The importance of a recognizable and specific place is one of the first things you will notice about George Sotter's paintings on view in the Michener exhibition. George Sotter and his associated group of Bucks County painters and artists had their center at Phillips Mill in New Hope. The buildings and countryside depicted in their canvases can be identified and located in the region where they lived and worked. Landscape played an important role in American painting and cultural identity. The picturesque landscapes of the Hudson River School, the depictions of threats to the pristine wilderness, the rugged mountains of the American West participate in shaping American traditions and identity that are unique to the nation. By the end of the 19th century, American artists give witness to significant changes through human interaction with the environment.
Suggested reading:
Novak, Barbara. Nature and Culture: American Landscape and Painting, 1825-1875. London and New York: Thames and Hudson, 1980.
Boime, Albert. The Magisterial Gaze: Manifest Destiny and American Landscape Painting, c. 1830-1865. Washington, D. C. and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991.
Lubin, David M. Picturing a Nation: Art and Social Change in Nineteenth-Century America. New Haven and London: Yale Univ. Press, 1994.
Bloemink, Barbara et al. Frederic Church, Winslow Homer, and Thomas Moran: Tourism and the American Landscape. New York: Bulfinch/Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, 2006.