Seeing the Landscape in Landscape Art
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Seeing the Landscape in Landscape Art Edward K. Faison n 1825, a young British immigrant, cap- made famous by George Inness in the 1880s and tivated by the wild scenery of the Hud- 1890s. In an ironic twist, a painting fraternity Ison River and nearby Catskill mountains, (the HRS) founded to celebrate America’s wil- endeavored to promote America’s natural won- derness became synchronous with a brief period ders as a distinctive national identity. That year in the northeastern United States in which the Thomas Cole began painting the undeveloped landscape was altered to a greater extent than landscapes of the Northeast with romantic gran- at any time since the last ice age. Because pho- deur and literal exactitude, inspiring a cadre of tography was in its infancy during this period followers that produced America’s first painting and because intensive observation and faithful movement. The Hudson River School (HRS), depiction of nature as well as the study of natu- as the movement was later named, thrived for ral science were integral to the HRS’s ethos, the next half century before being replaced by nineteenth century American landscape paint- the misty, ethereal landscapes of the tonalists ing affords a window into the dramatic ecologi- COURTESY OF THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART OF THE METROPOLITAN COURTESY Thomas Cole’s 1836 painting, View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm— The Oxbow. Cole included a portrait of himself working at his easel, dwarfed by the surrounding forest, in the lower center of the painting. Landscape Art 3 COURTESY OF THE NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART, WASHINGTON, D.C. WASHINGTON, OF ART, GALLERY OF THE NATIONAL COURTESY Deforestation is evident in George Inness’s The Lackawanna Valley, circa 1856. cal changes that occurred across the region. In land that were occurring around him. Although turn, these spectacularly rendered landscapes, he admired the cultural achievements of Europe when viewed with an eye toward ecology and and anticipated similar cultural greatness in natural history, can be seen afresh. America, he also decried the rapid loss of forest that inevitably accompanied the advancement From Forests to Fields of civilization. In 1841, Cole wrote on behalf Few paintings capture the overarching land- of the forest: scape dynamic of nineteenth century northeast- Our doom is near … These slumbering moun- ern North America as effectively as Cole’s View tains, resting in our arms, Shall naked glare from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massa- beneath the scorching sun, And all their wim- chusetts, after a Thunderstorm—The Oxbow. pling rivulets be dry. No more the deer shall Painted in 1836, The Oxbow depicts a wild, haunt these bosky glens, Nor the pert squirrel storm-battered forest clinging to the slopes of chatter near his store. A few short years! —our ancient race shall be, Like Israel’s, scattered Mount Holyoke under a darkened sky, juxta- ‘mong the tribes of men. posed against a sunlit, cultivated landscape sur- rounding the Connecticut River’s oxbow below. Cole wasn’t far from the truth. In fact he was Cole seems to capture the moment just before witnessing one of the greatest acts of defores- humanity on the right sweeps across the canvas tation the world has ever known. While for- and conquers the remaining wild nature on the est clearance took several centuries in Europe, left. Cole was certainly aware of and somewhat in eastern North America it was largely con- ambivalent toward the dramatic changes to the densed into two generations. From about 1810 4 Arnoldia 73/2 • October 2015 100 16,000,000 New England 90 14,400,000 Forest Cover and 80 12,800,000 Human Population 70 11,200,000 60 9,600,000 Connecticut 50 8,000,000 Maine 40 6,400,000 Population Massachusetts New Hampshire 30 4,800,000 DAVID FOSTER, HARVARD FOREST, HARVARD UNIVERSITY HARVARD FOREST, FOSTER, HARVARD DAVID Forest Cover (percentage of state) (percentage Cover Forest Rhode Island 20 3,200,000 New England Population Vermont 10 1,600,000 All New England (% of all six states) 0 0 Year 1600 1650 1700 1750 1800 1850 1900 1950 2000 This figure shows changes in forest cover in the New England states compared to human population. to 1870, much of the forested northeastern east Africa, with scattered trees and expan- United States was transformed into a mosaic sive grassland rather than the eastern decidu- of agricultural fields and cut-over woodlots. By ous forest landscape that it is. The stumps are mid-century every New England state except gone, evoking a subdued and bucolic scene for Maine was less than 50% forested. Southern in which cows and people lounge peacefully New England and Vermont, at their nadir, were beneath what appears to be a spreading, vase- only 30 to 35% forested (see figure above), and like elm tree. A myriad of colors emanate from by the 1880s New York state was reported to