Albert Bierstadt, Landscape Aesthetics, and the Meaning of the West

The Art Institute of Chicago
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Albert
Bierstadt,
Landscape Aesthetics,
and
of
Civil
the
the
Meanings
West
War
in
the
Era
ANGELA MILLER
WashingtonUniversity
lection of essays--"Terrain of Freedom"- brought together two apparunrelated
ently
objects: Mountain Brook, a
landscapepaintingby AlbertBierstadtdepicting a forest interior (fig. I), and The Freedman, a sculpture by John Quincy Adams
Ward of a newly emancipated, seminude
black man (Savage,fig. i). Through this juxtaposition, the exhibition asked viewers to
explore the historical, aesthetic,and cultural
correspondencesbetweenthe representation
of nationhoodthroughthe aestheticsof landscapepainting,and the representationof race
through the aesthetics of the ideal nude. In
the process,"Terrainof Freedom"evokedthe
wider world of political meanings within
which Bierstadt'slandscape art and Ward's
heroic black male are, in their very different
ways, situated.
40
Although both Bierstadt's and Ward's
works were displayed at the same National
Academy of Design exhibition in New York
in 1863,they share another,more important
similarity:each addressesits viewers with a
narrativelanguagein which nature'stopographies-a woodedinterior,anda muscularblack
body-carry moralanalogues.There,however,
the resemblanceends. For Bierstadt'spainting
speaks to the virtues of retreatfrom history
intonature.It is purgedof referencesto thepresent, or to the symbolic languageof war and
strife that found its way into so many works
of landscapeart in these years.There is little
suggestion of a world beyond the closed,
shrinelikecompositionof the painting,except
a tiny patch of blue visible through the treetops. While Bierstadt'scomposition is rendered dynamic by contrastsof texture,light
effects, and opposing shapes and lines, such
energiesare entirelyinternalto the painting.
By contrast,Ward'ssculptureexistsin a space
continuous with our own. The freedman's
body turnsto suggest motion;the moralnarrativeimplied by the sculpture centers on a
moment of incipient awarenessthat is given
dramaticfocus by the brokenmanacles.
Thesedifferences,I will argue,arecharacteristicof Bierstadt's
landscapesmoregenerally,
and ultimatelyservecontrastingvisions of the
nation'smoralandsocialdestiny.Bierstadtused
aestheticconvention-in this casethe idiom of
the picturesque-as a way out of history;Ward
employed convention-the language of the
idealnude-to re-engagewith history.Ward's
idealized,nudeblackman,ambiguouslypoised
between submission and agency, offers an
impliedrebuketo theabjectstatusof thehuman
form underslavery.If for Bierstadtlandscape
art allowedaudiencesto escapethe challenges
of the present,for Wardthe idealnudeoffered
a powerful responseto these very challenges,
acknowledging the burden of history while
risingto meet and transformit. Ward'semancipatedslavefaces a futurethat, like the concept of freedomitself, is characterizednot by
closurebut by uncertainty,transformation,
and
contestedmeanings.'
Bierstadt'sMountain Brook appealedto
its audiencesthroughits imaginedretreatinto
the cool intimacy of nature'sinner sanctum.
Yet it is a work deeply informed by culture;
specifically,by a history of landscapeaesthetics used in the serviceof moral,religious,and
nationalmeanings.In the firsthalfof the nineteenthcentury,the landscapegenrehad developed from its modest topographicalorigins,
evident in John Ritto Penniman'sMeetinghouse Hill, Roxbury, Massachusetts(fig. 2),
into a far more symbolically resonant and
aesthetically ambitious expression of what
PerryMillerhas called"nature'snation"-the
unsettledlandscapeas a symbolicrepositoryof
valuesinformingnationalidentity.2In his view
of a Massachusetts township, Penniman is
primarilyconcernedwith definingsettlement
in relationto the naturethatsurroundsit. The
work speaksto Americans'pridein theirability to carveout a harmoniousmiddlelandscape
balancedbetweenrawwilderness,whichresists
humanform, and overcivilization,in which a
pridefularrogancehas shut out naturalvirtue.3
Indeed, the subject of Meetinghouse Hill,
Roxburyis the processby which natureis subdued, organized,andplottedto servethe institutions of property and the requirementsof
home, church,andagriculture.
Landscapepainting in the United States
developed away from its original interest in
topographic minutiae and toward a representation of nature as a symbolic arena of
contending forces. Beginning in the I820s
with Thomas Cole and then with the maturing aestheticof the Hudson River School by
mid-century(in the work of FredericEdwin
Church, Jasper Cropsey, Asher B. Durand,
and John Frederick Kensett most notably),
the landscapegenre came to support a considerable weight of ideas surrounding the
centralrole of naturein the rise of the American nation-state, the country's providential
destiny in settling and occupying the continent, andthe properform of a godly republic.
Although the putative subject of landscape
paintingwas nature,its objectwas alsonational
culture.Bierstadt-whose careerbeganin the
I85osat the heightof the matureHudson River
School-extended this aestheticconstruction
(which I have elsewhere called the national
landscape)4into the yearsduringand afterthe
Civil War.
Nineteenth-century Anglo-American
art theory and practice were dominated by
the concept of the "sister arts." Ut pictura
poesis-a much olderconcept linkingthe verbal to the visual,literatureto painting-shaped
visualhabitsin the nineteenthcenturyaccording to a modelof narrativemeaning.Bierstadt's
originalaudienceswould havereadMountain
Brookas an unfoldingstory with a beginning,
middle,andend, one thatcanbe reconstructed
from contemporary reviews and from the
artist'suse of the familiaraesthetic language
of the picturesque, in which the space of
natureis organizedaroundalternatingbands
of light and dark, dappled sunlight and cool
shadow. Bierstadtintroduced visual texture
and variety through the suggestion of tactility-rough bark, lichen-covered rock, and
age-scarredboulder. He skillfully led viewers through an animated encounter with a
wooded landscape:they paused to pull out a
magnifyingglass and engagein a moment of
botanicalstudy;flickeda handacrossthe stream
of waterflowinglightlythroughthe cleftin the
center rock; and strainedto hear the song of
a kingfisher. Then began their somewhat
morearduousclimb acrossmoss- and lichencoveredrockstowardthe distantreachesof the
41
ALBERT
42
BIERSTADT,
LANDSCAPE
AESTHETICS,
AND
THE MEANINGS
OF THE WEST
IN
THE CIVIL
WAR ERA
ALBERT
BIERSTADT,
LANDSCAPE
sunlitforest,allthe whiledrawnvisuallyby the
patch of blue sky glimpsedoverheadthrough
the dense foliage. It was a lively journey,and
yet offereditselfas a cool interludefor an audience of viewerssurroundedby the din of war.
Although a full-scale exhibition work,
MountainBrookseems,in its choiceof subject
and vantage point, to have been a strategic
retreatfrom the heroic, grandiose,and occasionallybombasticlandscapesof its moment-panoramic compositions that proclaim the
kingdom of natureas the divinely sanctioned
expression of American unity and national
mission. Church's Our Banner in the Sky
(Conn and Walker, fig. io), for example,
commissioned for fundraising efforts on
behalfof the Union, takessuch ideasto literal
extremes with its image of nature's colors
paintingthe flag upon the heavens.Church's
propagandistic work proclaims that Provi-
AESTHETICS,
AND
THE MEANINGS
OF THE WEST
dence itself has underwritten the cause of
national unity. Yet despite its withdrawal
fromsuchovertsymbolism,Bierstadt's
painting
conforms to certaindiscernableformulasfor
representinga naturerichboth in detailandin
meaning.Indeed,MountainBrook combines
two approachesto landscaperepresentation
active in the mid-nineteenth-centuryUnited
States.One, advocatedby the leadingpractitioners of the landscapegenre,was the insistence on plein-air studies, in which artists
painted passages of scenery directly from
nature and then used them as the basis for
finishedstudio compositions.5An exampleof
this practicein the Art Institute'scollectionis
Sanford Robinson Gifford's Mist Rising at
Sunsetin the Catskills(fig. 3), whose intimate
dimensionsand broad,loose brushworksuggest an aide-memoire that the artist could
carry back to New York as the basis for a
IN
THE CIVIL
WAR ERA
OPPOSITE
PAGE
1
FIGURE
Albert Bierstadt
(American; 1830-1902).
Mountain Brook,
1863. Oil on canvas;
111.8x 91.4 cm
(44 x 36 in.). The Art
Institute of Chicago,
restricted gift of Mrs.
Herbert A. Vance
(1997-365).
2
FIGURE
John Ritto Penniman
(American; c. 1782-
1841).Meetinghouse
Hill, Roxbury,
Massachusetts, 1799.
Oil on canvas; 73.6 x
94 cm (29 x 37 in.).
The Art Institute
of Chicago, Centennial
YearAcquisition and
the Centennial Fund
for Major Acquisitions
(1979-I461).
43
ALBERT
BIERSTADT,
LANDSCAPE
AESTHETICS,
AND
THE MEANINGS
OF THE WEST
more polished work. Such sketchesservedas
color notations and established the main
motifs, and cloud and land forms, for finished compositions.
Mountain Brook also satisfied the Victorianurge for an intimateengagementwith
asone reviewer
nature,meticulouslydelineated;
Bierstadt's
here
was
it,
put
subject
"comparatively microscopic"when consideredalongside other exhibitionworks of the sameyear.6
Critics commentedon its "exquisite"studies
from nature, such as the trunk of the white
birch on the right, "with its peeled and curling bark,[and]its generalsilverytone... variegatedby spots of golden sunlightand sombre shadows."'Suchfidelityto nature'sdetails
reflectsa centraltheme in mid-centurylandscape practice and theory, spanning a spectrum from the writingsof Durand,president
of the National Academy,to the aesthetically
radicaljournal The New Path. An American
vehicle of the British Pre-Raphaelitemovement, which was itself closely linked to the
aesthetic ideals of John Ruskin, The New
Pathwaspublishedfrom 1863to 1865.8
Ruskin,
most prominently in his five-volume work
Modern Painters (i843-60), arguedpassionately against the emulation of older art and
inheritedformulas,and advocatedinsteadthe
painstakingobservationof naturein a spirit
of humility.FideliaBridges'sBird'sNest and
Ferns (fig. 4) characterizes the botanizing
impulseat work in the artistswho subscribed
to the journal's aesthetic vision. Bridges's
protractedfocus upon the hidden recessesof
nature, while carefully composed, seems a
modest transcription far removed from the
polishedsurfacesandself-consciousartistryof
much mid-centurylandscapeart.
