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Along the Juniata: Thomas Cole and the Dissemination of American Landscape Imagery
Along the Juniata Thomas Cole and the Dissemination of American Landscape Imagery Author:Nancy Siegel Along the Juniata focuses on the dissemination of American landscape imagery in the early to mid-19th century. Through a variety of media including drawings, paintings, engravings, and decorative arts, images of the American landscape were translated and reproduced in large numbers to provide an eager audience with examples of patriotic views an... more »d scenes of natural wonders. This book investigates the art of Thomas Cole as representative of this process and examines the means by which an 1827 drawing by the artist of a scene in the Allegheny Mountains was transformed into a painting, engraved copies, and adorned imported Staffordshire ceramics designed to appeal specifically to an American audience. The widespread use of this popular image by Cole demonstrates the cultural demand for images of the American landscape as it was fueled by a period of increased nationalism during the first half of the 19th century. Additionally, a selection of Hudson River School paintings and engravings illustrates the popularity of American landscape imagery as it appeared in painted and printed formats. Artists include Thomas Cole, Asher Brown Durand, Albert Bierstadt, John Frederick Kensett, John William Casilear, Jervis McEntee, Edmund Darch Lewis, Norton Bush, David Johnson, and Arthur Fitzwilliam Tait. These paintings are all recent discoveries and are illustrated for the first time. AUTHOR BIO: Nancy Siegel is director of the Juniata College Museum of Art and assistant professor of art history. She is the author of The Morans: The Artistry of a Nineteenth-Century Family of Painter-Etchers and Uncommon Visions of Juniataís Past.« less