A MONA Moment This summer the
Museum of Nebraska Art had a visitor. It was a large landscape painting titled
Scene Near Greeley, Colorado by the mid-nineteenth century American artist John
Kensett. The American landscape as a popular subject for artists began to capture
the public's imagination in the early decades of the 19th century. But when
it did, large, heroically sized canvasses like Scene Near Greeley, Colorado
were some of the most popular and lasting achievements of American art.
This popularity
stemmed from several sources. A middle class was emerging with more leisure
time to enjoy art and other entertainments. Artists and their public began to
use the landscape as a medium for important themes in American life. The New
York painter Thomas Cole used a series of landscape paintings to illustrate
the journey of life near the outset of the Civil War a sunset by Frederick Church
depicts an American flag subtly woven into clouds. But perhaps the most important
factor in this popularity was the public's newfound reverence and delight in
nature. This is the era of Thoreau's Walden Pond. American now had the time
and the inclination to find in the natural landscape the experience of the sublime.
One of the artists
who defined this experience for Americans was John Frederick Kensett. A New
York based artist who studied for seven years in Europe, he ultimately became
one of the lean landscape artists of his generation. Kensett was primarily a
painter of light. His brilliance was most evident in his skies, the area above
the horizon line. He wished the eye--as one contemporary critic suggested--to
be comfortably at rest in his paintings. When you think of a Kensett landscape,
you think of serenity. You win find a calm even light diffused through his paintings
in an infinite variety of warm, subtle hues. Like many landscape artists of
his time, Kensett was a joyous nature lover. He saw nature as devoid of stress.
We are not menaced by nature, but comforted by it. Nature is shown to us as
a friend.
Kensett played
a critical role in revolutionizing American landscape painting through his development
of what has become referred to as luminism. The soft, diffused light which blankets
the sky of Scene Near Greeley, Colorado harmonizes this painting into an exquisite
balance of light, color and serenity. The p4Wpeach hues of an early morning
sky quietly back-light a forest clearing with the majesty of the Colorado Rockies
in the background. It is where the plains meet the mountains. Interestingly,
Kensett chose not to feature the Rockies as the main subject matter. He chose
to show them to us filtered through the lens of the low-lying plains, a clearing
in the woods. The Rockies looming in the distance are peacefully overshadowed
with the rich ochre of the Platte valley in Autumn, and the regal reach of a
majestic tree which dominates the foreground. Kensett painted this canvas around
1870, during the last of his three trips to the west.
The consistency
with which Kensett adhered to this style is explained by the inability of his
contemporaries to discuss his work independently of his character. "His pictures,"
wrote author George Curtis, "are biographical, for they all reveal the fidelity,
the tenderness, and the sweet serenity of his nature .... He made sunshine that
softened and harmonized all."
The mood of Kensett's
landscape paintings had a profound effect on audiences. A contemporary critic
commented on Kensett's landscapes saying they called back "the very countenance
of a departed friend," expressing infinite peace and infinite sweetness. They
rebuked all morbid thoughts." They were, "poems of our common lot, blessings
in our daily path."
Where the Plains Meet the Mountains
By Ron Roth
Director
Museum of Nebraska Art