Mountain Brook contains many such
intimate transcriptionsfrom nature.Yet it is
clearly a composition,not simply an obsessive map of nature-an accusationfrequently
44
IN
THE CIVIL
WAR ERA
directed at artists such as Bridges. Bierstadt
selected and recombinednaturalelementsto
emphasizea structuredvisualexperiencewith
both a spatialanda temporaldimension.Dabs
of white pigmenthighlightthe sunlit sparkle
of the waterfall,first in the foreground,then
in a staggered progression that draws us
towardthe smallerflume in the distance.Tree
trunksform opposingdiagonalsthat also lead
the eye into the depthsof the forest, and cavernous spaces alternatewith open expanses
and bulgingprojections.Pointsof highervalue
also create a zigzagging movement that carries us into the landscape.While the composition is grounded in studies from nature,
Bierstadt avoided the seemingly unedited
detailthat characterizesthe aestheticextremes
of The New Path devotees,who occasionally
missed the forest for the trees-or the lichen.
In this context,Bierstadt'semphasison visual
narrative-along with his academic training in Dusseldorf, which favored highly
staged history painting and dramatic incident-offered a significantcounterweightto
the aestheticof the New Path artists.9Critical
reviews of the painting repeatedly praised
Bierstadt'smasterfulvisual orchestrationof
"carefulandconscientiousstudiesfromnature"
with his "capacityfor broadeffects,"referring
to the mellifluous transitions from light to
shade that draw the composition
together.l"
Indeed,MountainBrookalsosuggeststhecomforts of an overstuffedVictorianparlor:it presentsnatureas a vignetteandcontainsit within
a carefully choreographedcomposition, not
unlikethe popularterrariawhich broughta bit
of natureinto thediningroomsof city dwellers.
The visualdynamicsof Bierstadt'sforestinterior all suggesta highly developed,even stylized pictorialform, directedat narrativereadabilityandat reassertingnature'scontemplative
power,unsulliedby the collapseof otherforms
of nationalauthority.
ALBERT
BIERSTADT,
LANDSCAPE
The potentialproblemwith unitingthese
two approachesto landscape-the detailed,
New Path-inspired study from nature and
the olderconceptionof a composition-is that
it ultimatelyproducesa tension between two
ways of looking. On the one hand, it invites
an analyticgaze that studieseachpart,assessing it according to a measure of botanical
accuracy.On the other, it encouragesa synthesizingimpulseto graspthe whole, a search
for a unifying aesthetic. Bierstadt suavely
meldedtheseinto a seamlessunityin whichthe
viewer'seye was visually stimulatedby detail
while the spiritsof worn urbanaudienceswere
soothed with an overallimpressionof a cool
forestinterior.Bierstadt's
relianceon olderpictorialformulasof the picturesquefurnisheda
framework for unifying the individual passage into a restfulwhole. The resultingimage
remindedviewersof literaryassociationswith
forest glades, often linked to sensations of
melancholyand solitude."1
From its origins in eighteenth-century
theory, the picturesque was an aesthetic of
accommodation- a concordia discors, or a
meansby which opposing elementscould be
harmonized.12
As Timothy Sweet argued,the
picturesque "valued the subordination of
partsto the unity of the whole, [and]provided
a formal, aesthetic analogy for Unionism."
Such integration, however, was achieved at
the cost of a more direct confrontationwith
the fissures opening up in the national landscape.The picturesqueand its closely associated pastoral mode constituted, in Sweet's
reading,an "evasionof history"by naturalizing social and historical processes." But by
the i860s, evenas Bierstadtexhibitedhis work
to criticalacclaim,this synthesisbetweenpart
and whole, the balance between the integrity of the visual detail and the requirements
of aesthetic coherence-so fundamental to
the picturesquelandscapeaestheticsof mid-
AESTHETICS,
AND
THE MEANINGS
OF THE WEST
IN
THE CIVIL
WAR ERA
century-had begun to unravel.14Creatingan
even more charged situation for landscape
artists,aestheticdilemmascameto carrylarger
politicalresonances.Withthe secessionof the
Southernstates,the idealof the nationallandscape, rallyingsharedemotions and patriotic
attachmentsandforgedin the face of growing
sectionalism, reacheda crisis stage. In these
same years, the movement of artistsinto the
AmericanWestproffered a new lease on life
to an imperiledconcept,whose essentialhollowness was all too apparentin the war-torn
EasternUnited States.
Bierstadtwas one of a generationof artists
comingof age beforeandduringthe Civil War
who, afterhoning his talentson the moretried
and testedlandscapesof the Northeast,deftly
effectedthis shift in the symbolic locus of the
nationallandscapeby goingWestinto a region
that continued to hold forth the possibility
for futurereconciliationin a postwarworld of
arcadianpeace and plenty."Indeed,Bierstadt
stood at the head of a growingcorps of Eastern artists eager to meet the aesthetic challengesposed by this new and sometimesalien
landscape.In I859,he attachedhimself, in an
unofficial capacity,to the FrederickLander
survey expedition to the West. For the artist
andfor otherlandscapepaintersof his generation, the voyage into the interior--"theheart
of the continent,"as Fitz Hugh Ludlow, the
painter'stravelcompanionon his second trip
to the West in 1863,called it-offered a new
arena within which to realize professional
ambitions.'6Bierstadttook pains to establish
his authority as a witness, later giving an
embellishedaccountof his effortsto newspapers coveringhis trip. He had undergone"no
ordinary privation and fatigue," living for
weeks on breadandwater,and surroundedby
hostile Indians,in orderto observeand paint
the Western landscape at close range. "The
landscape thus achieved, amid the peril and
45
ALBERT
BIERSTADT,
LANDSCAPE
AESTHETICS,
AND
THE MEANINGS
OF THE WEST
IN
THE CIVIL
WAR ERA
FIGURE
3
Sanford Robinson
Gifford (American;
1823-1880). Mist
Rising at Sunset in the
Catskills, c. 1861.
Oil on canvas; 17.2 x
24. 1 cm (63/4x 9/2 in.).
The Art Institute of
Chicago, gift of
Jamee J. and Marshall
Field (1988.217).
isolation,"he stated,"isnot a composition,but
a genuinescenedrawnfrom nature.""1
In his "big pictures"-Ludlow's phrase
again-Bierstadt successfully synthesized
the real West of his firsthand observation
with an ideal image of a pristine,golden land
fresh from the hand of the Creator, and
untainted by sectionalism or commercial
greed.Bierstadtwas steepedin the European
traditionof the heroiclandscape(criticscompared him to both Claude Lorrainand J. M.
W. Turner);his confrontation with the real
West was filtered through these older conventions of artmaking.18
Indeed, as landscape
paintersmoved into the West,they remained
beholden to an older ideal of aestheticpleasure througha combinationof truthfuldetail
and idealizing composition; the lessons
Bierstadtlearnedin the East servedhim well
as he traveledinto new geographicalarenas
and began exhibiting paintings of unprecedented size and visual command.Bierstadt's
continued reliance upon older, synthetic
46
compositional formulas is evident in one of
his most ambitious exhibition landscapesof
the Rockies and the Sierra Nevada. Rocky
Mountains,Lander'sPeak (fig. 5) was exhibited in 1863,the same year as the Art Institute's Mountain Brook. The scale and narrative scope of Lander's Peak placed it in
pointed rivalrywith the work of Bierstadt's
contemporary Church; in fact, the painting
was exhibitedopposite Church'sHeart of the
Andes in 1864at the New YorkMetropolitan
Fair, which was held to aid the Sanitary
Commission in raising funds for the Union
effort. Together the two paintings spanned
North and South America,takingtheir audience on a journeydown the centralgeological
spine of the Westernhemisphere,comprised
by the Rockiesto the north and the Andes to
the south.19
Such a grand geographical program
requiredthe subordinationof distractingelements to the larger impression, and at the
same time demandedthe inclusion of details
ALBERT
BIERSTADT,
LANDSCAPE
such as the Indian village in the foreground
and middle distance,which would authenticate the artist'spresence in the West. Linked
as well to the older concept of mirabiliaassociatedwith eighteenth-centuryhistory painting, such details were thought to transport
the imagination to another place, if not
another time, and to produce an idealizing
effect through the imaginative dissociation
from the here and now. Bierstadt's Native
Americans consistently forward this aim,
avoidingany suggestionof the profound and
demoralizing impact of white expansion on
native cultures.For postwar artistsworking
in the West,Native Americans,strugglingto
preservetheir way of life, were transformed
into docile inhabitantsof a mythic wonderland, willingly yielding up their patrimony.
Only occasionally did artists depict native
resistanceto Americanexpansion.20
Easternaudiencesembracedthe imageof
an unpeopledwilderness,or one peopledonly
by innocentswho posed no obstacleto Western expansion, and whose timeless cycles of
life remainedunaffected by the intrusion of
new populations onto their lands. The massive rock walls surroundingBierstadt'smany
views of Yosemite,such as his i868 Yosemite
Valley(fig. 6) suggesta shelteringrefugefrom
historynot unlikehis woodlandbower of five
yearsprior.Displacedonto the West,Bierstadt's
arcadian longings found a new refuge fortressed againstthe outside world. Arcadiaoriginallya mountainousregion of the Peloponnesus- connoted a mythic space where
the cycles of time and deathwere suspended.
