Transnational Environmental Representation: Canadian and American Landscape Paintings during the 19th Century

Art and geography have long been intertwined. In fact, landscape painting is a source for geographical research. Geography, according to Otto Schluter for instance, is defined as landscape science. Therefore, geographers have emphasized the usefulness of landscape painting in the study of places. A natural landscape is made up of mountains, hills, plains, plateaus, lakes, streams, soils, and natural vegetation, not confined within man-made boundaries. Yet, traditionally art has been studied within national(istic) framework. Our transnational examination of the 19th Century American and Canadian landscape paintings hopes to reveal the emerging consciousness of “nature” and cultural divergence between neighbors in an era of shared territorial expansion. By analyzing the similar and differing intentions underlying their creation, their complementary yet distinctive compositional structures and styles, and their choices of subjects, this paper makes a case that natural landscape artists’ work did not just passively record scenes at critical period in the history of both the United States and Canada.

Canadian Association of Geographers, Western Division, Annual Conference, University of Victoria, Canada, 8-9 March 2019.