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Images and Anxieties in 19th Century Landscape Painting:
Pittsburgh and Allegheny CountyPhase 2 - 2001
Images and Anxieties in 19th Century Landscape Painting: Pittsburgh and Allegheny County
Presented by:Clover Bachman, M.A.
Ph.D Candidate, Literary and Cultural TheoryDepartment of English, Carnegie Mellon University
Three Rivers Second Nature Studio for Creative InquiryCarnegie Mellon University
For more information on the 3 Rivers – 2nd Nature Project, see http:// 3 r 2 n.cfa.cmu.edu
If you believe that eeeeccccoooollllooooggggiiiiccccaaaallllllllyyyy hhhheeeeaaaalllltttthhhhyyyy rrrriiiivvvveeeerrrrssss aaaarrrreeee 2222nnnndddd NNNNaaaattttuuuurrrreeee and would like to participate in a riverdialogue about water quality, recreational use and biodiversity in the 3 Rivers Region, contact:
Tim Collins, Research FellowDirector 3 Rivers - 2nd Nature ProjectSTUDIO for Creative Inquiry412-268-3673fax [email protected]
CCCCooooppppyyyyrrrriiiigggghhhhtttt ©©©© 2002 –––– SSSSttttuuuuddddiiiioooo ffffoooorrrr CCCCrrrreeeeaaaattttiiiivvvveeee IIIInnnnqqqquuuuiiiirrrryyyy,,,, CCCCaaaarrrrnnnneeeeggggiiiieeee MMMMeeeelllllllloooonnnn
All rights reserved
Published by the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry,Rm 111, College of Fine Arts, Carnegie Mellon UniversityPittsburgh PA 15213412-268-3454fax 268-2829http:// www.cmu.edu/studio
First Edition, First Printing
Partners in this Project
3 Rivers - 2nd Nature AdvisorsReviewing the Project
3 Rivers Wet Weather Incorporated (3RWW)Allegheny County Health Department (ACHD)Allegheny County Sanitary Authority (ALCOSAN)
John Arway Chief Environmental Services, PA Fish andBoat Commission
Wilder Bancroft Environmental Quality Manager, Allegheny County Health Dept.
Bob Bingham Professor Art, Co-Director, STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, Carnegie Mellon
Don Berman Environmental ConsultantJacqui Bonomo V.P. Conservation Programs, Western
Pennsylvania ConservancyJames Davidson Laboratory Manager, Allegheny County
Health Dept.David Dzombak Professor, Civil and Environmental
Engineering, Carnegie MellonMike Koryak Limnologist, U.S. Army Corp of EngineersMary Kostalos Professor Biology, Chatham CollegeMichael Lambert Director Three Rivers RowingEdward Muller Professor of History, University of
PittsburghJan Oliver Wet Weather Program Director, ALCOSANBeth O’Toole Director, Pittsburgh VoyagerTom Proch Biologist, PA Department of Environmental
ProtectionJohn Schombert Director, 3 Rivers Wet WeatherLisa Schroeder Director, River Life Task ForceDan Sentz Environmental Planner, Pittsburgh
Department of City PlanningJoel Tarr Caliguiri Professor of History and Public
Policy, Carnegie MellonSteve Tonsor Professor of Biological Science, University
of PittsburghDavitt Woodwell V.P. Pennsylvania Environmental CouncilJeanne Vanbriesen Asst. Professor, Civil & Environmental
Engineering, Carnegie Mellon
Figure 1.Thomas Rossiter, The Opening of the Wilderness, 1858Oil on Canvas, 173/4 x 321/2 in.Bequest of the Karolik Collection, Museum of Fine Arts Boston MA.
Pittsburgh in the nineteenth-century is a well documented city of contradictions. The emerging
wealth of mine and mill owners contrasted with urban poverty amidst the raw natural beauty of the three
rivers and an evergrowing industrial cityscape. This cityscape would ultimately include the sprawling steel
mills where -- along riverbanks transformed into industrial ports -- the poorest laborers and their families
would work and live. Artists painting in Allegheny County during this time were by no means outside of these
social and ecological contradictions. Their works often indirectly express, and occasionally directly engage,
emerging anxieties about the relationships between humans, industry, capital, and the natural world. A close
examination of some of the paintings from this period helps us to understand the historic relationship
between industry, art, people, and nature in the Allegheny County region.
As Industry grew in western Pennsylvania and northwestern Virginia paintings like Thomas Rossiter's The
Opening of the Wilderness (figure 1) expressed a sense that the regional progress of humans came at a cost to the
natural world. The clearcut trees, smoking train engines, and darkening sky evoke an image of industrial growth
at odds with a preexisting wilderness. Rather than progress evoking the image of a new dawn, or heroic conquer,
the progress of the train into the foreground brings the image of twilight to the wilderness.
