ShmoopTube

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[ musical flourish ]

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And here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by the Hudson River School,

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voted the number one party school by Trout Monthly.

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All right, the painting pictured above reflects what growing

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aesthetic trend among Americans in the early 19th century?

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And here are your potential answers.

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[ buzz ]

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[ mumbles ]

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[ mumbling continues ]

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All right. Well, how can we describe the aesthetic of this painting?

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Well, it's a very detailed landscape, that's for sure.

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And we see a man in the bottom left corner taking in the beauty of the outdoors.

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Is that Al Gore? All right.

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If you look in the middle there, we see that there are some buildings,

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which could represent man starting to make his

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mark on the world around him.

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All right, let's keep all those in the back of our heads as we look at the answers.

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So does the painting reflect the trend of

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B - a shifting focus toward pessimism and disillusionment?

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Well, all those gentle colors make the painting feel

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pretty rosy and idyllic.

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In fact, these painters were often referred to as "Romantics."

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No, not Romeo and Juliet romantics, but Romantics

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with the idealized belief that humans and nature could

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peacefully coexist.

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So that knocks out B and D.

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Could this aesthetic trend have reflected

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C - a refutation of religious subjects and piety?

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Well, take a look at the painting again.

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That man in the corner? The painters usually put

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a white settler in their landscapes to signify that

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God had created the land specifically for them.

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Which is also why you see those buildings in the distance.

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Obviously, much of this land already had inhabitants.

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But that wasn't really a concern for the artists.

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So it's not C, either.

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That means that these landscape paintings emphasized

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A - a combination of European forms and American ideas.

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This epic, sweeping form of landscape painting was originally developed in Europe,

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where every artist meticulously captured every detail.

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But the overwhelming grandeur of the landscape

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and that explorer in the foreground?

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Well, ready to take it on?

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Those were American ideas implanted on top of

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a traditionally European form. So the answer is A.

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Eventually, critics referred to American landscapes as

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relatively paint-by-numbers.

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Uh, but at least they were very patriotic numbers.

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