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A century and a quarter ago, the national park idea was born when Abraham Lincoln signed legislation setting aside Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove of giant sequoias "for public use, resort, and recreation inalienable for all time." Over the next decade, the Yosemite park commissioners had to fight private land claims to the valley. By 1890, however, a public park system was firmly established in California when the Yosemite high country and much of what is now Sequoia and King's Canyon National Parks were set aside as federally protected, public preserves. This collection of essays and photographs, originally published as a special issue of California History, documents the creation and management of California's first three national parks. As the essays remind us, the issues of park development so hotly debated today were raised first in Yosemite nearly a century ago. Yosemite's significance in landscape art, its role in the development of western tourism, and its promotion as one of the great icons of American culture are among the other major themes discussed here.
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"From 1875 to the first years of the twentieth century, artists were drawn to the towns of Monterey, Pacific Grove, and then Carmel. Artist at Continent's End is the first in-depth examination of the importance of the Monterey Peninsula, which during this period came to epitomize California art. Beautifully illustrated with a wealth of images, including many never before published, this book tells the fascinating story of eight principal protagonists--Jules Tavernier, William Keith, Charles Rollo Peters, Arthur Mathews, Evelyn McCormick, Francis McComas, Gottardo Piazzoni, and photographer Arnold Genthe--and a host of secondary players who together established an enduring artistic legacy."--prospectus.
"Many well-known artists, including Thomas Eakins and Winslow Homer, and lesser-known artists like Harriet Hosmer are closely examined, as is the art world of the time. In addition to discussing the free movement of American visual culture between 'high' and 'low', Barbara Groseclose interweaves nineteenth-century art criticism with current art history, to create a fascinating insight into the changing interpretations of American art of this period."--BOOK JACKET.
Spiritualism emerged in western New York in 1848 and soon achieved a wide following due to its claim that the living could commune with the dead. In Haunted Visions: Spiritualism and American Art, Charles Colbert focuses on the ways Spiritualism imbued the making and viewing of art with religious meaning and, in doing so, draws fascinating connections between art and faith in the Victorian age. Examining the work of such well-known American artists as James Abbott McNeill Whistler, William Sydney Mount, and Robert Henri, Colbert demonstrates that Spiritualism played a critical role in the evolution of modern attitudes toward creativity. He argues that Spiritualism made a singular contributio...
George Inness (1825-94), long considered one of America's greatest landscape painters, has yet to receive his full due from scholars and critics. A complicated artist and thinker, Inness painted stunningly beautiful, evocative views of the American countryside. Less interested in representing the details of a particular place than in rendering the "subjective mystery of nature," Inness believed that capturing the spirit or essence of a natural scene could point to a reality beyond the physical or, as Inness put it, "the reality of the unseen." Throughout his career, Inness struggled to make visible what was invisible to the human eye by combining a deep interest in nineteenth-century scienti...
Through the example of Central Pacific Railroad executives, Manufacturing the Modern Patron in Victorian California redirects attention from the usual art historical protagonists - artistic producers - and rewrites narratives of American art from the unfamiliar vantage of patrons and collectors. Neither denouncing, nor lionizing, nor dismissing its subjects, it demonstrates the benefits of taking art consumers seriously as active contributors to the cultural meanings of artwork. It explores the critical role of art patronage in the articulation of a new and distinctly modern elite class identity for newly ascendant corporate executives and financiers. These economic elites also sought to leg...
Compiled from John Muir s journal entries, letters, and hundreds of additional sources, this resource presents a detailed examination of Muir s travels throughout New Englandfrom the mountains of Maine to the halls of Harvard University. With comprehensive insights into Muir s wanderings, this unique reference discusses the beginnings of the environmental movement as well as how 19th century New England literary society evolved. This distinctive look at Muir showcases how he was just as much shaped by the cultural landscapes of the East as he was by the pathless expanses of the West."
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