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American
Literature: Romanticism
Student Research Submissions
2013 |
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Matthew Martin
23 March 2013
Spiritual
Understanding, Beauty, and the Hudson River
I have always
had a special appreciation for artists who choose to focus on the majesty of
nature. It is such a beautiful subject and I enjoy viewing what aspect of nature
each artist chooses immortalize in his or her drawings, paintings and
photographs: mountains, forests, bodies of water, or the sky. There is sublimity
in nature because it nourishes us and can protect us, but it can also destroy us
if we are thoughtless to its true power. That majesty and sublimity are what
drew me to nature art at a young age. I loved the beauty the artists showed, and
the solitude. In many paintings I saw as child and young adult, a human being
was nowhere to be found. There was only nature.
My interest continued through my graduate courses when I
enrolled in a humanities-level course, Texts and Images II, which introduced me
to many Romantic-era paintings that emerged from the United States and Europe. A
particular work from German artist Caspar David Friedrich had a profound impact
on me. In Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog,
a man is at the center of the painting, but he is not the
true focus--his back is turned and we cannot see the expression on his face. He
is staring at a range of mountains bathed in fog and mist. I was drawn to
Friedrich's other work because of that painting's sublime beauty as well as
other works in the Romantic era that show great respect to nature and its
power.
My interest in
Romantic-era artwork has grown since beginning our class. During a class meeting
early in the semester, we looked at selected works from artists that were in
what is known as the Hudson River School (hereafter HRS). I noticed similarities
in the HRS artists and Friedrich's works: nature as the focus and the human
being's role greatly downplayed (if found at all). I became curious about the
true impact that the artists in the HRS had on the entire Romantic period in
America. Did writers gain influence from those visual arts when creating their
works of prose? What was common ground between the two mediums? I ask these
questions as points of origin for my research. I know that as I find more
material, I will have more questions about the HRS.
My research
begins with a piece by Diana Strazdes, entitled “‘Wilderness and Its Waters’: A
Professional Identity for the Hudson River School.” Strazdes describes the
motivations for the HRS artists and gives a history of the movement of New York
based painters. The bulk of the essay is devoted to the journey of William James
Stillman, who traveled up the Hudson and gave a portrayal of landscape painters,
and published his story "Wilderness and Its Waters" in an early magazine known
as The Crayon that
launched the HRS’s popularity. According to Strazdes:
The designation
Hudson River School refers to landscape painters who worked and exhibited in New
York City from about 1825 to 1875...The Hudson River School painters achieved
success because their work resonated with Americans' collective image of their
land. The landscapes produced by these New York artists not only paralleled
developing scientific interests regarding American, but also provided Americans
with an attractive self-image, a shared political identity, and a reflection of
their desire for universal moral and religious truths. (333)
The artists did not just create
paintings that were pleasing to the eye, but were on a quest to search for truth
and to return to a period that was quickly becoming forgotten. It is no wonder
why writers such as Emerson urged citizens to search for higher truth and
spiritual enlightenment while in the solitude and sublimity of nature. If the
artists showed nature’s visual beauty, then writers described nature’s virtue
and spiritual beauty. The HRS "celebrated the varied manifestations of American
wilderness at a time when untouched nature was fast receding from the immediate
experience of Americans" (Strazdes 335). The nation was expanding and
modernizing during the 1800's, so truly virgin landscapes were fast becoming
developed and "humanized." It is understandable that artists of the brush and
pen would each want to immortalize nature in truly untouched ways. "The American
wilderness was fundamental to shaping not only Hudson River School landscapes
but also the artists who produced them...[it] necessitated painters who saw
nature in a new way..." (335).
The artists did not see beauty as strictly a pleasing
aesthetic, but evidence of something far greater. James F. Cooper (not to be
confused with the author) wrote a highly detailed work on HRS artists entitled
Knights of the Brush
and, interestingly enough, he found that "Hudson River School artists believed
beauty was a manifestation of virtue . . . mountains, waters and sky cohere to
form a unified whole. This sense of unity, order, and beauty reflect God's
order" (30). To the HRS artists, Nature is the greatest evidence of God's
existence. Cooper's work is divided into several chapters, each focusing on a
theme of HRS art: virtue, chivalry, spirituality, and light. These subjects and
themes are not exclusive to the visual art, though. As we have discussed in
class, the subjects of art from the HRS are similar to those in Romantic
narratives. Cooper believes "the legacy of the Hudson River School is more than
a collection of worthy paintings of growing reputations. These works remind us
that our American heritage is deeply rooted in the spiritual, the moral, and the
archetypal" (70).
My most burning question throughout all of this was
whether or not the writers and painters were influenced by one another, though.
John Driscoll answered that question in his book,
All That Is Glorious Around Us, a collection of
pieces of well-known and lesser known artists that were part of the HRS.
“Invariably, [the HRS artists] believed that nature had religious, therapeutic,
and/or didactic values--nature was equated with moral authority. These ideas,
cogently exploited by American artists, had a strong tradition in literature. It
is clear that artists and writers forged friendships and alliances during the
early part of the century and they shared interests and an appreciation of
nature. It is also clear that the artists were well aware of their literary
predecessors” (Driscoll 9).
If the moral and spiritual is so important in American
landscape artists' works, I notice the same amount of importance existing in
writers during the Romantic period: the sublime majesty of the water in
Last of the Mohicans: "
Winding its way among countless islands, and imbedded in mountains, the "holy
lake" extended a dozen leagues still further to the south" (paragraph 1.4), a
fear of the unknown evil in "Young Goodman Brown": "'My father never went into
the woods on such an errand, nor his father before him. We have been a race of
honest men and good Christians since the days of the martyrs; and shall I be the
first of the name of Brown that ever took this path and kept..." (paragraph 17),
and the spirituality of Rip looking into the Hudson Valley in "Rip Van Winkle":
He saw at a distance the lordly Hudson, far, far below him, moving on its
silent but majestic course...On the other side he looked down into a deep
mountain glen, wild, lonely, and shagged, the bottom filled with fragments from
the impending cliffs, and scarcely lighted by the reflected rays of the setting
sun. For some time Rip lay musing on this scene; evening was gradually
advancing; the mountains began to throw their long blue shadows over the valleys
. . . " (paragraph 14-5).
From what I've found in the early stages of researching this topic, the writers and the artists were influenced by nature’s majesty and the same spiritual yearnings. In some of the works I have cited, I get the sense of an obligation to describe nature because of the impact the HRS had on the American cultural landscape (and still has). While nature may be the surface subject, the sublime and even transcendental focuses the artists chose to portray speaks more for their internal motivations than I ever expected. I could see nature as the dominant force in paintings from this era, but spiritual and moral standpoints had not crossed my mind. So far, I've learned that even though the paintings look aesthetically beautiful, there exists a deeper meaning and beauty in their subtleties. I think I will explore the spiritual aspect of the HRS painters and Romantic writers more in my future post, as it has been the most common thread between the material that I have found so far.
Works Cited
Cooper, James F.
Knights of the Brush: The Hudson River School and the
Moral Landscape. New York: Hudson Hills, 1999.
Print.
Driscoll, John.
All That Is Glorious Around Us: Paintings From the Hudson
River School. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1997. Print.
Strazdes,
Diana. “‘Wilderness and Its Waters’: A Professional Identity for the Hudson
River School.” Early American Studies
7.2 (Fall 2009): 333-62. ProjectMUSE.
22 March 2013. Web.
