Painting the American Landscape: 5 Weeks

Reflecting early American ideas of discovery, exploration and settlement, 19th century landscape painters captured pastoral scenes, wildernesses and an expanding national consciousness about the natural environment. Their work also contains an inherent ambivalence, as their romanticizing of the mostly unexplored territories of the newly formed United States contributed to a westward expansion that would also bring about its industrial and commercial development, ultimately requiring a national park movement to preserve the beauty they sought to capture on canvas. This series of live talks via Zoom focuses on one artist each week - Thomas Cole, Asher B. Durand, Albert Bierstadt, Frederic Edwin Church and Thomas Moran - and explore the stories of their lives, their visions of the natural world and their environmental concerns.