The American Renaissance

Emerson's Concord home, from Rare Books Print File at Virginia

Ideas from Europe

1. individualism = each unique, own emotions & ideas
   • internal man different from external nature
2. nature = as an organism, not Newton's watch
   • a mysterious process, always in flux
3. emotion = passion, intuition, imagination
   • a higher source of truth than reason
4. diversity = acceptance of different lifestyles
   • optimism, progress, democratic

Philosophers

The young Emerson, from Rare Books Print File at Virginia

• Ralph Waldo Emerson went for a walk in the woods in 1832
• born 1803 in Boston, died 1882 in Concord
• resigned from ministry 1832; went on tour of Europe
• read Kant - some "things in themselves" unknowable
  • "noumena" = Transcendentalism
• spoke on lyceum circuit (1826 by Josiah Holbrook)
  • Lyceum Museum in Alexandria built 1839 as a lecture hall
  • text of Lincoln's 1838 Lyceum address
  • no high school until Boston 1821
  • Horace Mann leader of public education - state boards
  • lyceum evolved into chautauqua by 1874
• self-culture movement - Young Men's Societies
  • led by merchants in new market towns
  • debate, public speaking, reading rooms
  • William McGuffey of Cincinnati published his Eclectic Readers
  • McGuffey picture from McGuffey Reading Center
  • Noah Webster dictionary 1828

  Horace Greeley, from the Library of Congress

• penny press
  • Horace Greeley's New York Tribune publicized "-isms"
  • Edgar Allen Poe wrote a balloon trip hoax story in 1844 New York Sun
  • article on the dime novel in the 1907 Atlantic Monthly
  • Godey's Ladies Book - picture from Hope Greenberg's web page
• 1836 Nature from "Oversoul" lecture
  • "I am part and parcel of God"
• 1837 "American Scholar" lecture at Harvard
  • "we will walk on our own feet, we will work with our own hands, we will speak our own minds." - should "read God directly" - books only for "scholar's idle times"
• 1847 lecture tour of Britain - popular intellectual
• used practical language of businessman, Whig entrepreneur
  • wealth, riches, work - metaphors for spiritual progress
  • "All men are consumers, and an all ought to be producers. Man is an expensive animal and ought to be rich. Wealth has its source in the application of mind to nature. The most intimate ties subsist between thought and nature. The art of getting rich consists, not in industry, but in being at the right spot for such getting, and in the right application of forces. Steam was as abundant 100 years ago as now, but it was not put to so good a use as now. (applause)." - "Puff now, O Steam!"

Transcendentalism

Fuller from USIA fotofile

• Hedge Club met in Emerson's Concord home
• Rev. Fred Hedge, George Ripley, Bronson Alcott
• Brook Farm 1841-7 in West Roxbury, leisure as positive virtue, where Beethoven first played in America
• Fruitlands 1843 at Harvard by Alcott, no cotton or carrots
• Margaret Fuller held her "Conversations" after moving to Boston 1839, could read German, wrote Woman in the 19th Century 1845, and edited the Dial 1840-42, editor for Greeley 1844, died off Fire Island 1850
• Henry Thoreau born in Concord, worked in father's pencil factory, attended Concord lyceum 1829, taught Concord Academy 1838-41 but 11-year old Edmund Sewall, wrote 31 essays for the Dial 1840-44, sought self-reliance at Walden Pond 1845-47, bent nails, bean garden, trapped woodchucks, invented raisin bread
• Thoreau opposed telegraph, railroad, factories, intensification of work (people "tools of their tools"), decay of spirit, inequality of society, vanity clothing, opposed slavery and the Mexican War, did not pay tax and jailed 1846, wrote Civil Disobedience

Novelists

• Publishing revolution
  • Napier steam press 1825, Hoe rotary 1846
  • curved stereotype plates for fast type-setting
  • zinc replaced limestone lithography by 1860
  • book price fell to 25 cents
  • Harper & Row, George Putnam, John Wiley, Cummings and Hilliard paid royalties
• James Fenimore Cooper

  KOBO in Whaling Museum

  • picture from the Cooper page at U of Texas
  • Leatherstocking Tales and hero Natty Bumppo
• Nathaniel Hawthorne
  • picture from Peabody Essex Museum
  • Scarlett Letter and Hester Prynne
  • picture from the 1995 film from Hollywood Pictures
• Herman Melville
  • Moby Dick and Captain Ahab's quest
  • New Bedford Whaling Museum
• Harriet Beecher Stowe
  • wrote sentimental novels for women: beautiful, sensitive, nurturing, sincere, but helpless heroines seeking romanticized marriage, security, social reform, luxury
  • wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin about Eliza's escape with little Harry to preserve domesticity and family, is reunited with mother Cassy in Canada after Simon Legree whips Uncle Tom to death, sold 300,000 in 1852
  • "so you are the little lady that has brought this great war"

