Your observations:Your questions: How does Cole's painting reflect the following debate among Americans: Would the wilderness disappear completely for the sake of civilization, or would the two exist in perpetual tension with one another? Thomas Cole, "The Oxbow," 1836 The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York In this Thomas Cole painting of 1836 entitled The Oxbow (The Connecticut River near Northampton), the tension between wilderness and garden, savagery and civilization, is recorded visually as European conventions of landscape painting are employed to comment on the state of the physical place of America. The savagery of the storm clouds over the wilderness retreats from the advancing cultivated landscape of civilization. And, as Cole scholar William Cronon has suggested, In the lazy turn of the great oxbow--echoed by the circling birds at the edge of the storm-- we can make out the shape of a question mark: where is all this headed?" The concerns expressed in Cole's painting reflected the debate among Americans. Would the wilderness disappear completely for the sake of civilization, or would the two exist in perpetual tension with one another? American Romanticism New York City First tenements were built NYC Apartments 2010 New York City Horses as transportation Disease was rampant; a Cholera epidemic killed an avg. of 100 people a day. In 1832, 1/3 of the citys population left to escape it. New York City Over 20,000 homeless children Crime/violence was rampant. (Gangs included pirates who robbed and rioted on the streets.) In the 1840s, William Cullen Bryant saw the need for a place of health and recreation (Central Park didnt become a reality until 1876.) Central Park in the 1870s Central Park 2010 Nature Meets Manhattan Romantics... Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Cross of Snow Romantics... Washington Irving The Devil and Tom Walker Rip Van Winkle The Legend of Sleepy Hollow Romantics... Oliver Wendell Holmes Old Ironsides Romantics... William Cullen Bryant Thanatopsis Romantics vs. Rationalists Rationalists (example Franklin) believed that: the city was a place to find success and self-realization. Romantics believed that: the city was a place of moral ambiguity and corruption and death. They equated the countryside with independence, moral clarity, and healthful living; they valued the integrity of nature. What is Romanticism? name given to schools of thought that value feeling and intuition over reason had strong influence on literature, music, and painting in Europe and England came relatively late to America What did Romantics believe? that imagination could comprehend truths that the rational mind couldnt reach in the importance of spontaneity, individual feelings, the beauty of natural landscapes that one should distrust progress and hold on to ideals of the past Characteristics of Romanticism I Can Never Visit Laura IInterestInterest in supernatural CConcernConcern for individual freedom NNostalgicNostalgic for the past VValuesValues intuition and spontaneity over reason LLoveLove for the beauty of the natural landscape