Gildedby sunlightor suffusedwith the raysof
AESTHETICS,
AND
THE MEANINGS
OF THE WEST
Despite the vast expansion of his symbolic programin his Westernwork, Bierstadt's
pictorial strategies-his symphonic management of parts and wholes, his emphasis
upon dramaticeffect-remained essentially
unchanged.Formulasthat had begunto seem
contrived and overworked in the East were
revitalized, and the scale of nature vastly
expanded. Such a broadening of prospects
served the needs of audiences, who, after
the Civil War, hungered for a renewal of
the nationalist expectationsso devastatingly
assaulted in the previous five years. Yet
movement into the West also paradoxically
encouragedsettlement,tourism,and the economic exploitation of the land-the very
engines of change that would, in the end,
IN
THE CIVIL
WAR ERA
FIGURE
4
Fidelia Bridges
(American; 1834-1923).
Bird's Nest and Ferns,
1863.Oil on wooden
panel; 20 x 16.8 cm
(77/ x 65/8in.). The Art
Institute of Chicago,
restricted gift of
Charles C. Haffner III
(1987.169).
the setting sun, the walls of Yosemiteappear
to form a naturalcathedral,a citadelof what
Bierstadt'scontemporary Herman Melville
would call"chronometrical"
(or celestial)time
in opposition to the "horological"dimension
of naturaltime.21
47
ALBERT
BIERSTADT,
LANDSCAPE
AESTHETICS,
AND
THE MEANINGS
OF THE WEST
IN
THE CIVIL
WAR ERA
FIGURE
5
Albert Bierstadt.Rocky
Mountains, Lander's
Peak, 1863. Oil on canvas; 73Y2x 1203/4cm
(186.7 x 306.7 in.). The
Metropolitan Museum
of Art, New York,
Rogers Fund (1907).
FIGURE
6
Albert Bierstadt.
Yosemite Valley, 1868.
Oil on canvas; 91.4 x
137.2cm (36 x 54 in.).
Oakland Museum, gift
of Miss Marguerite
Lairdin memory of Mr.
and Mrs. P.W. Laird.
48
challenge the arcadianvision that fed them.
Withinyearsof Bierstadt's
firsttripto Yosemite
in 1863,tourists flocked to the valley, lured
there in part by the tremendous publicity
value of Bierstadt'sown work. The journalist
and writerAmbrose Biercetook "grimsatisfaction"from the reporteddestructionby fire
of one of the artist'sYosemite views, complainingthat it "hadincited more unpleasant
people to visit California"than all the conspiraciesof hotel owners combined.22
A primary motivation for Bierstadt's
turnto the Westmayhavebeenthe purelyselfserving goal of exploitingdramaticnew subject matterthatwas beginningto enjoy a ready
market. Yet the artist effectively submerged
his professionalambitionsin the languageof
the ideal, emphasizing visual harmony and
suppressing or smoothing away extraneous
detail and harshcontrasts. Bierstadt'simage
of the Westalso contributedin a more subtle
fashion to its colonization. The panoramic
sweepof his art-his endlesslyrepeatedimages
of soaring,cloud-sweptmountainsseen across
serene valleys or reflective water-implied
mastery and visual possession. In the words
of a critic writing in these same years, such
scenes allowedviewersto imaginethe Westas
"thepossible seat of supremecivilization."23
The same aesthetic constructions that
undergirdedBierstadt'sWesternarcadiaalso
helpedform the pictorialformulasof photographerslike the SanFrancisco-basedCarleton
Watkins, already exhibiting in the East by
the early i86os. Both Bierstadtand Watkins
achieved an overalldistribution of light and
ALBERT
BIERSTADT,
LANDSCAPE
shadow in order to create a visually unified
and harmoniouswhole out of the individual
elementsof the landscape.Watkins'sclassical
sense of balanceis apparentin his Mendocino
Riverfrom the Rancherie,MendocinoCounty,
California(fig. 7). Watkins'simageis a subtle
play of contrastingdiagonals,accentedby the
dramaticverticalsof the pine treesin the foreground. The visual weight and darkertonality of the foregroundframethe centralmotif
of the river in the distance,which is banked
by the misty outline of receding mountains.
Such stable compositions, grounded in the
older formulae of the ideal pastoral landscape, offered a reassuringversion of the far
West as a land that could be inhabited not
only imaginativelybut socially and economically as well.24The pastoralWest of Watkins
and Bierstadt was, in this sense, the artistic
manifestationof a wider culturalimperative:
AESTHETICS,
AND
THE MEANINGS
OF THE WEST
IN
THE CIVIL
WAR ERA
thatof reducingtheAmericaninteriorto familiaraestheticterms,givingit, in thewordsof the
Romanticpoet WilliamWordsworth,"ahabitation and a name"by structuringit according to recognizedforms.Yet the termsof that
understanding were limited. For the sheer
scale of naturein the West also suggestedits
opposite:a region in which "manwas a wanderer,a guest, and not a master,"as Ludlow
proclaimedwhen gazing out acrossthe grandiose expanseof the Rockies.25
It becomesclearfrom Bierstadt'spatrons
and subject matter that what underwrotequite literally,what paid for-the redemptive
force of his pristineWesternlandscapeswas a
faith in the transformativepower of industry,
accumulating capital, and a new postwar
nationalism.The completionof the transcontinentalrailroadwas a primarynationalpreoccupationin the decadeof the i86os, enabling
FIGURE
7
Carleton Watkins
(American; 1829-1916).
Mendocino River
from the Rancherie,
MendocinoCounty,
California,c. 1863/68.
Albumen silver print;
39.9 x 52 cm (I53/4x
20o/2
in.).The Art
Institute of Chicago,
gift of the Auxiliary
Board (1981.649).
49
ALBERT
BIERSTADT,
LANDSCAPE
AESTHETICS,
AND
THE MEANINGS
OF THE WEST
the movement of population, capital, and
industry into the West, and putting in place
a new technological sublime that eclipsed
the power of nature to symbolize nation.
Bierstadt'ssun-gilt, wilderness arcadiaalso
suppliedthe timberfor these railroads,agents
of nationalunity thatwouldsuturethewounds
of the Civil War.The railroadwas a primary,if
disguised,elementin Bierstadt's1873Donner
Lakefrom the Summit(fig. 8), commissioned
by CollisP Huntington,one of the "BigFour"
California merchantsand bankers who-as
copartnersin the Central Pacific Railroad-were rapidly transformingthe state from El
Dorado into an outpost of the East. Donner
Passwas the siteof the gruesometragedyof the
Donner Party,who in 1846-47were caughtin
midwintersnow drifts and reducedto cannibalism. In this scene, Bierstadt effectively
transformedthe haunting memories of past
failuresinto sacrificialacts. His heroic narrative of America'spostwarconquestandannexation of the West is given form by the railroad, which is nestled in the grand contours
of the mountains.
DonnerLakealso revealswith new clarity
the primaryelementsof Bierstadt'sunderlying
symbolic program,as well as its internalcontradictions. The landscapeis flooded with a
light thatpromisesto illuminatethe shadowy
regions in the foreground as the sun rises in
the sky. The passage of the sun from east to
west had long carrieda powerful symbolism
associated with the passage of civilization
from Greeceto Rometo England-an iconographyrebornwith the movementof European
culture to the New World. Indeed, "Westwardthe Courseof Empire"was a phrasethat
resoundedthroughthe decadesof expansion,
aligningthe socialprogramthat informedthe
westwardmovementof populationandindustry with the structureof naturaltime itself.'2
Builtaroundthe dramaticcontrastbetweenthe
50
IN
THE CIVIL
WAR ERA
darkenedforeground and the light-infused,
mountainous distance, Bierstadt'spainting
implies a narrativeat odds with its idealizing
composition:the foregroundforestssupplythe
timber that will be used to build the railroad
which snakesits way throughthe rightmiddle
distance.Bierstadt,who useshiscompositionto
obscuredisruptivedetailslike the railroadby
placingthem in the recessesof the landscape,
employed aesthetics to evade the difficult
realitiesof a regionplaguedby conflicts over
resources,contests over land ownership,and
strugglesbetweensettlersandnativepeoples.
A look at Bierstadt's 1871-72
View of
Donner Lake, California(fig. 9), the oil study
for the commissionedpainting,revealssomething of the artist'sidealizingstrategy in the
finished work. Here he placed the railroadstill underconstruction-into the middledistance, where it impales a rocky outcropping
before tunneling through another spur of
mountain.Bierstadtalso emphasizedthe steep,
difficult terrainof the SierraNevada which
the railroadhad to surmount,and includeda
slendercross in the foreground,perhapscommemoratingthe lives lost in its construction.
In the finished work (fig. 8), though, these
particulardifficulties are integratedinto the
broadexpanseof sunlit terrain,where the eye
is drawnbackinto the depthof the landscape,
both by the light-suffused distance and the
vivid, aquamarineblue of Donner Lakeitself.
In this visual strategy,Bierstadtstruggledto
reconciletechnologicalexpansion'ssometimes
destructiveeffectson naturewith a nationalist
programgroundedin nature'spristineauthority.
versionof theWest,
Investingin Bierstadt's
however, depended upon faith in the comvisionsof
patabilityof ultimatelyirreconcilable
the region'sfuture-that of a timelesswonderland,and of a dynamicregionaleconomy driven by the developmentallogic of capitalism.
Few Americans realized the problem at the
ALBERT
BIERSTADT,
LANDSCAPE
heart of this somewhat self-serving attitude
towardnature.For to treatnatureas both an
altarto America'sspiritualmission, and as a
raw resourceto be exploited for the nation's
economic gain, was indeed a contradiction
embedded in Bierstadt'swork. John Muir-patronsaintand cofounderof the SierraClub
and a longtime residentof Yosemite-built a
careeron exposingsuchcontradictionsto view.
Muirembracednature'sfreaks,its strangeand
eccentricformations,its cataclysmicupheavals
and earthquakes,however inconvenientsuch
things were for human purposes. "We see,"
he wrote, "that everything in Nature called
destructionmust be calledcreation-a change
from beauty to beauty.""'
