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1000-1875: learning resources

The Great Serpent Mound

Fort Ancient Culture(?), Great Serpent Mound, c. 1070, Adams County, Ohio (photo: Eric Ewing, CC BY-SA 3.0)
Fort Ancient Culture(?), Great Serpent Mound, c. 1070, Adams County, Ohio (photo: Eric Ewing, CC BY-SA 3.0)

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Clean water for a young Philadelphia

Thomas Birch, Fairmount Water Works, 1821, oil on canvas, 51.1 x 76.3 cm (Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts)
Thomas Birch, Fairmount Water Works, 1821, oil on canvas, 51.1 x 76.3 cm (Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts)

Key points

  • As Philadelphia grew, so did the need to secure clean sources of water. When it opened in 1815, the Fairmount Water Works was celebrated as an example of American ingenuity, harnessing the power of nature to create and support a modern, healthy, beautiful city.
  • Built in a Neoclassical style to evoke the grandeur and moral well-being associated with classical antiquity, the Fairmount Water Works was the most popular tourist destination in America until the 1840s. Prints and decorative objects featuring the Water Works were manufactured and circulated internationally, making it an iconic image widely associated with the early American republic.
  • Along with the Water Works, the Schuylkill canal made the river more navigable through a series of dams and locks. This was part of a series of canals, constructed in the early 19th century, that enabled trade and expansion within the interior of the United States.

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Read and watch a short video on the history of the Fairmount Water Works

More to think about

The video states that the Water Works were the number one tourist destination in the United States until supplanted by Niagara Falls. Are there tourist destinations in your area that are linked to technology? How would you compare them to the Water Works in function and appearance?

Carleton Watkins and the business of seeing the American west

Carleton E. Watkins, Eagle Creek, Columbia River, 1867, albumen silver print, 40.01 × 52.39 cm (LACMA)
Carleton E. Watkins, Eagle Creek, Columbia River, 1867, albumen silver print, 40.01 × 52.39 cm (LACMA)

Key points

  • As industry and tourism expanded westward, photography became an important documentary tool for strategic planning and advertising, particularly for people who remained in the eastern United States. With the Transcontinental Railroad nearly complete, planning had begun on northern and southern routes across the country, and photographs like Eagle Creek, Columbia River were important for understanding the local geography and possible business opportunities. They also stoked popular imagination about the western territories.
  • To capture the expansive terrain of the wilderness and also preserve precise detail, Carleton Watkins invented the mammoth camera, which recorded images on large glass plates. This process yielded crisp, clear photographs, but also required the photographer to navigate the countryside while carrying delicate and heavy equipment.
  • This image was commissioned by the Oregon Steam Navigation Company to inform their business decisions, but Carleton Watkins made similar photographs that would be sold to the general public in galleries. Still, photography was not widely considered fine art until the early decades of the twentieth century.

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More to think about

This photograph was commissioned by the Oregon Steam Navigation Company to inform their planned work along the Columbia River. Using one of the high resolution images available, look at the types of information that Carleton Watkins is careful to include in this one picture. How do you think these details might have been used by the company? What do we learn about this region?

Olmsted and Vaux, Central Park

Frederick Law Olmsted, plan of Central Park, 1869
Frederick Law Olmsted, plan of Central Park, 1869

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Morrison H. Heckscher, Creating Central Park (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2008).
Francis R. Kowsky, Country, Park & City: The Architecture and Life of Calvert Vaux (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).
Roy Rosenzweig and Elizabeth Blackmar, The Park and the People: A History of Central Park (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992).
David Schuyler, The New Urban Landscape: The Redefinition of City Form in Nineteenth-Century America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986).
Robert Twombly, ed. Frederick Law Olmsted: Essential Texts (New York: W. W. Norton, 2010).

