Artistic Achievements

America’s Cultural Identity and a growing sense of Nationalism

Cultural Identity and Nationalism

• Early American writers and artists mimicked Europeans• Many American artists trained and worked in Europe• Americans were too interested in building up the country

to “waste” time in the arts• Puritanism discouraged time spent on the arts such as

theater, painting, and novels – it was considered a waste of time because it was not producing anything tangible.

• The outpouring and growth of national pride after the War of 1812 was reflected by new forms of art, architecture, and literature that celebrated a unique American character different from the Old World.

Painting

• Portraits– Gilbert Stuart painted patriotic portraits of founding

fathers– Charles Wilson Peale painted 60 portraits of

Washington– John Trumbull painted Revolutionary War scenes– America’s frontier preoccupation with survival and

Puritan attitudes that art was a ‘waste of time” limited artistic development in early America

– Many of America’s artists trained and practiced in Europe where they could get work

Lewis and Clark by Charles Wilson Peale

John Trumbull “Declaration of Independence Signing”

Hudson River School• Nationalistic upsurge after War of 1812 led to American artists

toward romantic landscape scenes like this one by Thomas Cole

Hudson River school of painting

National Literature

• Most literary writers came from the north (Mass and NY)

• Knickerbocker Group – New York writers- Washington Irving (The Sketch Book, Rip Van Winkle, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow) – Dutch Folktales- James Fenimore Cooper (Leatherstocking Tales, Last of the Mohicans)- adventure tales of American frontier heroes- William Cullen Bryant (Thanatopsis) - Poet

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow Rip Van Winkel

James Fenimore Cooper Washington Irving

Transcendentalism

• Based on doctrines of Individualism, self-reliance and nature.

• Rejected the theory that all knowledge comes through the senses. Feelings are important and transcends rational thought

• Dignity of the individual was stepping stone to humanitarian reforms of the mid 19th century.

• Many transcendentalists were active in abolitionism and other reforms.

Transcendentalists

• Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Scholar) Essayists and speaker urged American writers to abandon European themes and write about America.

• Henry David Thoreau (Walden: Or Life in the Woods, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience) influenced Gandhi and MLK

• Walt Whitman (Leaves of Grass) – Poetry was celebration of democracy, American patriotism, American frontiersman, romantic and emotional

Transcendentalists

• Emerson Thoreau Whitman

Other Literary Notables

• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – Poet (Song of Hiawatha, Evangeline, The Courtship of Miles Standish) based on American themes

• John Greenleaf Whittier – Poet whose work had great social influences that called for reforms against inhumanity, injustice and intolerance.

• Oliver Wendell Holmes – Poet• Louisa May Alcott – Writer (Little Women)• Emily Dickinson – Poet

Literary Dissenters

• Edgar Allan Poe – Short stories (The Raven, Fall of the House of Usher, Tell Tale Heart)

• Nathaniel Hawthorne – (The Scarlet Letter) themes of good vs. evil, critic of Calvinism or Puritanism

• Herman Melville – (Moby Dick) also themes of good vs. evil

Edgar Allen Poe Nathaniel Hawthorne