USH - Development of American Art and Literature - Church

Background
• 1815… had just finished fighting the War of 1812
• strong sense of nationalism
• America’s strong sense of identity begins to develop
o not just through politics, but also through art and literature
• artists were creating national heroes and national history
• most portraits created while the person was still alive
• reasons for the increase in art and literature
o more leisure time
o advent of public education (Horace Mann… see ID sheet)
o lighting added to more houses (more time to read, draw, write, etc.) [gas lamps]
• mostly in the North and the Northeast





American Art Developed
• several artists of importance developed their style during this period: 1815 – 1860

Gilbert Stuart
• famous for portraits/paintings
• the most famous of his portraits are of George Washington
o one of these was the portrait that Dolly Madison saved
• also painted… Adams, Marshall, etc.
• painted them as regal, royal, etc.

John Trumbull
• pictures of the Revolutionary War
• battle scenes: action
• show what war was really like (dead, dying)
• picture of the signing of the Declaration of Independence
• picture of the surrender at Yorktown

Emanuel Leutze
• painting of George Washington the Delaware River
o (the one with the ice on the river)
o portrays Washington as almost god-like

Hudson River School
• in the Hudson River Valley, New York
• art school
• American artists started to paint and draw in an “American” style
• famous for landscape portraits (many were of the river valley)

George Caitlin
• western landscapes
• Native Americans
o portrayed them as proud, powerful, etc.

John James Audobon
• American naturalist (one of the first)
• drawings of birds (catalogued thousands of species of birds)








Development of American Literature
• distinctive American literature develops at this time

James Fennimore Cooper
• stories dealing with the frontier and Native Americans
• “The Last of the Mohicans”

Nathaniel Hawthorne
• “The Scarlet Letter”
• Puritanism
• New England setting
• “The House of the Seven Gables”

Washington Irving
• “Rip Van Winkle”
• “Legend of Sleepy Hollow”

Herman Melville
• “Moby Dick”

Edgar Allen Poe
• “The Raven”
• (and so much more!)

Ralph Waldo Emerson
• transcendentalist
o get in touch with the inner self
o get back to nature
o focus on basic needs

Henry David Thoreau
• transcendentalist
o get in touch with the inner self
o get back to nature
o focus on basic needs

Noah Webster
• dictionary