Along the Juniata: Thomas Cole and the Dissemination of American Landscape Imagery

by Nancy Siegel

Along the Juniata focuses on the dissemination of American landscape imagery in the early to mid-19th century. Through a variety of media including drawings, paintings, engravings, and decorative arts, images of the American landscape were translated and reproduced in large numbers to provide an eager audience with examples of patriotic views and scenes of natural wonders. This book investigates the art of Thomas Cole as representative of this process and examines the means by which an 1827 drawing by the artist of a scene in the Allegheny Mountains was transformed into a painting, engraved copies, and adorned imported Staffordshire ceramics designed to appeal specifically to an American audience. The widespread use of this popular image by Cole demonstrates the cultural demand for images of the American landscape as it was fueled by a period of increased nationalism during the first half of the 19th century. Additionally, a selection of Hudson River School paintings and engravings illustrates the popularity of American landscape imagery as it appeared in painted and printed formats. Artists include Thomas Cole, Asher Brown Durand, Albert Bierstadt, John Frederick Kensett, John William Casilear, Jervis McEntee, Edmund Darch Lewis, Norton Bush, David Johnson, and Arthur Fitzwilliam Tait. These paintings are all recent discoveries and are illustrated for the first time. AUTHOR Nancy Siegel is director of the Juniata College Museum of Art and assistant professor of art history. She is the author of The The Artistry of a Nineteenth-Century Family of Painter-Etchers and Uncommon Visions of Juniataís Past.

150 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Nancy Siegel is Professor of Art History and Culinary History at Towson University and specializes in American landscape studies, underrepresented women artists of the 19th century, print culture, and culinary history of the 18th and 19th centuries. Her most recent book Susie M. Barstow: Redefining the Hudson River School complements the 2023-2024 touring exhibition she is co-curating for the Thomas Cole National Historic Site, Women Reframe American Landscape: Susie Barstow & Her Circle/Contemporary Practices. This exhibit builds upon her 2010 exhibition, Remember the Ladies: Women of the Hudson River School. She is co-curating a 2025 exhibition, Curious Taste: The Appeal of British Satire and completing the manuscript, Political Appetites: Revolution, Taste, and Culinary Activism in the Early Republic which is in development as a documentary for PBS. She provides historical cooking demonstrations and lectures widely on landscape and culinary histories in addition to serving as a culinary consultant for museums and non-profit institutions. Dr. Siegel has also authored/edited publications such as The Cultured Canvas: New Perspectives on American Landscape Painting; River Views of the Hudson River School; Within the Landscape: Essays on Nineteenth-Century American Art and Culture; Along the Juniata: Thomas Cole and the Dissemination of American Landscape Imagery; and The Morans: The Artistry of a Nineteenth-Century Family of Painter-Etchers. Her work has also appeared in Gastronomica, The Burlington Magazine, and Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide.
She has been the recipient of numerous research grants and fellowships including: the Eccles Centre for American Studies at the British Library; the Omohundro Institute of Early American History & Culture- Georgian Papers Programme Fellowship at Windsor Castle, Windsor, UK; Terra Foundation for American Art; New England Regional Fellowship Consortium: Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Massachusetts Historical Society, Connecticut Historical Society, Historic Deerfield; the Smithsonian American Art Museum; the American Antiquarian Society; Yale University; Winterthur Museum & Country Estate; the Massachusetts Historical Society; the Culinary Historians of Chicago; the New York Public Library; the Tavolozza Foundation, and the Furthermore Foundation.