Poets

Walt Whitman, from LC

• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
  • picture from the Longfellow page at Auburn
  • The Village Blacksmith
• Edgar Allen Poe
  • The Raven
• Walt Whitman
  • Leaves of Grass
  • picture from the Library of Congress
  • "Whitman's Daguerreotypes: Objects of Democratic Union" by Timothy Stifel

Hudson River School

1. Thomas Cole (1801-48) in Catskills 1825

• "In the pure blue sky is the highest sublime... All is deep, unbroken repose up there voiceless, motionless..."
• idealized, not literal - landscape affected character - color affected emotion
• The Oxbow
• Course of Empire - patron Lumen Reed
• National Academy of Design
• 4 images from the Munson Williams Proctor Institute on the Cole page of the Living Schoolbook Project at Syracuse

2. Asher Durand (1796-1886)

• Landscape, 1866 , from the Durand page of the Museum of Art at Brigham Young University
• Kindred Spirits painted of Cole, Cullen Bryant outdoors
• president of National Academy 1850-61
• art unions, catalogs, magazines (Godeys)

3. Frederick Church (1826-1900)

• only major artist to study under Cole
• View of the Hudson River Valley from Olana, 1867 , from the Church page of the Museum of Art at Brigham Young University
• Cotopaxi, Icebergs

4. Albert Bierstadt

• travelled throughout West, Rockies
• Yellowstone Falls
• Near Salt Lake City Utah, 1881c , from the Bierstadt page of the Museum of Art at Brigham Young University

5. Thomas Moran and George Catlin

Examples of the Hudson River School at Artcyclopedia and at the Desmond-Fish Library online exhibit of 1000 works of art.

Genre artists

• ordinary activity of ordinary people
• "the idea is the essence of art" - realistic style, but idealized subject
• to uplift, reform, educate, inspire

1. John L. Krimmel (1790-1821)

• immigrant from Germany to Phil. 1810
• Fourth of July in Center Square 1812, 1819
• Quilting Frolic, Country Tavern
• influenced John Neagle, Daniel Blythe

2. William S. Mount (1807-1865)

• "never paint for the few, but for the many"
• pictures of rural Long Island
• The Rustic Dance won American Institute of NY prize 1830
• Catching Crabs, Cider Making, Herald in the Country
• Banjo Player - stereotype of happy black musician
• Mount was violinist, saw itinerant musicians
• rise of the popular song

3. George C. Bingham (1811-1879)

• b. in VA, grew up in Missouri, Whig
• trained at PA Academy of Fine Arts 1838
• painted 1000 portraits over 45 years
• river scenes of West popular in East
• drawn from life, direct experience, individual expressions
• Fur Traders Descending the Missouri 1845
• Shooting for the Beef 1850
• Boatman series: Raftsmen Playing Cards 1847, Wood Boat 1850, Jolly Flatboatmen in Port 1857
• Election series: Canvassing for a Vote 1852, County Election 1852, Stump Speaking 1854, Verdict of the people 1855

4. Currier & Ives - lithographers

• 1834 litho co. founded by Nathaniel Currier
• 1852 partnership with James Ives
• mass-produced 3 lithographic prints per week priced from $4 to 15 cents
• new steel plates replaced less durable copper lithographs
• themes of progress, technology, heroes, Protestant ethic
• rural small town life, sex roles idealized
• Autumn in New England 1866
• American Farm Scenes series
• Winter Road 1853, Ice Fishing 1856
• At Home 1850, The Kiss 1850
• animals idealized in Horse Race, Winter Road
• Ladder of Fortune 1850
• Tree of Death, Tree of Life 1850
• birdseye views of towns; Wagons west 1860
• Erie railroad poster 1860
• American heroes: Washington and Lincoln 1865
• The "Lightning Express" Trains: Leaving the Junction 1860 picture from Currier & Ives Foundation
• Western expansion: Currier & Ives Railroad Lithographs: Westward the Empire, 1870-1871
• Currier & Ives previous exhibit from City Museum of New York

Daguerreotypes

• New daguerreotype photo process by Louis Daguerre in France August 19, 1839
• "Whitman's Daguerreotypes: Objects of Democratic Union" by Timothy Stifel
• Daguerreotypes 1842-1862 from the Library of Congress
• Secrets of the Dark Chamber, The Art of the American Daguerreotype from the Smithsonian
• The Daguerreian Society has pictures in its Gallery and essays in its Resources, including "A Thumbnail History of the Daguerreotype" by Kenneth E. Nelson.
• The Social Construction of the Daguerreotype Portraint 1839-1860 by Ben Mattison
• Communications Revolution includes Daguerreotype and Samuel F. B. Morse

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