GENERAL DESCRIPTION
For 19th-century Americans it seemed everywhere one looked, from the tropics to the Arctic, from the Far East to the far west, to the heavens overhead, the perspective of the earth and the Universe was widening.In the plethora of names from many countries, one heroic leftover from the age of the Enlightenment loomed largest: Baron Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859), the German naturalist, explorer, encyclopedist, thinker, and beatific presence in the mind of Western man. By the mid-19th century Humboldt was regarded in Britain as a statesman and exemplar of character; in the United States as a staunch friend of American democracy, an opponent of slavery, and no less than "the greatest man in the world;” and as a favorite son by every civilized country. [1]
Humboldt's expertise included the visual arts, and his artistic vision was as sweeping as his learning. In his Kosmos, a lifetime's work embracing (as the title suggests) the entire natural world first published in 1845 (in English in 1848), Humboldt specifically called for a landscape painting which would "flourish with a new and hitherto unknown brilliancy" in response to the magnificent scenery of the Himalayas and especially the Andes and Amazon basin. [2]
His global mandate particularly resonated with Frederic Edwin Church, who avidly sought confrontations with the natural sublime and (undoubtedly) to establish the foundations for an expanded career. Church and his contemporary landscape painters created work that reflected the expanding scientific world. Two aspects of this mid-19th century context are critical to understanding their artistic approaches.
The first is that science, history, and art were much more allied than we might now suspect. The search for the order of natural things was, since the later 18th century, a parallel pursuit to the determination of the history of mankind, and to "historical" art. And, given the continuing legacy of the Enlightenment, the first two endeavors predictably produced splendidly creative results: Charles Darwin's Origin of Species (1859) and Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay's History of England (1848) take their rightful places as great literature as well as exacting descriptions of knowledge.
The second is that in Britain and America especially, science was still an inquiry intimately connected to—or at least answerable to—theology. Of course, tenets of the two fields often appeared to conflict, but many attempts were made to resolve the difficulties. Paintings by artists such as Church or Thomas Cole (his mentor), offered a synthesis particularly accessible to Anglo-American audiences. That synthesis was verified by the contemporary science of Humboldt, Louis Agassiz, Matthew F. Maury, Isaac Israel Hayes, and others.
[1] The quotation is from Harper’s Weekly, 3 April 1858, 211. For a British opinion of Humboldt, see Morning Post (London), 5 July 1866.
[2] The pioneering article on this subject is Albert Ten Eyck Gardner, “Scientific Sources of the Full-Length Landscape: 1850,” Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 4 (October 1945), 59-65.
Adapted from
Gerald Carr, Frederic Edwin Church: The Icebergs (Dallas, TX: Dallas Museum of Art, 1980), 34-36.
NOTES
Removed the TMS tag for Church's Icebergs (1979.28) as part of the revision process, October 2015.
Needs rule to link to the time period and place. For the sake of moving quickly, I am adding constituents to this rule but it will still not link to the majority of the American landscapes in the PC. I am applying the content to Church, Bierstandt, and Miller.
Since the rule will not link to works based on time and place, I am changing the title of the CC from 1800-1900, United States, "Nineteenth-Century American, Exploration, and Science" to drop the years and place.
Changed status from routed to complete, June 21, 2016.
Adding "draft" tag back to note, Dec 19, 2016, as part of the revised harvest/route procedure. This note will be pulled into GDrive and manually moved to Queta's folders for final review. Update- January 18, 2017- Adding #routed tag so that I can easily keep track of this note in Evernote to confirm that it is eventually pushed into GDrive. As of January 18, 2017 the content is in Brain but not in GDrive so I am unable to finish revisions and mark it complete in Evernote or move the GDoc to Queta's folder.
Confirmed note updated in GDrive. Tagged completed and moved GDoc to Queta folder. (1/24/2017)
This note originally had a rule that linked to the exhibition 11304. That rule has been removed as of December 2, 2016 based on Shyam's advice (in D3C meeting 9/29/2016) that exhibitions cannot be targets for rules until the various exhibition IDs are cleaned up (TMS, Piction, Archives, Brain- all assigned IDs).
ASSOCIATED CONTENT CHUNKS
AUDIO ASSETS
Shipwrecks Throughout History: From Tut to the Atomic Age (four recordings from the event) 2007.
12936513: UMO, 12936521: UMO, 12936529: UMO, 12936537: UMO
VIDEO ASSETS
IMAGE ASSETS
Used a detail from the Icebergs as the CC illustration
40263414: Image
WEB RESOURCES
Cold Case Closed~Check out curator Sue Canterbury's 2014 blog post on DMA's Uncrated, summarizing how recent maritime discoveries connect to Church's The Icebergs.
