Romanticism in the United States took up themes of nature and spirituality in uniquely American ways.
c. 1800–1865 C.E.
videos + essays
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Karl Bodmer, expedition prints
Bodmer's depictions of North America profoundly impacted the way in which we understand the American landscape.
Thomas Cole, The Voyage of Life
Cole’s extraordinary series chronicles each stage of human life: childhood, youth, manhood, and old age.
George Inness, The Lackawanna Valley
Inness captures a tension between industrial progress and its effect on the American landscape.
A dream of Italy: Black artists and travel in the nineteenth century
Created as the Civil War was coming to an end but at a time when all Americans were not yet equal citizens, this painting invokes an idealized landscape, with references to both past and present.
Science, religion, and politics, Church’s Cotopaxi
The natural world and political metaphor, Church's Cotopaxi
Peter Frederick Rothermel, De Soto Raising the Cross on the Banks of the Mississippi
Picturing Spanish conquest in an era of U.S. expansion
Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze, Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way
Daniel Boone, Moses, and the western frontier: creating an American mythology
Thomas Cole, The Architect’s Dream
Cole, the great American landscape painter looks across the vast history of Western architecture
Albert Bierstadt, Hetch Hetchy Valley, California
Captured here in paint, this grand Californian landscape would soon disappear under water.
Thomas Cole, The Hunter’s Return
Cole feared for the American landscape as his country expanded westward.
