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On Tuesday, June 18 I was given the privilege of speaking to the docents and staff of the Hudson River Museum, to unpack key factors in the genesis of American landscape painting, apart from the familiar narrative about constructing a national image. First, its relationship to the importance of drawing and penmanship in the crusade for universal education. Second, as a tool for developing new economies in the wilderness. Third, how it reflects the artists’ commitment to public access and fourth, their concerns about environmental degradation.
\nAfter the talk, one of the docents mentioned how Lewis and Clark were charged by Thomas Jefferson with collecting botanical and mineral specimens to discover all that they might, about the unexplored regions they were about to traverse. I reminded her that while all of that was true, at the end of the day the expedition was all about beaver-pelts. The primary mission of the Corps of Discovery (as a military force) was to steal a march on the British Northwest Trading Company, by establishing diplomatic and trade agreements with indigenous nations between Saint Louis and the Pacific Northwest. Economic priorities such as these are today of slight concern, except as historic trivia. What has endured is an epic tale about the brave pursuit of knowledge.
\nPerhaps the salient point was to insist on the primacy of personal engagement, over self-expression, or aesthetic refinement. Artists like Thomas Cole, Frederic Church and Albert Bierstadt endured the hardships of travel and exposure to the elements to experience and record the power of nature. J.W.M. Turner famously had himself lashed to the mast of a ship so that the could experience firsthand a tempest at sea.
\nThese artists demonstrate by their example what might be learned by anyone who scales a snowy peak, treks across burning deserts, goes on sylvan rambles, or sits in one’s garden. When drawing and writing become part of these activities, one improves the likelihood that their experience will be more profound; transformed into the kind of knowledge that gives birth to ideas. The transcript is below, along with a PDF of the PowerPoint slideshow. (all images reproduced under fair use for critical and educational purposes).<\/p>\n
(A similar talk was delivered to a meeting of the Hudson Valley Greenway Community Council, at the FDR Presidential Library in Hyde Park, New York on June 12, 2019)<\/p>\n
Inventing the American Landscape: Art & Nature in the Hudson River Valley<\/em>, by James Lancel McElhinney \u00a9 2019<\/strong><\/p>\n A talk delivered to the docents, and members of the staff of the Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, New York “Let me open my comments by expressing my sincere thanks to Masha Turchinsky, Saralinda Lichtblau, Laura Vookles and Bridget McCormick for this opportunity to address you all today. I want to talk to you about two big, intertwined ideas. First, that American landscape art \u2013 manifested through drawing, painting and prints — was born in the Hudson Valley. Second, that from the beginning the artist’s appreciation of scenery went hand in hand with the mission of public access and the values of environmental responsibility. George Perkins Marsh, an early voice in the American conservation movement observed that,<\/p>\n \u201cVision is a faculty, seeing is an art\u201d<\/p>\n Few today know that one of the great American drawing academies was founded at West Point. When Sylvanus Thayer became superintendent in 1818, he specified two hours of drawing a day, for all second and third-year cadets. Apart from knowing how to produce mechanical drawings and maps, military officers were expected to know how to think visually\u2014not just to produce chorographic views of new territories, but also to be able to discern anomalies and changes in the terrain, which could inform their decisions under fire. Thayer\u2019s drawing-master was French miniaturist Thomas Gimbrede, who noted that,<\/p>\n \u201cDrawing is all curved lines and straight lines. Anyone can draw a curved line. Anyone can draw a straight line. Therefore, anyone can draw\u201d<\/p>\n These were heady times in American schoolrooms. Reformers like Rembrandt Peale, Hector Humphreys, Horace Mann and others promoted universal education, including drawing and penmanship. A working-person might know how to read a book, but not their master\u2019s longhand. Teaching cursive handwriting to all was another way to level the playing-field. Rembrandt Peale observed that drawing and writing were reciprocal skills.<\/p>\n \u201cWriting is nothing more than drawing the forms of letters. Drawing is nothing else than writing the forms of things\u201d.<\/p>\n Horace Mann called drawing a moral force.As the Young Republic began to form its identity, public demand for scenic vistas fueled a publishing boom\u2014at first in Philadelphia, then soon after in New York. Artists like William and Thomas and William Birch, Charles Willson Peale, Thomas Doughty and others specialized in river views\u2014at first along the Schuylkill and Delaware, and later the Hudson Valley. \u201cPeople seeing the beauty of this valley will want to stay, and their staying will be the undoing of the beauty.