The painting that inspired a National Park

Thomas Moran, Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, 1872, oil on canvas mounted on aluminum, 213 x 266.3 cm
Thomas Moran, Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, 1872, oil on canvas mounted on aluminum, 213 x 266.3 cm

Key points

  • In the 19th century, Americans living in the eastern United States had little access to the western territories. When Ferdinand Hayden led the first geological survey of Yellowstone in 1871, he brought along a photographer, William Henry Jackson, and a painter, Thomas Moran, to document the area. Their images helped influence Congress to make Yellowstone the first National Park and this painting was purchased to celebrate that legislation.
  • After the Transcontinental Railroad was completed in 1869, railroad companies sought to expand throughout the west and encouraged travelers to visit the region. Moran’s images of Yellowstone helped transform the area known as “Colter’s Hell” to a tourist destination considered a “wonderland.” Although Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone is actually a composite of different locations, the precise geological and biological details make this painting feel authentic.
  • Part of the myth of the American West was that these were untouched lands, erasing the local Native Americans who often assisted explorers, as we see in this painting. Around Yellowstone, these tribes were forced onto reservations when gold was discovered in the region two years later, contributing to the larger Plains Indian wars that had intensified after the Civil War.
  • Moran painted another version of Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone for the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893, where Frederick Jackson Turner argued his “frontier thesis.” He characterized American expansion as a civilizing force across the continent.

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More to think about

Thomas Moran’s paintings of Yellowstone were very popular with the viewing public and part of a successful tourism campaign. Today, professional and amateur photographs document and share images of iconic locations. Find an example from a familiar landmark or site and look at how it is framed, composed, or filtered. Does this modern image share any similarities with how Moran portrayed Yellowstone?
During the 1871 expedition, William Henry Jackson and Thomas Moran worked side-by-side and frequently collaborated. Compare some of the photographs taken by Jackson with Moran’s paintings. Why do you think Ferdinand Hayden brought both a photographer and a painter on his survey of Yellowstone?

Hetch Hetchy, Yosemite, and the battle for National Parks

Albert Bierstadt, Hetch Hetchy Valley, California, c. 1874-80, oil on canvas, 94.8 x 148.2 cm (Bequest of Laura M. Lyman, in memory of her husband Theodore Lyman, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art)
Albert Bierstadt, Hetch Hetchy Valley, California, c. 1874-80, oil on canvas, 94.8 x 148.2 cm (Bequest of Laura M. Lyman, in memory of her husband Theodore Lyman, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art)

Key points

  • The promise of the American frontier and the notion of Manifest Destiny inspired westward expansion throughout the 19th century. Artists like Albert Bierstadt often travelled with government-sponsored expeditions, visually documenting these remote and majestic landscapes for audiences in the East.
  • After the violence of the Civil War, the neutral territories of the West suggested a hopeful new direction for reconciliation and expansion. Ironically, while these landscapes celebrated pristine beauty, they inspired tourism, settlement, and industrialization that threatened the natural environment. Interest also grew in representing Native Americans, who were romantically perceived as part of a “vanishing culture,” but in reality had already been violently displaced.
  • The debate over the Hetch Hetchy Valley underscores the efforts in the early 20th century by naturalists like John Muir to advocate for laws protecting the environment. Although a 1913 law approved the damming of the river (and destruction of the valley) to provide water for San Francisco, the controversy would influence the 1916 passage of the National Park Service Act that now protects millions of acres of land.

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More to think about

Consider your initial reaction to Bierstadt’s landscape painting before watching the video. How does learning about the history of the Hetch Hetchy Valley affect your original response to this work?

Revisiting a frozen sea

Frederic Edwin Church, The Iceberg, c. 1875, oil on canvas, 55.9 x 68.6 cm (Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection, 1993.6)
Frederic Edwin Church, The Iceberg, c. 1875, oil on canvas, 55.9 x 68.6 cm (Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection, 1993.6)

Key points

  • Frederic Church painted epic landscapes, traveling through the American West, South America, and the Arctic to sketch locations. Back in his studio, he would combine these sketches to create composite views that blended specific detail and idealized vistas.
  • Church was inspired by Alexander von Humboldt, a naturalist who had traveled through South America and written extensively about his experience. This painting was also created during a time of growing awareness about the impact of industrialization on the natural world and the beginnings of conservationist efforts.

