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Pride of Place
Following the Revolutionary War, American artistic activity expanded expanded rapidly as painters and sculptors endeavored to forge an identity for their young nation. They provided exhibitions and patrons with images of the country's heroes and ordinary people as well as its brief history and promising future. Nearly every work celebrated place by depicting the unique bucolic landscape, significant historical events, or the inhabitants of rural areas and growing cities.
Picturesque locales like the Hudson River Valley attracted aspiring painters such as Thomas Cole and his followers, including his student Frederic Edwin Church. Albert Bierstadt preferred to depict the American West, while other artists took their skills further afield.
Often eschewing strict geographical transcription, artists carefully crafted scenes informed by ideas of location and identify (and often, their imagination) as travelers explored and settled the shifting frontier. These works helped inspire a national enthusiasm for landscape painting, which soon came to be seen as distinctly American.
Genre scenes -- paintings of everyday life depicting ordinary people -- also became popular. Often moralizing in nature, many expressed the egalitarian ideals espoused by Andrew Jackson (U.S. president from 1829 to 1837): hard work, the importance of family life, and civic responsibility. |