For Muir,rock was
not dead matter,but was imbued with vital
currentsof life and energy.Articulatinga protoenvironmentalvision, he drew no conventional distinction between a pastoralor picturesquenaturesuitedto humanmeasure,and
a naturethat appearedto more conventional
eyes as fragmentary,disordered, or chaotic.
More than his contemporaries,Muir saw that
the picturesqueconstituteda form of aesthetic
upholsterythatkeptviewersfroma moredirect
confrontationwith the hardsurfacesof reality
andof geologicalchange.
Bierstadt's Western arcadiawas something of a postwar creation. A few decades
earlier,a very different image of the region
was deeply entrenchedin the imaginationsof
most Americans.From the time of Zebulon
Pike forward,much of the Westwas considereda "desert"placeboth literallyandfiguratively, a landscapethat was meaninglessand
spirituallyunredeemed.Followinghis expedition to the region in 1806-o7, Pike described
the Great Plains as a "sterilewaste" resembling the deserts of Africa.28Equally memorablewas WashingtonIrving'sdescriptionin
Astoria, his 1836account of the fur trade. In
his narrative,Irving drew a striking analogy
AESTHETICS,
AND
THE MEANINGS
OF THE WEST
IN
THE CIVIL
WAR ERA
between the waste regions of natureand the
parallelconditionof humansocietyin theWest.
The desert pale beyond the civilized world
was,for Irving,a regionof chaosin which"new
andmongrelraces"wouldemerge.This frightening, new, hybrid humanityformingon the
Americandesertrepresentedthe "debris"and
"abrasions"of extinctcultures,"civilizedand
savage";of "the descendants of wandering
hunters and trappers;of fugitives from the
SpanishandAmericanfrontiers;of adventurers
and desperadoesof every class and country
yearly ejectedfrom the bosom of society into
the wilderness."29
Moreover,Irvingcompared
this humandetritusof the Westto the strange
and dramaticnew geologicalformationsthat
explorers first encountered on the Western
frontier. These landscape features, the rude
products of catastrophicupheavals,violated
the pastoralaestheticsassociatedwith the civilized landscapesof Europeand the American
East-the landscape aesthetics, that is, that
guidedBierstadt'sencounterwith the West.
Accordingto JohnRuskin,the appointed
guide to the landscapefor most middle-class
American viewers-and indeed the leading
arbiterof aesthetictastethroughouttheAngloAmerican world in the second half of the
nineteenthcentury-the wastespacesof nature
were terrifyingglimpsesinto a realmof spiritual destitution,a place from which God had
withdrawn.While Ruskin associatedbeauty
with foliage and vegetation, and sublimity
with bare rock, he connected moral and
aesthetic foulness with "dead unorganized
matter.""Like Bierstadt's audiences-and
like the landscape designer Frederick Law
Olmsted, who was said to have expressed a
preference for Yosemite without its rock
walls--Ruskin would havepreferredthe pastoral valleys in Yosemite to the spectacle
of inhuman geological forces that surround
the park.
51
ALBERT
BIERSTADT,
LANDSCAPE
AESTHETICS,
AND
THE MEANINGS
OF THE WEST
IN
THE CIVIL
WAR ERA
FIGURE
8
Albert Bierstadt.
Donner Lake from
the Summit, 1873.
Oil on canvas; 182.9 x
304.8 cm (72 x 120 in.).
New-York Historical
Society.
Bierstadt'sapproachto landscapeis, in
an important sense, also linked to those of
Ruskin,Irving,and others:all areproductsof
a thinkingaboutlandscapeaestheticsin terms
of their use value.For Ruskin this was moral
and religious; for Irving and Bierstadt, aesthetics were linked to social and economic
programs,and the incorporationof frontier
periphery into metropolitan center. Only
by bringing such outlying regions into production, by transformingthem from deserts
into gardens,it was imagined,would they be
fit for habitationby civilized people, in this
case Americans of European descent. The
desertregionsdescribedby Irvingand others
acquireda new status in the years following
the Civil War.Pressures to settle the West,
along with a growing industrial infrastructure, made the region newly accessible.Mining companies now possessed the extractive
technology to draw forth the preciousmetals
and minerals that were required to supply
Easternindustriesand the nation'sexpanding
postwar economy. What was once a wasteland-serving no utility,defying both human
52
settlementand aestheticconvention-was now
broughtinto the processes of social and economictransformation.31
During the sameyearsthatBierstadtwas
pastoralizingthe Westandrenderingit appealing to Easternimaginations,his contemporary
EmanuelLeutze was conceivingof the Western landscapenot as a strategicretreatfrom
the dilemmas of postwar national identity,
but as the site of heroic struggle, a provingground for a new, more racially inclusive
democraticorder.Leutze, like Bierstadt,was
trained in Dusseldorf. He was the leading
history painter of his generation, and was
committed,as Jochen Wierichhas shown, to
revealing through his art the workings of a
providentialdestiny linked to the expansion
of freedom into the American West.32In
Leutze's 186o mural for the United States
Capitol,Westwardthe Courseof EmpireTakes
Its Way(fig. Io),paintedduringthe Civil War,
the artist pointedly included a black man,
who leads a Madonna-like pioneer woman
on horsebackas their group of Westernemigrantsstrugglestoward the crest of the Sierra
ALBERT
BIERSTADT,
LANDSCAPE
Nevada.Here,the spineof mountainsbecomes
a geological symbol of the ongoing struggle
that must be surmounted for the nation to
achieve unity, a continental challenge summoning the nation to realize a new covenant
of freedom.
For Leutze, himself a product of midcentury German political liberalism, the
promise of free institutions in the West was
open not only to European Americans, but
to African Americansas well. Indeed, when
he died in 1868he had been planninga second
work celebratingthe next step in the republic's struggleto realizefreedom-The Emancipation of the Slaves."3Leutze thus envisioned the West through an insistentlysocial
and political lens, as a space within which to
act out the dynamics of the republic's own
historicalpromise.Weknow thatmanyblacks
did in fact migrate to the West both before
and afterthe CivilWarto takeadvantageof its
peculiar terrain of freedom; many became
entrepreneursand mine owners,intermarried
and achievedstatus within native tribes, and
otherwiseevadedmany if not all of the racial
barriersconstructedaroundthemin the South
and East.34
Bierstadt shared with Leutze a fervent
belief in the millennialist potential of the
West, a promise he expressed most operatically in his Oregon Trailof 1869(fig. ii). The
painting commemorated the sacrificialhistory of Westernmigration the year that the
transcontinental railroad linking East and
West was finally completed. The bones of
livestock scatteredin the foreground, along
with refractorymulesandcumbersomeprairie
schooners, give glimpses of the difficulties
faced by frontiersmen and their families as
they traveledacrossthe continent.In the exact
center of the painting is a Plains Indian village,recognizablefrom its teepeesbut tonally
from its naturalsurroundings.
undifferentiated
AESTHETICS,
AND
THE MEANINGS
OF THE WEST
IN
THE CIVIL
WAR ERA
Nowhere is Bierstadt'scomposite and idealizing methodmoreevidentthanhere;Oregon
Trail is clearly an arrangement of separate
passagesof scenery-Yosemite-like towering
cliffs, a river valley resembling the Merced,
and a stand of trees that seem to bear little
relationto the actualvegetationof California,
servinginsteadas a naturalcounterpartto the
heroic but diminished foreground figures.
The teepees representa form of picturesque
staffage, formulaic elements that serve to
measurethe landscapethroughthe introduction of humanfigures.
The teepees,however,havenothingto do
with the realitiesof California'snativepopulation, who had sufferedprecipitous decline
in the wakeof a centuryof Europeancolonization, firstthroughpeonageat the handsof the
Spanish colonizers, then through epidemic
and genocidal violence on the part of white
landowners.35On the farsideof the valley,seen
against the roseate hue of the cliffs, one can
just makeout anotherline of wagonswinding
their way west. The two wagon trains form
FIGURE
9
Albert Bierstadt.
View of Donner Lake,
California, I87I-72.
Oil on paper; 74.3 x
55.6 cm (294 x
217•
in.).
Fine Arts Museums
of San Francisco.
53
ALBERT
BIERSTADT,
LANDSCAPE
AESTHETICS,
AND
THE MEANINGS
OF THE WEST
a kind of wedge around the central, muted
motifof the teepeevillage.Thesenativenomads
appear like obstacles in the direct line of
progress.Evenas Bierstadtrefusesto represent
racial or cultural conflict in direct narrative
terms,he has displacedsuch conflict onto the
formal elements of the painting, where they
remainsubmerged--there,and yet not there.
Historical circumstances are excised from
Bierstadt's
vision,andreplacedwith serviceable
mythsthatspeakto audiences'nostalgiafor the
heroic phaseof Westernsettlement,now officiallyconcludedwith the arrivalof mechanized
travel.Unlike Leutze, then, Bierstadtevaded
the difficultrealitiesof the racialfrontier-both
AfricanAmericanandNative American--and
the questto redefinefreedomin a multicultural
arena.Instead, he dissolved these and other
challengesspurredby Westernsettlementinto
the blazinglight of the sinkingsun.
FIGURE
10
Emanuel Leutze
(American, born
Germany; 1816-1868).
Westward the Course
of Empire Takes
Its Way, 1862. Waterglass painting;
609.6 x 914.4 cm (240 x
360 in.). The United
States Capitol,
Washington, D.C.
54
IN
THE CIVIL
WAR ERA
That Bierstadt'svision of the West was
carefully constructed and selected out of a
wide rangeof alternativeaestheticsbecomes
even more apparentwhen one considers the
imagesof seismicupheavalsand naturalcuriosities revealed in the postwar geological
surveys of the GreatBasin and the Rockies.
Bierstadt'scompanion Ludlow, for instance,
describedhis discoveryof a particularlystriking geologicalformationin which he readthe
features of John Calvin. Ludlow gleefully
transferredCalvin'smoral vision of natural
depravity to the Western landscape itself.
