The Anatomy of Nature: Geology and American Landscape Painting, 1825-1875

Description

Geology was in vogue in 19th-century America. People crowded lecture halls to hear geologists speak, and parlour mineral cabinets signalled social respectability and intellectual engagement. This was also the heyday of the Hudson River School, and many prominent landscape painters avidly studied geology. Thomas Cole, Asher Durand, Federic Church, John F. Kensett, William Stanely Haseltine, Thomas Moran and other artists read scientific texts, participated in geological surveys and carried rock hammers into the field to collect fossils and mineral specimens. As they crafted their paintings, these artists drew on their geological knowledge to shape new vocabularies of landscape elements resonant with moral, spiritual and intellectual ideas. This major study offers an account of the role of geology in 19th-century landscape painting. It should be of interest to art historians, Americanists, historians of science and readers interested in the American natural landscape.

Rebecca Bedell is Assistant Professor in the Art Department at Wellesley College.

Winner of the 2002 New York Book Show Award Winner of the 2001 Award for Best Professional/Scholarly Book, Association of American Publishers "In this wide ranging book, Rebecca Bedell looks beyond the usual labels ... to find an unexpected continuity in 19th century American landscape painting: its obsession with the once fashionable science of geology. In lucid prose free of academic jargon, Bedell surveys the intersection of art, tourism and geology in the work of such painters as Thomas Cole, John Kensett and Thomas Moran."--New York Times Book Review "[A] gracefully written and handsomely crafted book."--Choice "In her scholarly, yet eminently readable and amply illustrated treatise ... Rebecca Bedell paints us a detailed picture of how the 19th century's 'fashionable science' molded ... Art... Seldom has the union of the arts and sciences come to such good effect."--American Scientist "In this wonderfully written, scholarly, and handsomely illustrated work, Bedell examines the fascinating and often surprising intersection of the two disciplines in the nineteenth century."--Ann Finholt, Ruminator Review