Please don't try to answer all of these questions--select one or even an element of one to answer. (ps--I won't normally write this many questions!)
--"Picturesque" and "sublime" are terms featured prominently but never defined in Cole's essay. Combine his use of the terms to the definitions you have found in your research. How do they agree or diverge from Cole's usage?
--This essay hinges upon a seemingly contradictory relationship between "cultivation" (developing an appreciation or 'taste' for natural beauty) and the "uncultivated" (nature in its pure state). Does this seeming contradiction produce a problem for the essay? How does one 'cultivate a taste for the uncultivated' and what effect should it have according to Cole? Do you agree or disagree with Cole's notions: explain how or why.
--Select a painting from the group made available on artstor, identify whether it is mainly picturesque or sublime and describe what makes it so.
At the end of the essay, Cole discusses both the threat of the destruction of the American landscape by "improvement" and a more hopeful future of peaceful, tasteful development. Select a painting that has evidence of human presence from the group made available on artstor (two salient examples are Cole's "View from Mt. Holyoke" and "Notch in the White Mountains") and discuss how the painting might be addressing the positive or negative effect of humans on the American landscape.
Thomas Cole’s use of the words ‘picturesque’ and ‘sublime’ in his Essay on American Scenery appears to correlate with the definitions I found for each, both described literarily and artistically.
ReplyDeleteCole’s use of picturesque does not feel arbitrarily placed and agrees with its common usage. Cole explains that “The Catskills, although not broken into abrupt angles like the most picturesque mountains of Italy, have varied, undulating, and exceedingly beautiful outlines.” This correlates to the definitions I found in that Cole attempts to attribute another definition to the Catskills. They are not picturesque like the mountains of Italy are picturesque, yet they have their own qualities that make them picturesque. Thus, it is not so much that any mountain is beautiful, but it’s own unique setting, shape, etc. that make it worth mentioning and therefore picturesque. This appears in the definitions, as they attempt to explain that there is no set of rules but an aesthetic quality given by the viewer of a natural setting that makes it picturesque. One source called this an “idiosyncratic charm of the particular” instead of just “beauty” or “sublime,” which Cole does seem to differentiate between. He uses this definition again when comparing the Rhine and Hudson Rivers. “The Rhine has its castled crags, its vine-clad hills, and ancient villages; the Hudson has its wooded mountains, its rugged precipices, its green undulating shores... Its shores are not besprinkled with venerated ruins, or the palaces of princes; but there are flourishing towns, and neat villas.” The Hudson is not “canonically beautiful nor emotionally heightened” as one of my sources points out, but still has its own charm and own aesthetic pleasures making it picturesque.
Cole, by explaining the importance of art derived from nature, seems to correlate with the sublime definitions as well. The definitions I found all seem to describe how something that is sublime fills some kind of ontological void, legitimizing human experience in some way. To Cole, an artistic expression of the sublime will do this as well as a first-hand experience. He uses the full range of the definition, using it multiple different ways given his use of the word. When talking about two lakes in the Franconia Notch mountain gorge in New Hampshire, Cole mentions the first time that he is overcome with an actual feeling of the sublime. The lakes have so much power over him because they “brooded the spirit of repose, and the silent energy of nature stirred the soul to its inmost depths.” He also goes on to comment on the tranquility of these lakes. The lakes’ silent energy, tranquility, and spirit of repose all seem to give some calmness or stillness to the environment, possibly giving it a timeless quality; something like, this is how it is and has been and ever will be, nothing changes. Here, the sublime is described in ‘artistic’ terms where space and surroundings do not matter, yet the beauty and sublimity lie in the timelessness of the setting. In contrast, he returns to this feeling of the sublime filling a void in the soul when at Niagara Falls. He says “In gazing on it we feel as though a great void had been filled in our minds--our conceptions expand--we become a part of what we behold.” Perhaps this is similar to what he feels at Franconia Notch, but he does not describe it in a similar way. But in both, something is stirred within Cole’s soul. His usages gels with those of the definitions popularly used, as well.
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