Where Bierstadtsaw readabilityin terms of
God'spresence,manifestthroughthe aesthetic
categoriesof the picturesqueand the beautiful, Ludlowplayfullyembraceda vision of the
Westernwilderness as destitute of godliness
and, by extension, inimical to colonization.
The wreck of matterandthe ruinof worlds-
ALBERT
BIERSTADT,
LANDSCAPE
AESTHETICS,
AND
THE MEANINGS
OF THE WEST
IN
THE CIVIL
WAR ERA
11
FIGURE
Albert Bierstadt,
The Oregon Trail,1869.
Oil on canvas;78.7 x
124.5 cm (31 x 49 in.).
Butler Institute
of American Art,
Youngstown, Ohio.
evidence of colossal uplift, wind and water
erosion, a fallenworld in continualprocess-seemed to furnish evidence, to Ludlow, of a
Westthatfascinatedpreciselyin the degreeto
which it violated conventional measures of
humanor social meaningin nature.36
In the sameyearsthat Bierstadtwas winning fame and fortuneexhibitinghis "bigpictures,"TimothyO'Sullivanproduceda striking
series of photographsthat convey a radically
differentvision of the region.O'Sullivantook
his photographsfor the Geological Explorations of the FortiethParallel(1867-69),directed
by ClarenceKing, who laterbecamethe first
head of the United StatesGeological Survey.
O'Sullivanalso servedas the photographerfor
the United StatesGeologicalSurveysWestof
the One HundredthMeridian(1871-74),under
the direction of LieutenantGeorge Wheeler.
O'Sullivan'swork for the FortiethParallelSurvey favorsthe fragment,the detail,the glimpse
into the earth'sinterior,over the panoramic
synthesis, and offers an extraordinaryrecord
of confrontation with a visual and scientific
reality quite alien to most Americans. His
photographsrevealevidenceof a dramatichistory of seismicupheavaland subsidencethat
supported King's own geological theories.
O'Sullivan'sWestbespokean alienterrainthat
only trainedscientistswere preparedto read
and interpret-a far cry from the open invitation offered by Bierstadt'sWest.37Bierstadt's
uniformitarian image suggests a geological
processoccurringoveraeons,revealinga temporal frameworkthat utterly overshadowed
the passingdin of the Civil War.The theory of
uniformitarianism,first set forth by Charles
Lyell,envisionedgeologicalchangeas imperceptiblygradualandincremental,suggestinga
West removed from the current of time and
change,and invulnerableto history."3
In his photographic work in the West,
O'Sullivanstrippedaway the protective layers of culturalassumptionto reveala world,
in the words of BarbaraStafford,"purifiedof
the human component," in which one sees
"with the eyes of matter,not those of man.""39
O'Sullivan'sIcebergCanyon,ColoradoRiver,
55
ALBERT
BIERSTADT,
12
FIGURE
Timothy O'Sullivan
(American, born
Ireland; 1840-1882).
Iceberg Canyon,
Colorado River, Looking Above, from
United States Geological Society Surveys
West of the One
Hundredth Meridian
(Colorado River
and Territory),1877.
Albumen silver print;
20 x 27.4 cm
(77/8X I0'3/6in.).
The Art Institute of
Chicago, Photo
Gallery Restricted
Gifts Fund
(I959.615/27).
56
LANDSCAPE
AESTHETICS,
AND
THE MEANINGS
OF THE WEST
LookingAbove (fig. 12), from the One Hundredth Meridian Survey, frames a desolate
stretch of river devoid of vegetation, a lunar
landscapethat affordsthe eye travelinto deep
space througha seriesof overlappingmasses.
Virtuallydead center,in the foreground,is a
man on a rock who is offeredas a stand-infor
the viewer,and servesto provide scale in the
utter absence of recognizablelandscapeelements.This figureseemsplacedthereto lend a
humandimensionto a vast and desolatelandscape,which itselfprovideslittlein the way of
picturesque incident or arresting narrative
detail.Yet cast into shadow and undifferentiated from his surroundings,the figure-like
picturesqueelementssuch as the river,which
transportsviewersinto the distance--acquires
a pointed irony in the context of an utterly
inhumanlandscapethat defiesdomestication.
Yet it was more than the specterof inert
matter,drainedof vivifyingspirit,thattroubled
aestheticexpectationsattunedto the conven-
IN
THE CIVIL
WAR ERA
tions of Bierstadt'spastoralWest.O'Sullivan's
photographsareantipastoralin anothersense:
they removethe detail,the isolatedpassageof
nature,fromitswiderframingcontext.Stafford
drew a distinction--datingto the beginnings
of the Europeanscientific study of naturebetween an aestheticimpulseto unify nature
and a "penetrative"vision that analyzes its
parts.The opposingworldsof the aestheticand
the scientific,sheconcluded,producea tension
between "surfacebrilliance"and "searching
knowledge."''In Stafford'sargument,this also
emergesasa tensionbetweena human-centered
form of knowledge, motivated by the need
for order,meaning,and coherence,and a new,
more objectivevision that sees past such sentimentalrequirementsand into the very heart
of nature.This "voyageinto substance"came
to dominatethe riseof eighteenth-andthen of
nineteenth-centuryscience. Its characterwas
analyticratherthan synthetic;it traveledvertically into the depths of nature rather than
ALBERT
BIERSTADT,
LANDSCAPE
surveying it panoramically and from a distance. In representational terms, this voyage into substancefavoredthe fragment,the
isolated discrete passage that reveals, like a
hieroglyphic,a knowledge of the earth'shistory and hiddenprocesses.And it carriedthe
human observer into alien landscapes: the
depths of the ocean, or the crevicesrevealing
the interior,telluricforces of the planet.This
voyage confrontedrealitydirectly,"nakedly,"
unclothed by aesthetic preconceptions and
acquiredknowledge.
O'Sullivan'sphotographic work in the
West had its origins in the Civil War photography he did for the studio of Alexander
Gardner.The shockingcharacterof thesephotographsderives,in severalpointed instances,
from the mannerin which they engage,only
to subvert, the expectations of viewers with
respectto humancontent.The best-knownof
these images is A Harvest of Death, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania (fig. 13), originally publishedin Gardner'sPhotographicSketchBook
If loss, disfigurement,and death
of the War.41
were the immediate subject of such photographs,their context, as works intended for
public circulation, demanded that this discord in the fabric of human society be integratedinto a moralizedaestheticframe.This,
however,O'Sullivan'sphotographsof the war
dead refuse to do. They obdurately remain
imagesof torn and bloatedbodies.42The same
refusalto placethe visualrealmat the serviceof
national mission--expressed in O'Sullivan's
indifference toward integration and accommodation-motivated his encounterwith the
alien landscapes of the West.43Such detachment from the demands of conventional
AESTHETICS,
AND
THE MEANINGS
OF THE WEST
landscapesand John Quincy Adams Ward's
newly emancipatedslave.Each respondsto a
similarchallenge:that of incorporatingnew
and untested territories and bodies into the
nation. Each answersthis challengethrough
aesthetic,representationalmeans:in one case,
through the aestheticsof the ideal landscape,
and in the other,throughthe aestheticsof the
idealnudebody.Both involveda processof rigorousselectionandexclusion,a consciouselimination of that which did not fit the formula.
Bierstadtand Wardalike used the history of
aestheticconventionto "clothe"new realitiesin
familiarterms.As Ruskinsuggested,"Ground
is to the landscape painter what the naked
humanbody is to the historical."44Ground-rock, soil-must be clothed in vegetation,the
harsherdetails of nature softened by atmosphere,justasthe humanbody mustbe shielded
from its nakedness by the aesthetics of the
idealizednude.
In this volume,KirkSavageoffersinvaluableinsightsinto the problemof representing
the free blackin the post-Civil Warperiod of
Reconstruction. How was the emancipated
slaveto be represented,giventhe exclusionof
IN
THE CIVIL
WAR ERA
13
FIGURE
Timothy O'Sullivan.
A Harvest of Death,
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, 1863. Albumen
silver print; 17.3 x
22.4 cm (6'3/6 x 8'3/16in.).
Printed by Alexander
Gardner,from
Gardner'sPhotographic
Sketch Book of the
War, i865-66. The Art
Institute of Chicago,
gift of Mrs. Everett
Kovler (1967.330.36).
aesthetics contrasts notably with Bierstadt's
integrative approach,which contributed to
his popularityin the postwaryears.
I would like to concludeby returningto
my initial comparisonof Bierstadt'sWestern
57
ALBERT
BIERSTADT,
LANDSCAPE
AND
AESTHETICS,
THE MEANINGS
OF THE WEST
the AfricanAmericanfromthe westerncanonical traditionof the classicalnude?This tradition had conferredhumanandhistoricallegitimacy on its subjects, previously denied to
those who were enslaved.The idealnude representedan ostensibly timeless and universal
canon of proportion and godlike measure.
But as we see from Josiah Nott and George
Gliddon'sTypesof Mankind of 1854(fig. 14),
mid-nineteenth-centuryracehierarchiesconceived of this classical ideal in contrast to
a descending scale of humanity linked ultimately to the animalworld. The grotesque,
the shapeless-unredeemedby a sense of proportion,or by "human"measuresof beauty-formedthe humancounterpartto the"waste"
spaces of the American West. What did not
conformto this aestheticideal-whether in the
human form or in the forms of nature-was
consigned to lower, less-than-humanstatus.
To representthe nakedblackbody according
tlot. W S'
FI(. 83•. - A,•l?
340.f
.IG.
f•-,
FIG.
341.
'%
i'~
..
342.3"
Fro.
.r
..,C
FIGURE
14
From Josiah Nott
and George Gliddon,
Typesof Mankind
(Philadelphia, 1854),
p. 458. Photo courtesy
Emory University
Library.
58
Fm
-4.F
Y..
4.,-m
?
YongMap
....
IN
THE CIVIL
WAR ERA
to the aestheticprescriptionsof the classical
nude was thus to endow the black man with
the full humanitythat was still in the process
of being legally,politically,and sociallynegotiated.Yetimagesof freedblacks,which were
circulated on behalf of the Union and its
commitmentto emancipation,remainedpersistently derogatory and demeaning.Ample
evidence is furnished by Gardner'sPhotographicSketchBook of the War,which offers
such brutally direct images of the war dead.
