| American
picturesque, as defined by John Conron, is America's first aesthetic,
one that permeated all aspects of American culture in the nineteenth
century. Twenty years in the making, this book presents the picturesque
aesthetic as the common thread holding together American literature,
art, and landscape architecture. Focusing on the peak years of the
aesthetic, 1830-1880, Conron describes how the picturesque transformed
not only American perception but also American space.
American Picturesque demonstrates the sweeping breadth
of the concept and the specific aesthetic of the picturesque in
many aspects of nineteenth-century American culture. Conron traces
the picturesque through landscape, topographical, and genre painting;
rural cottages and villas in styles ranging from Gothic and Italian
Revival to Queen Anne; a landscape garden (Montgomery Place); a
rural cemetery (Mount Auburn); a suburb (Llewellyn Park); Central
Park and urban architecture; and prose narratives by James Fenimore
Cooper, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Frederick Douglass,
Harriet Wilson, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps,
and others.
Ultimately, Conron ably defines the multifaceted structure of the
picturesque and establishes its influence on nineteenth-century
writers and artists in various media. He also shows how the picturesque
aesthetic influenced people from all walks of life in the way they
perceived a painting, a woodland scene, a public park, a house,
or even one another. This book will appeal to anyone interested
in nineteenth-century American art, literature, or culture in general. |
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