ARCHIVAL RESOURCES
Gerald Carr, Frederic Edwin Church: The Icebergs (Dallas, TX: Dallas Museum of Art, 1980). http://files.dma.org/multimedia/document/161611253907523_original.pdf
12712641: UMO
FUN FACTS
TEACHING IDEAS
RULES
set operator as or
Apply to objects where number equals 1979.28
apply to objects where constituent_id equals 1958
apply to objects where constituent_id equals 1349
apply to objects where constituent_id equals 2094
Category
rules_operator
OR
General Description
For 19th-century Americans it seemed everywhere one looked, from the tropics to the Arctic, from the Far East to the far west, to the heavens overhead, the perspective of the earth and the Universe was widening.In the plethora of names from many countries, one heroic leftover from the age of the Enlightenment loomed largest: Baron Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859), the German naturalist, explorer, encyclopedist, thinker, and beatific presence in the mind of Western man. By the mid-19th century Humboldt was regarded in Britain as a statesman and exemplar of character; in the United States as a staunch friend of American democracy, an opponent of slavery, and no less than "the greatest man in the world;” and as a favorite son by every civilized country. [1]
Humboldt's expertise included the visual arts, and his artistic vision was as sweeping as his learning. In his Kosmos, a lifetime's work embracing (as the title suggests) the entire natural world first published in 1845 (in English in 1848), Humboldt specifically called for a landscape painting which would "flourish with a new and hitherto unknown brilliancy" in response to the magnificent scenery of the Himalayas and especially the Andes and Amazon basin. [2]
His global mandate particularly resonated with Frederic Edwin Church, who avidly sought confrontations with the natural sublime and (undoubtedly) to establish the foundations for an expanded career. Church and his contemporary landscape painters created work that reflected the expanding scientific world. Two aspects of this mid-19th century context are critical to understanding their artistic approaches.
The first is that science, history, and art were much more allied than we might now suspect. The search for the order of natural things was, since the later 18th century, a parallel pursuit to the determination of the history of mankind, and to "historical" art. And, given the continuing legacy of the Enlightenment, the first two endeavors predictably produced splendidly creative results: Charles Darwin's Origin of Species (1859) and Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay's History of England (1848) take their rightful places as great literature as well as exacting descriptions of knowledge.
The second is that in Britain and America especially, science was still an inquiry intimately connected to—or at least answerable to—theology. Of course, tenets of the two fields often appeared to conflict, but many attempts were made to resolve the difficulties. Paintings by artists such as Church or Thomas Cole (his mentor), offered a synthesis particularly accessible to Anglo-American audiences. That synthesis was verified by the contemporary science of Humboldt, Louis Agassiz, Matthew F. Maury, Isaac Israel Hayes, and others.
[1] The quotation is from Harper’s Weekly, 3 April 1858, 211. For a British opinion of Humboldt, see Morning Post (London), 5 July 1866.
[2] The pioneering article on this subject is Albert Ten Eyck Gardner, “Scientific Sources of the Full-Length Landscape: 1850,” Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 4 (October 1945), 59-65.
Adapted from
Gerald Carr, Frederic Edwin Church: The Icebergs (Dallas, TX: Dallas Museum of Art, 1980), 34-36.
Fun Facts
Archival Resources
Gerald Carr, Frederic Edwin Church: The Icebergs (Dallas, TX: Dallas Museum of Art, 1980). http://files.dma.org/multimedia/document/161611253907523_original.pdf
12712641: UMO
Web Resources
Cold Case Closed~Check out curator Sue Canterbury's 2014 blog post on DMA's Uncrated, summarizing how recent maritime discoveries connect to Church's The Icebergs.
Notes
Removed the TMS tag for Church's Icebergs (1979.28) as part of the revision process, October 2015.
Needs rule to link to the time period and place. For the sake of moving quickly, I am adding constituents to this rule but it will still not link to the majority of the American landscapes in the PC. I am applying the content to Church, Bierstandt, and Miller.
Since the rule will not link to works based on time and place, I am changing the title of the CC from 1800-1900, United States, "Nineteenth-Century American, Exploration, and Science" to drop the years and place.
Changed status from routed to complete, June 21, 2016.
Adding "draft" tag back to note, Dec 19, 2016, as part of the revised harvest/route procedure. This note will be pulled into GDrive and manually moved to Queta's folders for final review. Update- January 18, 2017- Adding #routed tag so that I can easily keep track of this note in Evernote to confirm that it is eventually pushed into GDrive. As of January 18, 2017 the content is in Brain but not in GDrive so I am unable to finish revisions and mark it complete in Evernote or move the GDoc to Queta's folder.
Confirmed note updated in GDrive. Tagged completed and moved GDoc to Queta folder. (1/24/2017)
This note originally had a rule that linked to the exhibition 11304. That rule has been removed as of December 2, 2016 based on Shyam's advice (in D3C meeting 9/29/2016) that exhibitions cannot be targets for rules until the various exhibition IDs are cleaned up (TMS, Piction, Archives, Brain- all assigned IDs).
rules
Apply To
Objects
number
Equals
1979.281
Apply To
Objects
constituent_id
Equals
1958
Apply To
Objects
constituent_id
Equals
1349
Apply To
Objects
constituent_id
Equals
2094
source file
time_and_place-0053.xml.nores