I: History painting/Leutze (continued)
II: Manifest Destiny (continued)
III: Myths and realties of western settlement
IV: The Frontier
V: Viticulture (Erica Hannickel)
Aka ÒWestward Ho!Ó
Commissioned in 1860 by the Congress for U.S.
Capitol Building
Rockies
Golden Gate
culmination of LeutzeÕ pictorial cycle of history paintings
Bishop BerkeleyÕs poem:
In happy climes, the seat of innocence,
Where nature guides and virtue rules,
Where men shall not impose for truth and sense
The pedantry of courts and schoolsÉ
Westward the course of empire takes its way
The four first Acts already past
A fifths shall close the Drama with the day;
TimeÕs noblest offspring is the last
Boone (ÒColumbus of the WoodsÓ) in medallion on lower left
Origins of the phrase
John L. OÕSullivan, editorial in the Democratic Review (1845)
Mexican War, 1846-8
Yeoman ideal
farming vs settling (Jasper)
Has the Iowa landscape been shaped by farming or by settling?
Is LeutzeÕ painting a celebration of farming or settling?
Andrew Melrose, Westward, the Star of Empire (1867)
Gooden, ÒPitching Tents in IowaÓ (1857)
Is LeutzeÕs painting a peaceful depiction?
Sauk
Rock River, Illinois
Keokuk
Autobiography, 1833
What are his complaints?
How attached were his people to the land?
How did they try to persuade Blackhawk to move to Iowa?
Was Blackhawk right to stay in Illinois?
Why do you think the autobiography was so popular?
Jasper on womenÕs unwillingness to uproot
Role of women in LeutzeÕs mural?
Actual role of women on the Overland Trail
Why does GastÕs painting represent the westward movement in the figure of a woman?
In the final version of the mural, Leutze
added an African-American.
(Support for Emancipation? Or did he, like OÕSullivan,
see the West as a safety-valve to expel freed slaves?)
United States Census Report of 1890
WorldÕs Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893
Crash of May 1893
What does the frontier look like? Metaphors? Images?
When does a frontier close?
Is he pessimistic or optimistic about the future course of US history?
Is he right to emphasize the frontier?
Persistence of fascination with frontier into the 20C
Viticulture in America 1840-1870
"drink of civilization"
"Bacchus America--The Old Wine God and the New"
(1869)
William R. Prince
"grape fever"