Picturing Nature

Today, many Americans enjoy being surrounded by nature - whether it’s a wilderness area, a city park, or a small backyard. However, Americans have not always liked nature or enjoyed images of it. In colonial times, Americans avoided the wilderness - wild nature was frightening and had to be dominated because survival depended on it. Artworks that pictured only nature were not common; instead, nature tended to be portrayed in the backgrounds of portraits and history paintings or as scientific studies. As living conditions in America changed and nature became less threatening, a radical change occurred in the American perception of nature. The American landscape became a source of American pride and economic growth, rather than a place of evil and chaos. 

The arts were instrumental in bringing about this change. Writers such as Washington Irving (1783-1859), James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851), and William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878) wrote about the American landscape, while artists such as Thomas Cole, Asher B. Durand, Frederic E. Church, and many others depicted nature in their paintings. These paintings taught Americans to see nature for its impressive beauty rather than as a source of fear. Later the artists were grouped together by critics and historians and referred to as the Hudson River school. These early written and visual descriptions of the American landscape encouraged people to see this wilderness firsthand and mountain tourism became a major pastime.

Attributed to Pieter vanderlyn (1687-1778)
Pau de Wandelaer (1713 - after 1763) or 
Pau Gansevoort (1725 - 1809)
Oil on canvas, c. 1730-40
x1940.600.28


John Vanderlyn (1775 - 1852)
A Distant View of the Falls of Niagara
Oil on canvas, c. 1802-3
1945.83


Thomas Seir Cummings (1804 - 1848)
Thomas Cole (1801 - 1848)
Oil on canvas, c. 1826-1828
1962.51


Thomas Cole (1801 - 1848)
Rip Van Winkle
Pencil on paper, c. 1825



Tompkins H. Matteson (1813 - 1884)
Rip Van Winkle’s Return
Oil on canvas, 1860
1993.6