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TJ123-8-2009 LK VWD0011 Tradition Humanistic 6th Edition W:220mm x H:292mm 175L 115 Stora Enso M/A Magenta (V)22 CHAPTER 27 The Romantic View of Nature22
The isolated settlement, dwarfed and enshrined by snow-
capped mountains, a magnificent waterfall, and a looking-
glass lake—all bathed in golden light—is an American
Garden of Eden, inhabited by tribes of unspoiled “noble
savages.” Bierstadt gave cosmic breadth to the ancient
Roman genre of the idyllic landscape, in which humankind
and nature flourish in perfect harmony. The huge dimen-
sions of the painting (some 6 x 10 feet) heralded the official
establishment of landscape as a respectable genre, compara-
ble to historical and religious subjects that, in academic tra-
dition, commanded a large-size canvases. Such “frontier
landscapes” also gave public evidence of American expan-
sionism and ascending nationalism.
Most nineteenth-century American artists visited
Europe and spent years studying abroad; however, for the
ordinary public, panoramic landscapes depicting remote
locales were substitutes for actual travel, and viewers were
known to carry binoculars to their showings, admission to
which usually required entrance fees. Such was in fact the
case with the paintings of Frederic Edwin Church
(1826–1900), a pupil of Thomas Cole. Church’s celebrated
vista of Niagara Falls, displayed in a ticketed exhibition in
New York City, was visited by more than 100,000 specta-
tors (Figure 27. 15 ). His rendering of the Falls as seen from
the Canadian side includes almost no foreground, thus put-
ting viewers at the brink of the rushing water. The sky-
borne rainbow, one of Church’s favorite devices, would
have been recognized as a symbol of divine benevolence
and harmony. One critic called Niagara “the finest picture
ever painted on this side of the Atlantic.” Other Church
landscapes, illustrating tropical storms, erupting volcanoes,and gigantic icebergs, transported American gallery
patrons to the exotic places—Brazil, Ecuador,
Newfoundland—the artist himself had visited. Such
scenes, produced in the age of polar exploration and ocean
shipwrecks, conjured awe and a sense of the Romantic sub-
lime. Called by his contemporaries “the Michelangelo of
landscape art,” Church became the most famous American
painter of his time.America and Native Americans
The Romantic fascination with unspoiled nature and
“natural man” also inspired documentary studies of Native
Americans (Figure 27. 16 ), such as those executed by the
artist–ethnologist George Catlin (1796–1872). During the
1830s, Catlin went to live among the Native Americans
of the Great Plains. Moved by what he called the “silent
and stoic dignity” of America’s tribal peoples, he recorded
their lives and customs in literature, as well as in hundreds
of drawings and paintings. Catlin’s “Gallery of Indians,”
exhibited widely in mid nineteenth-century Europe, drew
more acclaim abroad than it did in his own country. Catlin
popularized the image of Native Americans as people who
deeply respected nature and the natural world (see chapter
18). He described exotic rituals designed to honor the
Great Spirit (or Great Sun) and promote health and fertil-
ity. Observing that most tribes killed only as much game as
was actually needed to feed themselves, Catlin brought
attention to Native Americans as the first ecologists.
Harmony with nature and its living creatures was
central to Native American culture, whose pantheistic
idealismis eloquently conveyedin the proverbial teachingsFigure 27.15 FREDERIC EDWIN CHURCH, Niagara, 1857. Oil on canvas, 42^1 ⁄ 2 901 ⁄ 2 in. Grand scale and fine
detail characterize this typically nineteenth-century American painting. A contemporary newspaper critic exulted,
“We know of no American landscape which unites as this does the merits of composition and treatment.”