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

A. 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

B. 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)
  • picture of Lyceum Hall built 1839 in Burlington, NJ, the town where James F. Cooper was born
  • 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

  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!"
• Hedge Club met in Emerson's Concord home
• Rev. Fred Hedge, George Ripley, Bronson Alcott
• Margaret Fuller held her "Conversations" and edited the Dial
• Fuller's picture from USIA fotofile
• Henry Thoreau sought self-reliance at Walden Pond 1845-47
• Thoreau's picture and book page from Thoreau Society

C. Novelists

• James Fenimore Cooper
  • picture from the Cooper page at U of Texas
  • Leatherstocking Tales and hero Natty Bumppo

  KOBO in Whaling Museum

• 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

D. Poets

• 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

E. Hudson River School

• "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 ../../USPics18 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

F. Genre artists

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

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

• "never paint for the few, but for the many"
• pictures of rural Long Island
• The Rustic Dance won American Institute of NY prize 1830
• Banjo Player - stereotype of happy black musician
• Cathing Crabs, Cider Making, Herald in the Country

• the Missouri artist - river scenes popular in East
• Fur Traders Descending the Missouri 1845
• Boatman series, Election series (drawn from life)

• 1852 partnership - mass-produced 3 prints per week - 15 cents
• themes of progress, technology, heroes, Protestant ethic
• rural small town life, sex roles idealized
• The "Lightning Express" Trains: "Leaving the Junction" picture from Currier & Ives online exhibit from City Museum of New York

G. Daguerreotypes

• The first photographs from 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
• Digital Daguerreian Archive from Greg Walker
• The Daguerreian Society has pictures in its Gallery and essays in its Resources, including "A Thumnail History of the Daguerreotype" by Kenneth E. Nelson.