Academic

Cover Art and Book Content

By Alfred Brophy

Those of us who've used the Norton Anthology of American Literature will recognize Asher Durand's Kindred Spirits (now owned by Alice Walton's Crystal Bridges Art Museum), which depicts the landscape artist Thomas Cole and the poet (and lawyer) William Cullen Bryant on a precipice in the Adirondeck Mountains.   So I find it exciting that this article in American Literary History, "Unlikely Kindred Spirits," is addressing the landscape visions of Asher Durand and of Henry David Thoreau.  The author, H. Daniel Peck, points out that the Durand painting may not be the best fit for a book with a lot of Thoreau -- then again, on second look, maybe it is.

As I talk about in Property and Progress: Antebellum Landscape Art and Property Law, Durand (whose 1853 canvas Progress is at the center of my article) had a more positive take on America's progress than did Thoreau -- or especially Thomas Cole.  But what they all show, each coming from different vantages, is the centrality of America's love for property.  While some of Cole's landscapes are ambivalent (at best) about development -- he's quite skeptical of trains going through his beloved Catskill landscape, though human progress and human footprints on the land often appear in his landscapes -- Cole, Durand, and Thoreau all provide evidence that Americans embraced "progress," the market, and economic development.

Peck's article raises the question whether art can help alter our understanding of literature; and I would add, our understanding of law as well.  I think the answer is yes to both.

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on May 20, 2010 (boomark / email).