be the variety of land uses—hay meadow, cow less than 25% forested. pasture, various grain fields—of the surround- George Inness reveals this dramatic toll on ing fields. Indeed, habitat destruction is often the northeastern forest in The Lackawanna far from our mind when we view agrarian Valley (circa1856). This prominent early work scenes like the The Valley of Wyoming. There by Inness depicts the stump-strewn landscape is good reason for this response. An elevated around the incipient Scranton, Pennsylvania, perch overlooking an open plain with scat- bisected by a churning locomotive, all wit- tered trees and nearby water is the single most nessed by a central, reclining bystander. It is appealing landscape to humans, simulating both a jarring scene of the raw conversion of our ancestral savanna home in Africa and forest to field and a powerful statement that closely describing many nineteenth century humanity is no longer dwarfed in the presence landscape paintings. of wild nature (as Cole portrayed himself in The But as The Lackawanna Valley poignantly Oxbow) but rather dominion over it. reminds us, semi-open landscapes, though A decade after Inness’s The Lackawanna innately appealing, do not occur naturally in Valley, Jasper Cropsey painted a nearby north- the environment of the northeastern United eastern Pennsylvania landscape. The Valley States. They are almost entirely the result of of Wyoming (1865) depicts a sweeping land- deforestation followed by sustained disturbance scape so open, with fields ascending high on by human activity. The moist, temperate cli- the slopes of the distant hills, it suggests a mate in this region does not sustain grasslands savanna landscape of the American west or and savanna; instead it grows forest almost Landscape Art 5 Jasper Cropsey’s The Valley of Wyoming, 1865, depicts the agrarian landscape that replaced eastern forests. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. everywhere except for a few inhospitable and cousins of modern day elephants, were com- temporarily disturbed locations. As forest ecol- mon in this transitional landscape between ogist E. Lucy Braun (1950) wrote: tundra and forest, and these large herbivores When the Pilgrims came to this continent, New probably helped maintain the landscape’s semi- England was covered by forest interrupted only open character, much the way elephants do in where lakes or bogs and river swamps made tree African savannas today. growth impossible; where sand deposits near the coast were unsuitable for closed stands; where Disturbances in the Nineteenth fire or windfall had temporarily destroyed the Century Landscape forest; where Indians had burned the forest (espe- The tranquility evoked by Cropsey’s Valley of cially near the coast); and where rock outcrops Wyoming belies the relentless disturbances occurred in the more rugged sections. required to maintain agrarian landscapes One would have to travel back 12,000 to of the Northeast in a semi-open state. How- 14,000 years to the end of the last ice age to ever, a closer look at the composition reveals find an environment that supported open land- some of these disturbances. In the left middle scapes in the Northeast at a scale comparable ground, we see farmhands cutting and collect- to the agrarian landscapes of the nineteenth ing hay in an upland meadow near a gray barn. century. Then, cold climates south of the wan- The arduous task of cutting hay meadows by ing ice sheet sustained a mix of tundra grasses hand provided fodder for livestock in winter, and sedges and scattered spruce trees in an open and simultaneously prevented trees and shrubs “spruce parkland.” Mastodons, the now extinct from invading and overtaking the grass. Cattle 6 Arnoldia 73/2 • October 2015 Edge of the Forest (1891) by George Inness shows a forest ecosystem altered by human interventions. Courtesy of Yale University Art Gallery. themselves were anything but passive inhab- trees were largely relegated to hedgerows along itants of the landscape. In the hill pasture in stone walls, fences, or rock outcrops where they the right foreground, a well-worn path, short were less accessible to livestock. The source of cropped grass, exposed rocks, an eroding slope, the two distant rising smoke (or steam) trails is and even the prominent elm tree all point to the unclear; however, burning of fields was a com- intensive grazing and trampling effects of these mon practice in the nineteenth century North- animals. Somewhat parallel to the megafauna east following harvesting of grain and hay. Like of the Pleistocene Northeast and contempo- cattle grazing, fire preventedwoody plants from rary East Africa, domestic livestock maintained establishing, including the thorny shrubs that grassy pastures by trampling and consuming cows often avoided. tree and shrub seedlings. Grazing and burning were not limited to open The prominent elm appears to have been an crop fields and meadows but also frequently artistic addition by Cropsey (it doesn’t appear occurred in nearby woodlands.