Born in the USA: Nature, Enlightenment, and the Hudson River School of Painting (Tuesday Section)

Fall (14 hours or more) | This course is completed

48 Lebanon Street Hanover, NH 03755 United States

Room 212

New

9/26/2017-11/16/2017

View Schedule

$80.00

8 sessions, 10:30 AM - 12:30 PM
September 26 - November 14
Hanover Senior Center
Course Fee: $80

The Hudson River School of painting emerged in the mid-19th C. in the United States, and is seen, historically, as the first uniquely American style of art. Artistic style is at the service of content: the viewer’s emotional or intellectual experience of the subject of the artwork. In this course, we’ll look at the artistic roots of this aesthetic and the artists’ kinship with the American Transcendentalists of the period. We’ll study Thomas Cole, Frederick Edwin Church, Albert Bierstadt, John LaFarge, and, in later decades, the work of Winslow Homer, George Inness, Jr., William Henry Chandler, and Maxfield Parrish. Why is the work of these artists uniquely American (USA)? In what ways did they succeed (or fail) in creating Enlightenment/enlightenment through their artwork? What does this artistic movement tell us about the historical contexts of the period 1850-1950? Where do we see strands of their aesthetic in contemporary movements of art, philosophy, literature?

  • There are required textbooks for this course.
Evarts, Jo

Jo Evarts was a Wellesley College Scholar in the Class of 1972 at the college; she earned her EdM at Harvard in 1982. She has taught History of Art, European and American Literature throughout her life. Evarts has also worked as a journalist; she was the editor-in-chief of the Windsor Chronicle in the 1990s, and she and her late husband created and published The Complete Hoot from 2005-2015. Throughout these years, the Evarts’ have staged Shakespeare productions for actors of all ages.