David Knox, one of Gardner'scorps of photographers, posed his photograph A Fancy
Group, Front of Petersburg, August, 1864
(fig. i5) according to the antebellum conventions of the genre, in which the black
male was denied dignity of affect or action.
The centralfigure'sangularbody, disheveled
appearance,and exaggeratedfeaturessignalan
assault on the classical composure that had,
through the history of western art, come to
signify dignity.
Reconstruction, like the concurrent
encounter with the West, was a moment of
cultural and historical possibility in which
the American nation stood poised to welcome the blackmaleas a citizen and an equal.
Emancipation in this sense offered a new
start for relations between the races and an
opportunityfor the republicto makegood on
its own deepest aspirations as a new nation
grounded in human freedom and enlarged
socialpotential.StandingbehindReconstruction was the Republicanparty of Ulysses S.
Grant.The federalcommitmentto incorporatingthe new freedmeninto the body of the
nation coincidedwith the Republicanpledge
to open the West to settlement. In the postwar years, the freedman and the West each
laid claimto a shareof the nationaldream.As
the shapeof Americanlife and landscapewas
being reconceived, both the idealized black
body and the pastoralizedWesternlandscape
ALBERT
BIERSTADT,
LANDSCAPE
performedan importantculturalfunctionfor
their audiences.Ward'sFreedmanhelped his
viewers to reimagine the black body, previously confinedwithin the conventionsof the
grotesque.These conventionshad socialramifications,for they limitedAmericans'abilityto
implementa new multiracialsociety.Endowing the figureof the newly emancipatedblack
manwith a powerfulgraceandmoralcomplexity, Wardvisuallyexpressedthe new statusof
the freedmanas a fully human actor.So too,
Bierstadt's
pastoralimageshelpedhis audiences
imaginea regionreadyto becomea full member of the expandedunion. As a criticfor the
New YorkLeader remarkedabout an early
Westerncompositionby the artist,"I feel that
this is a glimpseinto the heartof the continent
towardswhich civilizationis struggling ."
...
Bierstadt,the writermaintained,gavehis audiences "the romanceof the new. This, to me,
is the power of the picture. I know that the
nation'sfuturegreatnessis somehow... seenin
the greatWest.This pictureis a view into the
penetraliaof destinyas well as nature."45
While both Bierstadtand his contemporaryWardansweredthe challengeof political
and social incorporationthrough the inherited languageof the ideal,they used that language in the service of strikingly different
ideological aims. For Ward, the idealized
humanformyields to history;the humansubject harksto the promiseof new meaning,and
of evolving culturalpossibilities concerning
race and nationhood. Wardseemed to sense
that a projectsuch as freedommust of necessity bearthe marksof its social and historical
origins,andthatthe languageof the idealcould
serveas a criticalreflectionon the shortcomings
of reality.Appropriatedandusedby thosewho
aimedto changethe courseof history,it summoned audiencesto substitutea new, freshly
imaginedversionof blackhumanityin placeof
a long historyof degradingraciststereotype.46
AESTHETICS,
AND
THE MEANINGS
OF THE WEST
Bierstadt'sideal landscape,by contrast,
drew viewersinto their own mythic world, a
worldsealedoff fromhistoryandsafefromthe
challengesof the futureand the uncertainpilgrimagethroughtime and change.Bierstadt's
was an artuncomfortablewith untestedpossibilities, an art whose successderivedfrom its
visualizecertainenduring
abilityto dramatically
culturalmyths. Increasinglyfor Bierstadt,the
pilgrimagefrom darknessto light-to return
to the narrativeof his woodlandinteriorwith
which we began-revealed not a confrontation with the moralchallengesof history,but
rathera fiction of escapethat paperedover a
difficult time of nationalgrowth and change.
His Westwas not a story of moralcomplexity,
development,and transformation,but a fable
or allegory of contrasting elements visually
(and by implicationpolitically)balancedand
resolvedinto unity.Suchanallegoryworkedto
contain the ideologicalchallengesof postwar
nationhoodand citizenship.Aestheticconvention overrodethe contradictionsof history,and
the productive tension between imaginative
idealandsocialfactgaveway,finally,to fantasy.
IN
THE CIVIL
WAR ERA
FIGURE
15
DavidKnox
(American; act. i86os).
A FancyGroup,
Front
of Petersburg,
August,
1864, I864 (detail).
Albumen
silverprint;
17.3x 22.4 cm(6'3/i6x
in.).Printed
by
8'I3/6
Alexander
Gardner,
fromGardner's
Photographic Sketch Book
of the War, I865-66.
The Art Institute of
Chicago, gift of Mrs.
Everett Kovler
(I967.330o.76).
59
NOTES
2. For more on this painting, see Bruce Chambers, The Worldof David Gilmore Blythe, exh.
cat. (Washington,D.C., 1981),pp. 94-97-
FOR
PAGES
21-49
SAVAGE,"Molding Emancipation: John Quincy Adams Ward's The Freedman and the
Meaning of the Civil War,"pp. 26-39.
22. Savage(note 4), PP. 72-122. The politics of representationdid not change fundamentally
until afterthe Civil Rights movement;for more on this, see Savage(note 21).
23. Aaron Lloyd, "Statueof Limitations:Why Does D.C. CelebrateEmancipationin Front of a
Statuethat Celebrates19th-centuryRacism?,"WashingtonCity Paper,Apr.28, 2000, p. 19.
24. Howells (note 8), p. 647.
25. The Beecher monument is located in Cadman Plaza in downtown Brooklyn and is illustratedin Sharp(note 3), cat. no. 91.
26. The most recent volume on this monument and its historicalcontext is Hope and Glory:
Essayson the Legacyof the y4thMassachusettsRegiment,ed. MartinH. Blatt,ThomasJ. Brown,
and Donald Yacovane(Amherst,Mass.,2000).
This materialappeared,in somewhatdifferentform, in KirkSavage,StandingSoldiers,Kneeling
Slaves:Race,War,and Monumentin Nineteenth-CenturyAmerica(Princeton,1998).
"Albert Bierstadt, Landscape Aesthetics, and the Meanings of the West in the
MILLER,
Civil WarEra,"pp. 40-59.
1.Harper'sWeekly7 (May 2, 1863),p. 274,and "ALetterto a Subscriber,"TheNew Path 9 (Jan.
1864),p. 118.
2. A good selection of contemporary documents relating to the EmancipationProclamation
and its meaningcan be found miIra Berlin, ed., Free at Last (New York, 1992), pp. 95-129; and
C. Peter Ripley, ed., Witnessfor Freedom: African-American Voiceson Race, Slavery, and
Emanczpation(Chapel Hill, N.C., 1993),pp. 221-31.
3. A plastermodel of TheFreedman,perhapsthe original,is in the collection of the Museumof
American Art of the PennsylvaniaAcademy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia,and is reproduced in
Jacolyn A. Mott and Linda Bantel, eds., AmericanSculpturein the MuseumofAmerican Art of
the PennsylvaniaAcademyof Fine Arts (Philadelphia/Seattle,1997),p. 81,and on the back cover,
color ill. Wardbegan to make bronze casts of the original plaster as early as 1864.As of 1985,
when the art historianLewis Sharpcompletedhis catalogueraisonneof Ward'swork, six known
bronze copies of The Freedmanhad been located;see Lewis Sharp,J]ohnQuincy Adams Ward,
Dean ofAmerican Sculpture(Newark, Del., 1985), pp. 153-56.
4. There are three portraitsof AfricanAmericanson slate gravestonesin an eighteenth-century
graveyardin Newport, R. I., a group of African Americans depicted in a marblepanel found
on a tomb erected in Pittsburgh in t86o; and a handful of plaster images dating from the
185os, including John Rogers's Slave Auction (fig. 4). See Kirk Savage, Standing Soldiers,
KneelingSlaves:Race, War,and Monumentin Nineteenth-CenturyAmerica(Princeton, 1998),
PP. 15-17, 70-72.
5. See The Independent,June 11, 1863,p. 6.
6. Savage(note 4), pp. r6-17.
7. James Jackson Jarves, The Art-Idea (New York, 1864;reprint, Cambridge, Mass., 1960),
pp. 225-26.For Greenough'sstatueof Washington,see Vivien Green Frvd,Art and Empire:The
Polzticsof Ethnicityin the United States Capitol,1815-1860 (New Haven, 1992), p. 79.
8. WilliamDean Howells, "Question of Monuments,"Atlantic Monthly 18 (May 1866), p. 648.
Henry Tuckerman,Book of the Artists(New York, 1867),p. 582. Tuckermanattributedthis suggestion to Jarves'sTheArt-Idea, but it does not appearthere.
9. Kirk Savage,"'Freedom'sMemorial':Manumissionand Black Masculinityin a Monumentto
Lincoln," in Reynolds J. Scott-Childress, ed., Race and the Productionof Modern American
Nationalism(New York,1999),pp. 32-34. For informationon Lincoln'smixed reputationamong
AfricanAmericansafterthe Civil War,see Ripley (note 2), pp. 221-31.
Io. Savage (note 4), pp. 21-23. For illustrations of Brown's pediment, see ibid., pp. 37-39,
figs. 2.9-2.12.
Ii. See for example"ATypicalNegro," Harper'sWeekly7 (July 4, 1863),p. 429. See also William
A. Gladstone, United StatesColoredTroops,1863-1867 (Gettysburg,Pa., 1990),p. 44. The identificationof scarsand brandsfiguredroutinely in the publishednotices of runawayslaves.
12. For a reproductionof the TorsoBelvedere,see
Sharp(note 3), p. 43.
13. TheIndependent(note 5). See also New YorkTimes,May 3, I863,p. 5;andJune 24, 1863,p. 2.
A more comprehensive selection of press clippings can be found in the John Quincy Adams
WardScrapbook,WardPapers,Albany Instituteof History and Art,
N.Y; see especially
Alban),
New YorkEvening Post, Nov. 3, 1865.
