The Hudson River School

Cole has no restrain in describing the beauty of all the elements found in the American scenery. He talks about the mountains, the sky, the streams, the sunset, waterfalls, all of which are overflowing in richness, full of magnificence, and unsurpassed by any other. For Cole the scenery and nature are subjects which must be present in the souls of every American. While he considers himself and even others underserving of “such a birthright”, he is thankful for the beauties given to us by nature. Cole suggests to his audience that the reason behind him painting natural scenes relates to the experiencing of a particular emotional response while doing so. This is a response which can only be compared to a “calm religious tone”, full of “tranquility and peace.” Witnessing the beauties of the American scenery, anywhere one goes, makes one realize how “the sublime and beautiful are bound together in an indissoluble chain. In gazing on it we feel as though a great void had been filled in our minds.” Cole places great emphasis on the importance for all members of society to learn how to cultivate “a taste for scenery.” This can be achieved by appreciating the physical beauty of nature and the ability of said beauty to provide mankind with a different perspective about life and with

Classical landscape by Charles Sheeler is an exterior oil on canvas of the Estate of Mrs. Edsel B. Ford, Grosse Pointe Farms (figure 1) filled with deep, hidden irony. It was painted in 1931, and is based on a watercolor study. It’s a calm, clean, and serene painting that takes your breath away. It’s depicting a place someone would want to be in, a place where things get done, and a place where one can go to achieve this idea of the American dream. Charles Sheeler used American industry as a major theme of his art, his work “lends itself to an analysis in terms of geometric forms” he examines his subject matter so closely in order to fully understand the composition, the effect, and the design he wants to depict. Sheeler painted the plant’s exterior as an idyll, a beautiful, picturesque scene of the industrial age booming; however, in reality the United States was in the middle of the worst years of the Great Depression. Therefore, this painting done in Sheeler’s hyper-realistic artistic style is not actually depicting what the factory actually looked like.

Humanity is but a facet of the sublime macrocosm that is the world’s landscapes. In the relationship between man and landscape, nature is perpetually authoritarian. In her free-verse poems, The Hawthorn Hedge, (1945) and Flame-Tree in a Quarry (1949), Judith Wright illustrates the how refusal to engage with this environment is detrimental to one’s sense of self, and the relentless endurance of the Australian landscape. This overwhelming force of nature is mirrored in JMW Turner’s Romantic artwork, Fishermen at Sea (1796). Both Wright and Turner utilise their respective texts to allegorise the unequal relationship between people and the unforgiving landscape.

Daniel Ridgway Knight was an odd American artist who loved to paint relaxed French peasants in luscious landscapes. Ironically, he lived during a stressful time when the Industrial Revolution displaced numerous farmers and polluted the environment. He seemed to ignore the harsh truth and shut himself in his imaginary serene world. For instance, In the Premier Chagrin, translated as The First Grief, Knight paints two healthy girls conversing on a stone wall in front of gorgeous fields. At first, it appears as merely a pretty painting that is nicely contrasted to show depth and realism. Yet, with a closer look, this contrast in the colors and lines of the landscape and the figures creates tension to suggest the painter’s conflict between longing for serene freedom and feeling trapped within the stiff society.

Mary Catherine Bateson's Improvisation In a Persian Garden, Annie Dillard's Seeing and Leslie Marmon Silko's Landscape, History, and the Pueblo Imagination

Prominent American landscape painter through the Gilded Age, Thomas Cole, argued through his series of paintings The Course of Empire that authenticity may temporarily give way to decadence but when that occurs the natural course of empire will take place and decadence will without fail crumble. This notion of Cole believing that authenticity will overcome decadence is exemplified through his personal disagreements with human vanity, his pictorial style, and his influences.

In 1910, when this school was first open, many students throughout the United States still attended classes in one-room schoolhouses. Aside from the one-room schoolhouse in Marshwood, Olyphant had progressed beyond that stage. This building was the centerpiece of the Olyphant School District. It had the look of a high school in a major city. At the time all of the streets in downtown Olyphant were paved with red brick. Most of the students lived within walking distance of the school. They were able to walk home to eat lunch. Therefore, no one ever thought of including a cafeteria in the building plans. It was built without a cafeteria or kitchen of any kind.

