Nineteenth-century landscapes - Report from Europe - Brief Article

Magazine Antiques, April, 2002 by Miriam Kramer

In art history the term "sublime" means something distinct from, and sometimes contrasted with, the beautiful. In regard to nature the word was often used to describe the wild, grand, and even terrifying, such as mountains and torrents of water. The high point of the sublime in British landscape painting was reached in the mid-nineteenth century with the death of Joseph Mallord William Turner in 1851. It can also be argued that the next phase of the story took place in the United States when landscape painting there came into its own.

Certainly the coincidence of the westward expansion and the rise of artistic talent resulted in the creation of a new school of landscape painting in the United States. One of the first practitioners was Thomas Cole, who was a great devotee of the wilderness. The work was continued by, among others, Frederic Edwin Church, whose immense canvases reflected the grandeur of his scenes, such as the view of Niagara Falls shown below.

An exhibition entitled American Sublime: Landscape Painting in United States 1820-1880 is on view at the Tate Britain in London until May 19. It will then be seen at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia from June 17 until August 25, and at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts from September 22 until November 17. In London, the show is supported by GlaxoSmithKline and sponsored by the Henry Luce Foundation. The curators are Andrew Wilton of the Tate and Timothy J. Barringer of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. They have also written the accompanying catalogue, which is distributed in the United States by Princeton University Press. It may be purchased by telephoning 800-288-2129.