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More to think about

The video connects Frederic Church’s The Iceberg to contemporary environmental concerns. If you were creating a campaign to discuss climate change, do you think Church’s painting would be an effective image to use? Do you think this painting would be more, or less, effective than a photograph?

Landscape and the American republic, Frederic Church’s Natural Bridge

Frederic Church, The Natural Bridge, Virginia, 1852, oil on canvas, 28 x 23 inches (The Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia)
Frederic Church, The Natural Bridge, Virginia, 1852, oil on canvas, 28 x 23 inches (The Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia)

Key Points

  • Natural Bridge, a natural limestone formation located in western Virginia, has long been the subject of artistic renderings. A substantial number of such images were produced in the first half of the 19th century, when the site was actively celebrated as a symbol of the natural beauty of the American landscape.
  • Unlike the horizontal compositions of most other artists, Frederic Edwin Church depicted the Natural Bridge with an emphasis on its verticality, making a visual reference to the form of ancient Roman triumphal arches. This visual parallel served as a metaphor for the linkage between the republicanism of the newly established United States and its model in ancient Rome. 
  • The need to reinforce the tie to ancient Roman
    was heightened in the mid-19th century. Slavery was expanding across southern and western territories in the U.S., and many people saw this trend as a threat to the young republic. Frederic Edwin Church, however, had faith that the republic would endure. Like other 19th-century landscape painters, he employed his images of the natural terrain and its wonders as visual definitions or metaphors of the state of the nation.

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Read more about the 2021 exhibition, Virginia Acadia: The Natural Bridge in American Art, held at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.
Learn more about this painting in the context of the 2020–21 exhibition, Alexander von Humboldt and the United States; Art, Nature, and Culture, held at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

More to Think About

Church’s painting is meticulous in the rendering of natural details, from rocks to plants to the bubbling stream. Do you think this level of realism is essential to communicating his message of support for American republicanism? Why or why not? 
Knowing that Church’s intention with this painting was to convey his belief in the future of the American republic, how might you imagine the conversation between the two figures in the scene?  
What other natural formations do you think are symbolic of the United States in some way? Have you visited any of these sites in person? Compare them with the symbolism of Natural Bridge.

Science, religion, and politics, Church's Cotopaxi

Khan Academy video wrapper
Science, religion, and politics, Church's CotopaxiSee video transcript

Key points

  • This large oil painting, measuring four by seven feet in size, presents a panoramic view of the Ecuadorian landscape. Cotopaxi, the volcano positioned in the background of the composition, actively erupts and impacts the entire scene. Painter Frederic Edwin Church made multiple sketches on two trips to South America, translating them to large painted canvases upon his return to his studio in New York.
  • Church was inspired by the work of Prussian naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, whose published descriptions and ideas about the natural world were widely read in the United States. Church’s highly detailed style and interest in natural wonders, like volcanos, reflects a fascination with the great variety of the environment as well as the emerging understanding of the earth’s geological evolution.
  • Church’s focus on sites of natural grandeur was shared by his fellow Hudson River School painters. In his images, any human presence was often dwarfed by the sublime beauty and immensity of such locales.
  • Cotopaxi was painted in 1862, midway through the American Civil War. Different symbolic readings of the painting suggest that the violence of the eruption led to either hope or despair for the warring nation.

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Read more about Frederic Edwin Church (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
Who Was Alexander von Humboldt? Smithsonian Magazine March 2020
Alexander von Humboldt and the United States: Art, Nature, and Culture (exhibition at Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2020–2021)
Learn about the Hudson River School at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and from Google Arts & Culture

More to think about

How do you understand this painting? Based on what you see and your knowledge of the time, do you read it as hopeful or as a metaphor of a nation in despair?

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