In the past year the Board of Trustees have allocated capital funds on the recommendation of Headmaster John Loring to the athletic programs of the school. The faculty and staff have expressed their concern about the spending decisions of the headmaster to support athletic programs over the needs of the students and faculty. This year the trustees have included the faculty in the decision process in order to objectively create a capital budget which will be in the long-run interest of the school.

During the nineteenth century, artists wanted to create awareness of nature before it changed completely. The landscape paintings represent more than the beauty of nature: it can trigger a memory, tell a story, document a moment. Thru Cole's painting of 1828, where he illustrates the story of Adam and Eve expulsion from the "Paradise" land , I remember the moment when I returned to Venezuela after spending one year abroad. The Expulsion from the Garden of Eden is based on the biblical metaphor of Adam and Eve; who had the opportunity to live in a paradise land, with the exception that they wouldn’t consume a fruit from a specific tree.

The first American group of painters, The Hudson School of Romantic Landscapes, was lead by Thomas Cole, who was born in 1801 in England. He went to Philadelphia and Ohio as a traveling portrait painter in 1819. In addition, he traveled to Europe where he painted many Italian subjects, and later many of the scenes in his paintings came from his European studies. He died in 1848 at the age of 47. Cole’s artwork represents the Romantic style of painting, especially in his famous work The Oxbow (Fulwider 618). In the life and time around Thomas Cole, three things stand out. The major themes in Cole’s artwork, what was romantic about the Hudson River School’s art, and why landscape was a national religious symbol for Americans.

There is a lightning-struck tree trunk and a passing storm in this dark and relatively scary setting, but because of its healthy wildlife and bold colors, the condition that the nature is in looks more happy in contrast to the monotone-looking civilization. Although the right side of the painting looks dull and unexciting, it is adapted and cultivated for an acceptable human living environment. During westward expansion, Americans moved west to acquire land and thrive off of what they’ve made. Some components the right side consists of is an oxbow, cultivated farmland, housing, chimney smoke, ships, and cut down trees in the mountains that carve out Hebrew words, “Noah,” and when flipped upside down,

I am analyzing the form and content of a stylized painting entitled The Palisades by John William Hill. This was found in the collection section of themetmusuem.org which was painted during the pre Raphaelite movement; when artist emphasized meticulous detail in what was observed rather than imagined nature. This artwork shows the aesthetics of nature, depicting a peaceful scenery with spacious green acres during the year of the 1870s. During the late 18th centuries, natural resources weren’t highly industrialized and that in itself shows how nature was essential for all human species. I argue that this painting shows how everything in nature connects and communicates with one another.

Public School #18: Paterson, New Jersey, is a poem by Maria Gillan. Her memories of growing up a short, skinny, shy, poor immigrant kid on Seventeenth Street in the 1950s, brought to life in her poems, moved the students at a city middle school she attended to pour their own feelings on paper(Paterson,NJ). Her teachers at her school left their mark but not always for the better. The poem Public School No. 18 Paterson, New Jersey, deals with her feelings of alienation among her teachers who tell her to speak English.

History, social institutions, tradition, and geography all impact the arts, literature, religion, and philosophy in different ways. For instance, geography can serve as a blank canvas for an artist. Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s Valley Curtain shows this exact thought by portraying a 200,200 square feet curtain that spans over a mountain range in Colorado. This work of art can be interpreted many ways by the viewer, however, the artists’ main purpose of the curtain was to point out the natural beauty of the geography it was covering. However, because of social institutions and media, the curtain began to pose a safety threat towards humans and animals. The work of art by Christo and

In Nature & Landscape: An Introduction to Environmental Aesthetics, Allen Carlson proposes that scientific knowledge can enhance our aesthetic appreciation of the natural world. He draws a connection between technical know-how used in the context of natural landscapes and art history or criticism in the context of conventional art forms. In either case, the viewer would find relatively more meaningful experiences of aesthetic appreciation than if one looked at a painting or landscape without any prior knowledge about it. Carlson endorses this point within his larger Natural Environmental Model, which asserts that though the environment is not entirely of our creation, it does not mean that we have to approach it without any prior understanding.