Nature and Culture: American Landscape and Painting, 1825-1875

by Barbara Novak

In this richly illustrated volume, Barbara Novak explains that for fifty extraordinary years, American society bestowed in the idea of Nature its most cherished ideals. Between 1825 and 1875 all kinds of Americans--artists, writers, scientists, as well as everyday citizens--believed that God
in Nature could resolve human contradictions, and that nature itself confirmed the American destiny. During these years Nature, God, and Man converged to become a trinity, and it was through the landscape painters, the leaders of this intellectual movement, that the nation was reminded of divine
benevolence "by keeping before their eyes the mountains, trees, forests, and lakes." Using diaries and letters of the artists as well as quotes from literary texts, journals, and periodicals, Novak illuminates the range of ideas projected on to the American landscape by painters such as Thomas Cole,
Albert Bierstadt, Frederic Edwin Church, Asher B. Durand, Fitz Hugh Lane, and Martin J. Heade, and writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, William Wordsworth, Théodore Rousseau, and Frederich Wilhelm Schelling.
Adding a rich new dimension to the discussion of nature's influence in America, Novak explains how religion, philosophy, science, and literature served as the support system for the idea of God in Nature. She shows that the idea of nature as a national vested interest was invaluable to a young
expanding nation, but ultimately this essentially monolithic view collapsed from within, undermined by the Civil War, Darwinism, and a burgeoning technological landscape. Taking American landscape painting in its golden era as a product of society, she examines the cultural background of paintings
as an index to their intrinsic meaning. She explains, for example, how new discoveries in science were made consonant with Deity, how religion itself permeated nature with the idea of Creation, and how the landscape artists were given the task of providing the images of nature that became the
national iconography. Novak goes on to demonstrate how American landscapists, handling rocks, clouds, plants, and other natural elements, paralleled and diverged from scientific developments, and also how the artists who accompanied explorers on their westward expeditions related to their scientific
colleagues.
Now with a new preface, this incisive volume encompasses a vast cultural panorama. It beautifully demonstrates how the influence of the nature served, not only as a vehicle for artistic creation, but as its ideal form.

Genres: Art, Nonfiction, History, Art History

476 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1980

Reviews

[Dianne · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book inspired my love of art history. I wrote a paper on it in seminary, and have since read it a couple more times. If you love American history and art, this is a book for you.

[Christina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Once you get past the too-theoretical new introduction, this is a useful, thought-provoking analysis of 19th-century American landscape painting, especially worth reading in the Darwin centennial year. I liked her "iconographic" approach (chapters on rocks, clouds, plants) and her chapter on American artists in Italy.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Novak is the doyenne of American landscape painting, and this intro is extremely well-organized and well-written--anyone interested in the 19th c., the West, and/or 19th c. literature and philosophy would benefit from reading this book.

[Carol · Rating 5 out of 5]

The second of Novak's trilogy on 19th century art. Stresses the importance of trancendental ideas of Nature but she also makes a strong case for the interdisciplinary study of art which largely faded shortly after this book was published. The best of the trilogy and an indispensible book.