Landscape and Genre Painting in America, 1820 - 1860
ARHA 273
Fall 2007
| Section:
01
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The course considers landscape and genre painting within the framework of American culture from, roughly, the Jacksonian and antebellum periods. We will investigate the ideological dimensions of these works and consider how they contributed to the construction of a 19th-century American national identity. We will explore how landscape painting relates to the rise of industrialization and the growth of the American city; the rising political tensions leading up to the Civil War; the interrelationship between art and science; the moral, spiritual, and social dimensions of American nature; the pastoral ideal and the concept of the wilderness; the myth and reality of the frontier; and the ideologies of Manifest Destiny and Jacksonian democracy. We will explore the stylistic and ideological dimensions of landscape in the art of Thomas Cole; Hudson River School painters such as Frederic Edwin Church and Asher B. Durand; and luminist painters such as John Frederick Kensett and Martin Johnson Heade. We examine the construction of American identity in depictions of everyday life by genre painters such as William Sidney Mount, Richard Woodville, and Lilly Martin Spencer. We will consider how these artists' images of a variety of Americans inform our ideas abut gender, race, class, and regional types of the pre-Civil War period. |
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Essential Capabilities:
Interpretation, Writing |
| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
HA ART |
| Course Format: Lecture / Discussion | Grading Mode: Graded |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
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Fulfills a Requirement for: None |
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Past Enrollment Probability: Not Available |
| SECTION 01 |
Major Readings: Wesleyan RJ Julia Bookstore
Andrew Wilton and Tim Barringer, AMERICAN SUBLIME: LANDSCAPE PAINTING IN THE UNITED STATES, 1820-1860 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002)
Elizabeth Johns, AMERICAN GENRE PAINTING: THE POLITICS OF EVERYDAY LIFE (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991)
Marianne Doezema and Elizabeth Milroy, eds., READING AMERICAN ART (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998)
Readings are drawn from key literary texts of the period (including work by William Cullen Bryant, Ralph Waldo Emerson, James Fenimore Cooper, and Harriet Beecher Stowe) and methodologically diverse art historical studies.
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Examinations and Assignments:
Midterm and final exams, 8-10 page paper |
Additional Requirements and/or Comments:
A field trip to New York museums is an optional part of the scheduled curriculum. |
| Instructor(s): Noble,Nancy J. Times: ..T.R.. 09:00AM-10:20AM; Location: DAC100; |
| Total Enrollment Limit: 35 | | SR major: 8 | JR major: 5 | | |
| Seats Available: 15 | GRAD: X | SR non-major: 7 | JR non-major: 5 | SO: 5 | FR: 5 |
| Drop/Add Enrollment Requests | | | | | |
| Total Submitted Requests: 0 | 1st Ranked: 0 | 2nd Ranked: 0 | 3rd Ranked: 0 | 4th Ranked: 0 | Unranked: 0 |
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