The
New
Path
thanks
to
Andrew
Walker for drawing this reference to
14.
(note i). Many
my attention.
is. For more on the moraldimensionof sculpture,see Savage(note 4), pp. 8-15.
16.JohnQuincy AdamsWardto J. R. Lambdin,Apr.2, 1863,in AlbertRosenthalPapers,Archives
of AmericanArt, SmithsonianInstitution,Washington,D.C., roll D34, frame1302.
17. It would not haveoccurredto Wardto makethe figure a freed woman, even though women
were also escapingslaveryby runningto Union camps.Women,no mattertheircolor, could not
become full citizens in nineteenth-century America, and were denied the suffrageuntil 1920.
A figureof a fugitivewomanprobablywould havebeen understood by contemporaryaudiences
as a victim-most likely a sexual victim-rather than as a person capableof assumingfreedom
and citizenship.
18. Catalogue of Paintings,Statuary,Etc. of the Art Department in the Great North-Western
Fair (Chicago, 1865),p. 8. My thanksagainto Andrew Walkerfor bringingthis to my attention.
19. The now-standardwork on this period is Eric Foner,Reconstruction:America'sUnfinished
Revolution,1863-1877 (New York, 1988).
zo. See Howells (note 8) and Tuckerman(note 8). As late as 1894,the eminent art critic Charles
de Kay singledout TheFreedmanfor praise;see "Wardand His Art,"NeuwYorkTribune,Mar.
iI,
1894,in the John Quincy Adams WardScrapbook,New-York HistoricalSociets:
21. For moreextendedreflectionson the functionof monumentsin the nineteenthcenturs;see Kirk
Savage,"The Past in the Present:The Life of Memorials,"HarvardDesign Magazine(fall 1999),
pp. 14-19; andSavage(note 4), pp. 4-8, 64-70.
I would like to thankThe Art Instituteof Chicago, and in particularGregory Nosan, Andrew
Walker,and the Departmentof AmericanArts, for creatingthe occasionfor the presentvolume,
and for the researchsupport and unfailing enthusiasm with which they have assisted in the
preparationof this article.
PLATE
6. Constant Xlaver. Lorte's.lelunrhohl:
i. MarshallP. Beach, "TrueLove Can Never Die," Godey'sLady'sBook and Magazine (Philadelphia,1867),p. 155.
i. SeeEricFoner,"TheCivilWarandthe Storyof AmericanFreedom,"pp. 5-25 in thispublication.
2. See Perry Miller,"The Romantic Dilemma in American Nationalism and the Concept of
Nature,"in idem,Nature'sNation (Cambridge,Mass.,1967).
3. The classic definition of the "middlelandscape"is found in Leo Marx, The Machinein the
Garden.Technologyand the PastoralIdeal in America(New York,1964).
4. Angela Miller, "Everywhere and Nowhere: The Making of the National Landscape,"
AmericanLiteraryHistory 4, 2 (summer 1992), pp. 207-29.
5. Asher B. Durand,laterpresidentof the National Academyof Design, codified this practicein
his "Letterson LandscapePainting,"a seriesof essayspublishedin 1855in The Crayon,the leading journalof aestheticsand criticismat mid-century.See The Crayon I (Jan.3;Jan. 17;Jan. 31;
Feb. 14; Mar.7; Apr.4; May 2; June 6; andJuly II).
6. See "FineArts:The Brooklyn Artist'sReception,"New YorkEvening Post, Mar.5, 1863,P. .Here as elsewhereI am indebtedto Andrew Walkerfor collectingand transcribingthe reviews
of Bierstadt'swork.
7. Quoted in Nancy K. Anderson and LindaS. Ferber,Albert Bierstadt:Art & Enterprise,exh.
cat. (New York,1990),p. 193.
8. See Linda S. Ferberand WilliamH. Gerdts, The New Path: Ruskinand the AmericanPreRaphaelites,exh. cat. (New York,1985).
9. On the criticalreceptionaccordedBierstadt'sDusseldorf-influencedstyle, see Andersonand
Ferber(note 7), pp. 28-29.
to. "AnEveningat the CenturyClub,"BostonEveningTranscript,
Jan.i6,1863,p. I; andNew York
furtherstatesthat "the chief
Evening Post (note 6). The review in the BostonEvening Transcript
attraction"of Blerstadt'spainting"restsin the broadcontrastof light and shadewhich it presents
though the rocks and trees, each carefuland conscientious studies from nature."See also "The
National Academy of Design: Its Thirty-EighthAnnual Exhibition,"New YorkEvening Post,
Brook.
May 22, 1863,p. t, for othercriticalresponsesto the use of lightandshadowin Mountamn
ii. See Boston Evening Transcript (note Ic), which further suggests such landscapes
Shakespeareanassociations.
12. For a fullerexplanationof this concept, see Angela Miller,TheEmpireof the Eye:Landscape
RepresentationandAmerican CulturalPolitics,1825-1875 (Ithaca,N.Y, 1993)p. 14,andpassim.
13. Timothy Sweet, Tracesof War:Poetry,Photography,and the Criszsof the Union (Baltimore,
1990), pp. 78, 97. Sweet elaboratedupon the specifically political, Unionist characterof picturesqueaestheticsas they were appliedto the representationof natureand the war dead. The
art criticJ. E. Cabot, who publishedin TheAtlantic in 1864,providedan explicit linkageof the
aestheticand the political;see Sweet, pp. 93-95.
14. For the most careful consideration of this mid-century aesthetic crisis, see David Miller,
Dark Eden:TheSwampin Nineteenth-CenturyAmericanCulture(Cambridge,1989),chaps.7-8;
see also Miller(note 12),chaps. 5-6.
15. In fact, Bierstadt'scompetitor Church went as far as South America, shifting his artistic
focus from the northern to the southern hemisphere--somewhat ironically,as it turned out,
since slaveholdershad their eyes on Brazil,where slaveryremainedin place until 1888.
16.This was the title of Ludlow'sbook of I870;see note 25.
17. Quoted in Andersonand Ferber(note 7), p. 73.
18. Ibid., p. 194.
19. For a reproductionof Church'sHeart of the Andes,see FranklinKelly et al., FredericEdwin
Church,exh. cat. (Washington,D.C., 1989),p. 109.
20. A striking example of such a depiction is Theodore Kauffmann, Westward the Star of
Empire(1867;St. Louis, Mo., MercantileLibrary),althoughits sympathiesremainambiguous.
21. See Herman Melville, Pierre, or, The
(New York, 182z;reprint, New York,
Ambiguittes
1929), pp. 293-300.
22. Quoted in Andersonand Ferber(note 7), p. 87.
23. Ibid., p. 75.
24. The role of Western photography in promoting a developmental ethos, especially with
respect to specific kinds of aestheticconventions, has been most consistently explored by Joel
Snyder, who offers a helpful contrast between the work of Carleton Watkins and that of
Timothy O'Sullivan.See Snyder,"TerritorialPhotography,"in W J. T Mitchell,Landscapeand
Power (Chicago, I994), pp. I75-2oi; and idem,AmericanFrontiers:ThePhotographsof Timothy
H. O'Sullivan,
1867-1874, exh. cat. (Philadelphia, 198I).
101
NOTES
FOR
PAGES
49-71
25. Fitz Hugh Ludlow, TheHeart of the Continent:A Recordof TravelAcrossthe Plainsand in
Oregon (New York, 1870),p. 158.Ludlow's book is an invaluableguide to post-war attitudes
towardthe West.
26. Angela Miller, "AmericanExpansionism and Universal Allegory: William Allen Wall's
Nativityof Truth,"New EnglandQuarterly63,3 (autumn 199o),pp. 446-67.
27. Quoted in Michael L. Smith, Pacific Vizsons:California Scientistsand the Environment,
1850-1915 (New Haven, I987),p. 98.
28. This perceptionwas confirmedby the StephenLong expeditionof 1820. Thomas Farnham,
who crossedthe Plainsin I839on his way to Oregon, saw a "burntandand desert,whose solemn
silenceis seldom brokenby the treadof any other animalthan the wolf or the starvedand thirsty
horse which bearsthe travelleracross its wastes."The Boston historianFrancisParkmanfound
"the naked landscape... drearyand monotonous" and litteredwith the "skullsand whitening
bones of buffalo . . . scatteredeverywhere."Farnhamis quoted in Henry Nash Smith,
Vzrgin
Land: The American Westas Symbol and Myth (Cambridge, 1970), p. 176. Also see Francis
The
and Mountain Life (New York, i849; reprint,
Parkman,
Oregon Trail:Sketchesof Prairine
New York, 1977),p. 63. This image of the West as a sterilewastelandwas long lived, and had a
rebirth
in
Farm
noteworthy
SecurityAdministrationphotography,most notably in the work of
ArthurRothstein,which was sponsoredby the United Statesgovernmentto documentthe conditions of the Dust Bowl in the I930s.
29. Quoted in Smith(note 28), p. I77.
30. Quoted in Smith(note 27), p. 95.
3i. For an elaborationof this point, see RichardSlotkin,Fatal Environment:The MYthof the
Frontierin the Age oflIndustrialization,1800-i890go (Middletown,Conn., I985),pp. 33-47; and
Alan Trachtenberg,The Incorporationof America:Cultureand Societyin the Gilded Age (New
York, 1982),pp. I1-37.
32. JochenWierich,"Struggling
ThroughHistory:EmanuelLeutze,Hegel,andEmpire,"Amerncan
Art (forthcoming,2001).
33. See BarbaraGroseclose, Emanuel Leutze, 1816-i868: FreedomIs the Only King, exh. cat.
(Washington,D.C., I976),p. 62.
in the American
34. See Quintard Taylor,In Searchof the Racial Frontier:AfricanAmerincans
West,I528-1990 (New York, 1998);idem, "Throughthe Prismof Race:The Meaningof AfricanAmericanHistory in the West,"in Clyde A. MilnerII, ed., A New Significance.Re-Envisioning
the Historyof the Amerincan
West(New York, I996),pp. 289-3oo;and ShermanW Savage,Blacks
in the West(Westport,Conn., 1976).
