Kindred Spirits: Martin Johnson Heade, Painter; Frederick Goddard Tuckerman, Poet; and the Identification with "Desert" Places
1980; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 32; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/2712561
ISSN1080-6490
Autores Tópico(s)Archaeology and Natural History
Resumoturned to new landscapes to express a new perception of nature. Whether exotic places-tropical rain forests, ice-bound regions, islands-or domestic scenery such as swamps and marshland, landscapes previously unportrayed were seized upon by the artist's transforming eye. These landscapes shared a vision that went beyond novelty to constitute a new symbolic imagination. They bespoke an attentiveness to nature, a pendulum-swing back from the themes and by now stilted 'picturesque conventions of high Romantic landscape. They reflected a heightened sensitivity to particular locales, times of day, and atmospheric conditions. Often they explored the potential of light to transfigure the natural setting. Above all, the new landscapes presented an alien face to the world of human activity and meaning. They related to the tradition of desert places, the term recalling the wilderness of the Old Testament. The oldfashioned use of the word referred to any wild, uninhabited region, including forest land . . . deserted, forsaken, abandoned (OED). Removed from the arena of public meaning, desert places embodied an ambiguity at times unsettling. They shifted deceptively between outer world and inner. The growing interest in desert landscapes at midcentury testified to a new spirit of individualism and self-exploration in the ethos of American art and literature. Within this current should be placed the painter Martin Johnson Heade (1819-1904) and the poet Frederick Goddard Tuckerman (1821-1873). Notwithstanding the distinctions entailed by the different mediums in
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