\u201d<\/p>\n Indeed, the steamboats and railroads that delivered travelers to upriver resorts, Lakes George and Champlain, to Adirondack camps and the White Mountains an American Grand Tour, dependent upon the same industrial economy that poisoned wild rivers and filled the air with soot from coal-burning vehicles, factories and cities. In his painting of the Lackawanna Valley, George Inness shows us the fate of the forest\u2014a field of stumps. The trees have been recycled as fence-rails and railroad ties. Distant Steamtown, with its fuming chimneys and brick-bound dystopia recalls the question posed by William Blake,<\/p>\n \u201cAnd was Jerusalem builded here In his epic poem The Lament of the Forest, painter Thomas Cole described the rape of the land, stripped of its beauty by human greed. Here are a few lines, which presage Richard Powers\u2019s Pulitzer-Prize winning novel The Overstory<\/em>.<\/p>\n \t‘Echo, whose voice had answered to the call<\/p>\n \tOf thunder or of winds, or to the cry<\/p>\n \tOf cataracts \u2014 sound of sylvan habitants<\/p>\n \tOr song of birds \u2014 uttered responses sharp<\/p>\n \tAnd dissonant; the axe unresting smote<\/p>\n \tOur reverend ranks, and crashing branches lashed<\/p>\n \tThe ground, and mighty trunks, the pride of years,<\/p>\n \tRolled on the groaning earth with all their umbrage’<\/p>\n By the time Cole\u2019s student Frederic Church painted Niagara, the falls had already become a well-established tourist destination. Artists like Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Moran, who had accompanied railroad and mineral surveys of the American West helped sell the idea of national parks to Congress. Cole\u2019s lament and George Perkins Marsh’s dire predictions helped shape the thinking of subsequent activists like John Muir, John Burroughs and Rachel Carson. Downloadable PDF of the talk:
\nJune 18, 2019. 11:30 A.M.<\/p>\n
\nWithin a couple of decades, the great North River had become a magnet for landscape artists.
\nA young Briton who had emigrated to Ohio, before moving to New York produced this painting of Fort Putnam in 1826, giving birth to what is known today at the Hudson River School. His name was Thomas Cole.
\nFive years earlier, Irish painter William Guy Wall and author John Agg had traveled from what was then believed to be the source of the Hudson River in the Adirondacks to New York Harbor.
\nOver the next four years, Wall and printmaker John Hill produced a remarkable series of hand-colored etchings, which were published with travel-narratives by Agg.
\nThe Hudson River Portfolio is divided between canonical picturesque views and natural wonders, including a preponderance of waterfalls. I wondered why. And then it occurred to me that people looking at these images in 1820 might have seen more than just thrilling scenery.
\nSome would have recognized these falls as untapped hydropower, perfectly suited to manufacturing.
\nWhile it is only a theory, it is possible that some of Wall\u2019s backers were looking to promote commercial development in the upper Hudson Valley. Tourism would not develop in these regions for another couple of decades, after canals and railroads had penetrated the wilderness.
\nYears later, two thousand miles to the west, upon meeting a group of prospectors entering the Boulder Valley in central Colorado, an Arapahoe chief named Niwot is quoted as saying, <\/p>\n
\namong these dark Satanic Mills?\u201d<\/p>\n
\nIf we are to preserve nature\u2019s treasures, we must continue to develop new ways to bring human beings into deeper contact with nature, without consuming it\u2014except as personal experience, while leaving no trace. One need not be an artist in order to benefit from writing, drawing, and journal-keeping. These are proven methods for transforming experience into knowledge. Pulling into a highway scenic overlook to snap a few pictures avoids any significant engagement with nature, which can be its own best advocate, if only people will take time to interact with it. Clean rivers, heritage itineraries, historic sites, improved hiking and rail-trails, and open spaces, let citizens reacquaint themselves with nature.
\nThe more profound their experience, the more likely they will be to discover how deeply they care about these resources, and perhaps take steps to protect them. Over the years, many artists have taken up the cause. Explorers and artists were always pathfinders. In many ways, they were the first tourists. They showed the world what America looked like.
\nFollowing their example\u2014perhaps at an easel, or with sketchbook in hand\u2014we can deepen our experience of nature, enriching our encounters with all of its wonders.
\nWith the rise of social media, and a new revolution in printed matter underway, there are countless opportunities for nature conservancies and preservationists to partner with the arts. Environmental humanities programs at University of Pennsylvania, Colby College, and elsewhere are rapidly discovering that the arts\u2014not just as individual expression, but more as personal engagement\u2014can provide common ground between science, history, and the societies they serve. This was true in the nineteenth century. It is still true today.
\nThe American landscape was invented in the Hudson Valley\u2014a vision being reborn today. Foregrounding the arts in new initiatives like the Empire State Trail<\/a> not only honors that legacy. It will assure their success.
\nThank you.” <\/p>\n
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