American Landscape

Featuring images of the American landscape from the seashore of New England to the mountains of the west, this exhibition will include approximately forty-five works from the MFA’s outstanding collections. Paintings by such well-known artists as Thomas Cole, Albert Bierstadt, Martin Johnson Heade, George Inness, Winslow Homer, Willard Metcalf, Arthur Dove, Georgia O’Keeffe, and others will provide both an overview of the history of landscape painting in the United States and a view of the country’s natural beauty and famous sites.

Thomas Cole, considered to be the father of American landscape painting, brought landscapes to both critical and popular attention in the 1830s, proving that American scenery was a suitable subject for fine art and that it could be used as a vehicle to impart important moral lessons about the cycles of human existence. The painters who followed him, known as the Hudson River School, devoted themselves to recording the wonders of their native landscape, from the brilliant foliage of the east coast, to Niagara Falls, to the majesty of the recently explored western territories like Yosemite and the Sierra Nevada mountains. Later in the nineteenth century, painters like George Inness explored the spiritual qualities of the landscape, while followers of the Impressionist movement found their inspiration in ordinary scenes of woodlands and meadows. America’s modernist painters, including Dove and O’Keeffe, also drew inspiration from the land, using its distinctive forms and colors as an anchor for their increasingly abstract styles.