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3R2N Images and Anxieties in 19th Century Landscape Painting: Pittsburghand Allegheny County, Phase 2 - 2001
Figure 2.William L. Sonntag, Scene near Grafton,1864,Oil on Canvas, 301/4 x 50 in. R.W. Norton Art Gallery, Shreveport, LA.
Unlike paintings such as William Sonntag's Scene near Grafton (figure 2) -- which reassures the viewer of the endless
expanse and magnitude of nature -- Rossiter's work gives a foreboding image where trees are stripped and cleared and
trains become the landscape. Sonntag's work, by comparison, renders human encroachment small and unobtrusive. In
Scene Near Grafton the humans and their simple wooden building are dwarfed by an endless and mysterious rivervalley,
one cast in soft misty sunrise tones and colorful fall hues. Sonntag's work reassures the viewer that man's needs are
indeed in concert with nature's. Rossiter's work disturbs such a vision. The endless wilderness becomes finite and
destructable. Paintings such as The Opening of the Wilderness spoke directly to the anxieties emerging in the time of
rapid industrial expansion. The painting questions the ways in which man's dominance over nature will significantly
transform his relationship with nature.
Figures 1a., 1b.Details from The Opening of theWilderness
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3R2N Images and Anxieties in 19th Century Landscape Painting: Pittsburghand Allegheny County, Phase 2 - 2001
Figure 3.Alfred S. Wall, Old Saw Mill, 1851, Oil on Canvas,Private Collection
Not all landscape painters were able to articu-
late the contradictions of the expanse of a modern
industrial world onto a wild landscape so directly. Most
paintings were engaged, like Sonntag's, with a story
wherein human progress and nature were complimenta-
ry. Alfred Wall was a Pittsburgh artist whose painting,
Old Saw Mill (figure 3) represents a more sentimental
version of humans at peace with nature through the use
of nature. Like Sonntag, Wall surrounds his people with
a bounty of resources --trees, water, and light -- which
they have put to use, creating an image where man and
nature coexist harmoniously.
Alfred's son A. Bryan Wall would become one
of the best known local landscape painters in 19th
Century Pittsburgh. His paintings of Western
Pennsylvania also depict humans in harmony with their
natural world. Less sentimental than Old Saw Mill, the
younger Wall's Landscape (figure 4) is typical of con-
temporary topics for landscape painters. The scene
depicts a shepherd and his dog tending a flock of sheep
in the early fall. Typical of much late Barbizon style, the
painting evokes a pastoral theme: one which idealizes
the simplicity of a lone man in communion with his nat-
ural surroundings. The man in the painting is both a
part of nature and a guardian of it. As a shepherd he is
a person who spends time in nature with animals. He
also protects and cultivates aspects of the natural world
for use by humans.
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3R2N Images and Anxieties in 19th Century Landscape Painting: Pittsburghand Allegheny County, Phase 2 - 2001
This well known painting offers up ideas
about man's relation to the natural world which
nineteenth-century audiences would be familiar
with. It is at once a view of the domestic world, the
man herding sheep toward the viewer in the fore-
ground, and the wild one. The latter is evidenced
by the mass of softly lit woods on the horizon
which the shepherd gazes toward. As this painting
evokes the pastoral it invokes a reassuring and ide-
alistic image of man's use of natural resources
(animals here) as sensible and in balance with the
world around him.
Wall is not the only painter to describe the
region in such idealistic terms. Even more idealis-
tic, George Hertzel's Woodland Stream (figure 5)
offers up a highly romanticized view of a natural
setting which is simultaneously awsome and wel-
coming. It is a scene which increases the scale of
nature and eliminates humans from the subject
proper. Yet, like Wall's more domesticated vision
of the natural world Hertzel's "wild" nature is noti-
cably non-threatening. Soothed by warm sunlight
and cool blue shadows the water and towering
trees evoke a natural world which man appreciates,
watches and values for the sake of its untamed
beauty. The small roses in Woodland stream -- tra-
ditional symbols of human feelings, love, and
chivalry -- lend a comforting air to the picture. For
the viewer, they provide the human scale (and an
element of domestic familiarity) to what could
have been an image of foreboding or impenatrable
wilderness. Man's relationship with and place in
nature is mediated by the familiar symbol of the
rose. As a flower which is found in the wild and
also cultivated by humans, the rose links the ideas
of wilderness and garden. Natural beauty is simul-
taneously domesticated and idealized. Hertzel's
Rocky Gorge (figure 6) evokes a similar sensibility.
Figure 4.A. Bryan Wall, Landscape, circa late Nineteenth Century, Oil on canvas. Frick Art andHistorical Center, Pittsburgh, PA.
