Nature and Culture: American Landscape and Painting, 1825-1875

Barbara Novak's Nature and Culture is both a sweeping look at mid-19th century American landscape art and a pinpointed analysis of how American artists arrived there. Each aspect of American and European culture gets its own angle -- from the divine to music to geology and evolution to travel art and even European aesthetics and politics. Many spheres of public and private life touched each of the artists discussed, and so, each piece they painted of the American landscape embodies (to some degree) those spheres. My only gripe is that the art is reprinted in this book in black and white, so the vibrant descriptions sometimes fall on deaf ears. I read the Third Edition of this book and I can tell why the art world keeps revisiting this show more topic. Any scholar of art will find this one very interesting. show less