts, artists
4/19/2019
Hudson River School
Edward Hicks
Peaceable Kingdom
Transcendentalism & Romanticism
Reformist, idealistic, humanitarian, abolitionist, highly literary.
moral enthusiasm; faith in the individual and intuitive perception; rejected rationalism
presumed goodness of natural world over corruption of human-made society
“transcendent” truths beyond human reason and senses, guided by intuition.
Importance of imagination over reason: mystical, individual, democratic.
In art, asymmetry over symmetry; inspiration from ruins; gothicism over neoclassicism.
“Luminists”: Church & etc.
“composite “cosmic” landscapes
Niagara
4/19/2019
Dr. Nick Melczarek 2004