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3R2N Images and Anxieties in 19th Century Landscape Painting: Pittsburghand Allegheny County, Phase 2 - 2001
Figure 5.George Hertzel, Woodland Stream, 1880Carnegie Museum of Art
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3R2N Images and Anxieties in 19th Century Landscape Painting: Pittsburghand Allegheny County, Phase 2 - 2001
Hertzel and Wall painted in
styles familiar and acceptable to local
collectors. Their works were exhibited
and collected by both Andrew Carnegie
and Henry Clay Frick. (This was unusual
for local artists, as the collections of
Pittsburgh’s wealthy art patrons were
predominately composed of European
works. Hertzel and Wall’s ability to cre-
ate an aesthetic image of Pennsylvania
and Allegheny County which resonated
with works by celebrated European
painters, such as Millet, enabled their
success.)
An image of the wilderness as
vast yet approachable, was certainly
important to economic and industrial
development. Images such as Hertzel’s
and Wall’s, along with similar images by
Miller (figure 7), harmonized with a
vision of the region as an endless natural
resource supplying both economic and
spiritual well-being.
Ironically, the very need to cre-
ate such images -- ones which offer a
reassuring story of the natural world --
exposes underlying anxieties about
human relationships to nature. As the
industrial landscape of Pittsburgh was
growing ever larger, paintings of natural
scenes were more and more important.
Artists had to go further outside of the
city to capture their idyllic images and
poor and lower middle-class urban resi-
dents (who lacked the economic
resources to travel to the country) were
increasingly isolated from the very natu-
ral amenities which initially defined the
city.
Figure6.George Hertzel, Rocky Gorge,1889.Oil on Canvas.
Figure 7. Eleazer Hutchinson Miller, Mountain Stream, 1890, Watercolor on Paper.11 x 16 in.Private Collection
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3R2N Images and Anxieties in 19th Century Landscape Painting: Pittsburghand Allegheny County, Phase 2 - 2001
As the ecological impacts of
industrialization became undeniable
towards the end of the nineteenth cen-
tury many regional artists turned
toward the image of industry as a
topic. In these paintings rivers are
reduced to shippingways which sup-
port mills bellowing smoke. In Fritz
Thaulow’s images of the Monogahela
(figures 8 and 9) the polluted air and
water take on a strangely beautiful
dreamlike quality -- rendering the
familiar image foreign to the viewer’s
eye. Although The Smokey City does
show a few discernable figures on the
street, both emphasize the scale of
industry. The rivers themselves
become a part of a mottled scene
where nature becomes significant only
in terms of its subordination to the
economic interests of local industry.
Figure 8.Fritz Thaulow, The SmokeyCity, 1895Carnegie Museum of Art
Figure 9.Fritz Thaulow, Steel Mills along theMonongahela, 1898Carnegie Museum of Art
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3R2N Images and Anxieties in 19th Century Landscape Painting: Pittsburghand Allegheny County, Phase 2 - 2001
Ironically, period paintings in
local collections and popular illustra-
tions often depicted an idealized vision
of the laborer and the natural world.
Wall’s Landscape and locally exhibited
works by international artists such as
Dagnanbouvert (figure 10) present rus-
tic images of the laborer which were
reflected in popular illustrations (figure
11). In these images the working class-
es are presented in an unquestionable
and organic relationship with their nat-
ural world. Here the idea of domestici-
ty mingles with images of wilderness.
Yet, photographic images show that
the experience of Pittsburgh’s working
classes was diametrically opposed to
such a vision. It was decidedly urban
and lacking in natural amenities.
Pascal Adolphe-JeanDagnanbouvert, Concert in theForest, 1893. Oil on Canvas.Marie de Neufchatea, France.
Fennway andTerrier, Coal Miners,illustration circa1890
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3R2N Images and Anxieties in 19th Century Landscape Painting: Pittsburghand Allegheny County, Phase 2 - 2001
Figure 11.
The images tenement housing and neigh-
borhood streets emphasize the complete
lack of amenities for the city’s working poor
(figures 11 and 12).
Photographer unknown, Tenement District, Pittsburgh c. 1900.
Figure 12.Chautauqua Photographic Co. HomeLibrary Group, Compromise Alley, 1904.Carnegie Museum of Art.
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3R2N Images and Anxieties in 19th Century Landscape Painting: Pittsburghand Allegheny County, Phase 2 - 2001
Sadly, many of the same wealthy families involved in
collecting the art which idealized the local natural landscape
were simultaneously involved in eliminating it from the city prop-
er (see Weisberg, Collecting in the Guilded Age, 1997). The final
compenstion for workers in 1875 was the establishment of “The
Pittsburgh Association for the improvement of the Poor.” Like
later goups it dealt almost exlusively with the most basic of sub-
sitance issues, for the orphans and widows of mine and mill acci-
dents.
