Review by Choice Review
This reexamination of American landscape painting claims to explain "the lost history of how the national landscape came into being, which individuals were engaged in it, what their motives were, and what alternatives existed." Miller demonstrates how the succeeding generation of artists subverted the warning of Thomas Cole's The Course of Empire and instead celebrated the process of settlement as fulfillment of national destiny. Ironically, westward expansion--and the resulting debate over slavery in the territories--ultimately undermined the authority of national institutions, a tension mirrored in some paintings that overtly portrayed landscape as determinant of national destiny. This book is an unusually well researched investigation of the interplay between the domesticated landscapes depicted on canvas and the Whig ideal of social order, as well as the voices dissenting from the myth of nationalist hegemony in the landscape. The author's analysis of a number of paintings challenges long-standing interpretations or provides strikingly fresh insights. This book is sure to spark intense debate among historians of American art and the American landscape. Advanced undergraduate; graduate; faculty. D. Schuyler; Franklin and Marshall College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