35. See Albert Hurtado,Indian Survivalon the CaliforniaFrontier(New Haven, 1988).
36. See Ludlow (note 25),p. 234.
37. On the scientific address of O'Sullivan's work, and its implied audience of experts,
see Snyder,"TerritorialPhotography" (note 24). King's theories of catastrophismare stated
most succinctly in his "Catastrophismand Evolution,"American Naturalist 11 (Aug. I877).
King'sdescriptivelanguagein his Mountaineeringin the Sierra Nevada (Boston, I872;reprint,
Lincoln, Neb., i970), reveals a great deal about the association between aesthetics and geology, in addition to the genderedimplicationsof aestheticcategories.See for instance p. 79. "I
haveneverseen Nature when she seemed so little 'MotherNature' as in this place of rocks and
snow, echoes and emptiness.It impressesme as the ruinsof some bygone geologicalperiod, and
no part of the present order,like a specimen of chaos which has defied the finishing hand of
Time."Landscapesthat defied the domesticatingassociationswith the feminine and nurturing
aspects of nature were linked, in King's thinking, with a vision of catastrophicupheavaland
change.For an analysisof the genderedtermsof nineteenth-centurygeology,see Smith(note 27),
PP. 7I-103
38. See CharlesLyell,Principlesof Geology (London, 183o).
39. BarbaraMariaStafford, Voyageinto Substance:Art, Science, Nature, and the Illustrated
TravelAccount,1769-1840 (Cambridge,Mass.,
I984),p. 345.
40. Ibid., p. 321.
41. See AlexanderGardner,Gardner'sPhotographicSketchBook of the Civil War(Washington,
D.C., I865-66;reprintNew York, I959).This book was originallytitled Gardner'sPhotographic
SketchBook of the War
42. My readingdeparts here from that of Timothy Sweet, who emphasizedthe operationsof
Gardner'stext over the visualcharacterof the imagesthemselves.
43. Joel Snyderarguedin AmericanFrontiers(note 24), p. 19,that O'Sullivan'swar work under
Gardnerpreparedthe way for his engagementwith the "violent,explosivechange"that characterized much of the Westernlandscape.O'Sullivan'saestheticwas peculiarlywell suited to the
antipastoralqualitiesof the GreatBasin,which was the focus of much of his photographicwork
for the Fortieth Parallel Survey. Snyder's argument offers a strikingly different account of
O'Sullivanfrom that of Sweet (note 13).
44. Quoted in Smith (note 27), p. 83.
45. Quoted in Anderson and Ferber(note 7), p. 78.
46. On the contested versions of freedom since the Civil War,see Eric Foner, The Stori of
AmericanFreedom(New York, i998);and idem, in the presentvolume.
CONNANDWALKER,
" The History in the Art: Painting the Civil War,"pp. 60-81.
i. Quoted in Eliot Clark,History of the National Academyof Design (New York,1954),p. 76.
2. "Postscript-Artists Going to the Seatof War,"The Crayon8 (May i861),p.
I20.
3. The Knickerbocker,vol. 58 (July 1861),p. z52,cited in LucretiaHoover Giese, " 'Harvesting'
the Civil War:Art in WartimeNew York,"in PatriciaBurnhamand LucretiaHooverGiese, eds.,
RedefiningAmericanHistory Painting(New York, 1995),p. 67.
4. New YorkDaily Trzbune,
May 5, I861,citedin Giese(note 3), p. 67.
5. "TheExhibitionat the NationalAcademy,"Harper'sWeekly9 (May 13,i865), p. 291.
102
6. MarkTwain, Travels zvithMr. Brozw'n,
ed. FranklinWalkerand G. Ezra Dane (New York,
in
Baxter,"Burdensand Rewards:Some Issues for AmericanArtists,
I940), quoted JeanTaylor
diss., Universityof Maryland,I988),pp. 20-2I.
1865-1876,"(Ph.D.
7. "The Progressof Paintingin America,"North AmericanReview 124 (1877),
p. 4548. Ibid., p. 458
9. MarkThistlethwaite,"TheMost ImportantThemes:History Paintingand Its Placein American
Art,"in GrandIllusions:HistoryPaintingin America(Fort Worth,1988),p. 50.
Ic. Giese (note 3), p. 70.
II. The SmithsonianAmerican Art Museum has established two comprehensivelistings: the
the Inventoryof AmericanSculpture.
Inventoryof AmericanPaintingsExecutedbefore I914,and
Together,the Art Inventoriesprovideinformationon over 335,000artworksin public and private
collectionsworldwide.
12. "Leutze'sPortraitof GeneralBurnside,"BostonEvening Transcript,May 21, 1863,p. 2. No
reproductionof this work is known to exist.
13. "AOriginalProspect,"BostonEvening Transcript,
May 25, 1863,p. 4.
14.Henry James,Hawthorne (London, I879),p. 144.
(Portsmouth,N.H., 181), p. 48.
15. CharlesPeirce, TheArtsand SciencesAbnridged
16. AnnaLewis,"ArtandArtistsof America,"Graham'sMagazine45 (Aug. 1854),P. 414.
17. HaydenWhite, The Contentof the Form:NarrativeDiscourseand HistorncalRepresentation
(Baltimore,1987),pp. 1,6.
8S. We have relied for this chronology on Patricia Burnham and Lucretia Hoover Giese,
"HistoryPainting:How It Works,"in Burhamand Giese (note 3), p. 6. Reynolds himself recognized that a painter"mustsometimesdeviatefrom vulgarand stricthistoricaltruth,in pursuing
the grandeurof his design."In his "ThirteenthDiscourse on Art,"Reynoldsdrew a prematurely
postmoderndistinction:"It is allowed on all hands,"he told his listeners,"thatfacts,and events,
however they may bind the Historian, have no dominion over the Poet or the Painter.With us
History is madeto bend and conform to the greatidea of Art."SirJoshuaReynolds,Discourses
on Art, ed. RobertWark(SanMarino,Calif., 1959),p. 244.
19. Reynoldsis quotedin BarbaraMitnick,"TheHistory of History Painting,"in WilliamAyres,
ed., PicturingHistory:AmericanPainting, 770--I930, exh. cat. (New York, I993),p. 29.
2c. C. S. Rafinesque,TheAmericanNations (Philadelphia,1836),pp. 76-77.
21. See Patrcia Mainardi,The End of the Salon:Art and the State in the Early ThirdRepublic
(Cambridge,1993);and BarbaraGroseclose, NineteenthCenturyAmericanArt (Oxford, 2000),
pp. 12-17.
22. JamesJacksonJarves,"Artin America, Its Condition and Prospects,"Fine Arts Quarterly
Reviez,.20 (Oct. 1863),pp. 394-95.
23. Unidentifiednewspaperclippingscited in RobertJ. Titterton,JultanScott:Artistof the Czvtl
\V'r and .ative America(Jefferson,N.C., 1997),pp. Ito-II. For an illustrationof The Battle of
Cedar Creek, see ibId.,p. 112.
24. Robert Hughes,AmericanVisions(New York, I997),p. 272.
25. Dominick LaCapra, Representing the Holocaust. History, Theory, Trauma (Ithaca,
N.Y, 1994).
York Times, Oct. 20, 1862, quoted in Keith F. Davis, "'A Terrible Distinctness':
\ew
Photographyof the Civil WarEra,"in MarthaA. Sandweiss,ed., Photographyin NineteenthCenturyAmerica,exh.cat.(FortWorth/NewYork,1991),p. I5o.
27. See Marshall Fishwick, "WilliamD. Washington:Virginia'sFirst Artist in Residence,"
W.
Magazine 19(1952), pp. 14-15.
Commonzwealth
28. For a discussionof Leutze and a compendiumof those who studied with him, see Barbara
Groseclose, Emanuel Leutze, 1816-1868: FreedomIs the Only King, exh. cat. (Washington,
26.
D.C., 1976).
29. At the time Carterfinishedthis painting,his reputationas a painterof portraitsand histoncal subjectshad been firmly established.He completeda second Lincoln-themedhistory painting entitled Lincoln Greeting the Heroes of War(1865;The Hendershott Collection), which
shows Lincoln, a liberatedslave, and an allegory of Peace greetinga group of Union generals.
For a reproductionof this work, see Avres (note 19),p. 144.For discussionof Carter'scareer,see
Paul M. Angle, "Lincoln'sDrive Through Richmond,"ChicagoHistory4 (fall 1955),pp., 29-34.
30. The Vanderlynis reproducedin David Lubin,Picturng a Nation:Art and Social Changein
Nineteenth-Century America (New Haven, 1994),p. 3. For the Poussin, see Alain M6grot,
NicholasPoussin(New York, 1990),p. 194,color ill.
31. See Twain(note 6).
32 For more on Carter'sartistic liberties, see Barry Schwartz, "PicturingLincoln," in Ayres
(note 19),pp. 145-48.
s David (London, 1986),p. 65.
33. Reproducedin AnitaBrookner,Jacques-Lout
34. Quoted in David ParkCurry,AmericanDreams:Paintingsand Decorative Artsfrom the
Collection,exh. cat. (Richmond, Va., I997),p. 37. See also a brief notice of the painting
WVarner
in TheJewish Messenger,Mar 24, I865.
35. Two of these three history paintings were Emanuel Leutze's The Departureof Columbus
from Palosin 1494 (I855;privatecollection),and PeterRothermel'sPatrnckHenry in the House of
BurgessesDeliverng hzsCelebratedSpeechAgainstthe StampAct (I85sI;Brookneal,Va.,Patrick
Henry MemorialShrineFoundation).The third painting, Coumbusand the Egg, is unlocated,
and was identifedas the work of an artistknown only as "Gever."For a representativereviewof
all threecanvases,see Chicago Times,June I, I865,p. 2.
36. Jarses(note 22), p. 396.