Photographic images of Pittsbugh’s urban poverty would
become very familiar to 20th Century viewers. The riverbanks of
the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers would slowly transform
into the backdrop for the grimy urban reality which became
infamous (figure 13). Still, Many popular illustrations from the
nineteenth century attempted to “document” the growth of the
county’s industry in an idealized manner. One even goes so far
as to represent Pittsburgh simultaneously as a busy industrial
port and idylic country setting. The City of Pittsburgh illustration
published in 1822 foregrounds a scene of trees and wilderness
overlooking downtown.
Figure 13.Frederick Gutenkunst, Pittsburgh fromJunction of Allegheny and MonongahelaRivers, ca. 1870. Private Collection. Nicholasand Maralyn Graver
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3R2N Images and Anxieties in 19th Century Landscape Painting: Pittsburghand Allegheny County, Phase 2 - 2001
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3R2N Images and Anxieties in 19th Century Landscape Painting: Pittsburghand Allegheny County, Phase 2 - 2001
Though romantic evoctions of nature were popular among nineteenth-century collectors, images of the region’s mills,
industrial water-fronts, and workers were increasing (as shown by Thallow’s work earlier). These images, like the industry itself,
would disrupt forever the idyllic image of Allegheny County’s wilderness. Thomas Anshuntz’s 1896 painting, Steamboat on the
Ohio (figure 14) shows a vision of an organic relationship between humans and nature being disrupted by industrial progress.
Here, people are of the river and of nature. The nude swimmers standing in the foreground convey an image of natural man,
communing with his natural environment. This relationship is disrupted and displaced by the coming steamboat and the mills
on the opposite bank. The river becomes a trafficway for shipping and is no longer safe for enjoyment by people. Like The
Opening of the Wilderness discussed earlier, Steamboat on the Ohio illustrates the conflict between viewing nature as an eco-
nomic resource and an aesthetic amenity. Anshuntz’s painting reminds the viewer that the rivers came to be seen almost exlu-
sively in light of the former by the end of the nineteenth century. Yet, the painting problematizes this fate and can help raise
new questions about our relationships to the region’s waterways, as a part of the “natural” world we inhabit and seek-- like the
young swimmers -- to be a part of and enjoy.
Figure 14.Thomas Anshuntz, Steamboat on the Ohio,1896. Oil on canvas. 271/4 x 481/4 in. Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh PA.
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3R2N Images and Anxieties in 19th Century Landscape Painting: Pittsburghand Allegheny County, Phase 2 - 2001
Bibliography and Further Reading
Carnegie Institute. Dept. of Fine Arts. Exhibition of Paintings by Pittsburgh Artists: Galleries E and F.Pittsburgh: Carnegie Institute, 1940.
Cuthbert, John A. Early Art and Artists in West Virginia. Morgan town, West Virginia: West Virginia UP, 2000.
Dickson, Harold Edward. A Working Bibliography of Art in Pennsylvania. Harrisburgh, PA: PennsylvaniaHistorical Museum and Commission, 1948.
Folk, Thomas. The Pennsylvania School of Landscape Painting: An Original American Impressionism.Allentown, PA: Allentown Art Museum, 1984.
Hastings, Peter. Ed. The Annual Exhibition Record of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.
Lorant, Stefan. Pittsburgh: The Story of an American City. New York: Doubleday, 1964.Madison, CT: Sound View Press, 1988.
McCullough, Jean. Ed. Art in 19th Century Pittsburgh: An Exhibition Selected by the University Art Gallery,University of Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh: McCullough Communications, 1977.
Merrick Art Gallery. The Merrick Art Gallery: Catalogue of 19th Century European and American PaintingsCollected by Edward Dempster Merrrick. New Brighton, Pa: Merrick Art Gallery Associates, 1988.
Stoudt, John Joseph. Pennsylvania Folk Art: An Interpretation. 2nd ed. Allentown, PA: Schlechter’s, 1948.
Thurston, George Henry. Allegheny County’s Hundred Years. Pittsburgh: A.A. Anderson and Son. Book and JobPrinters, 1888.
Weisberg, Gabriel P. Ed. Collecting in the Gilded Age: Art Patronage in Pittsburgh, 1890-1910. Pittsburgh: FrickArt and Historical Center, 1997.
Westmoreland Museum of Art. Southwestern Pennsylvania Painters: Collection of Westmoreland Museum ofArt. Greensburg, PA: Westmoreland Museum of Art, 1989.
3R2N Images and Anxieties in 19th Century Landscape Painting: Pittsburghand Allegheny County, Phase 2 - 2001