Get Creative at Home: Take a Journey through Time with Early American Landscapes
Can you imagine what your hometown’s landscape was like in the 1800s?
By Melissa Katzin, Manager of Family Programs, and Meg Williams, Coordinator of School and Teacher Services, High Museum of Art
Artists often paint their surroundings and try to faithfully represent them, as Régis François Gignoux (pronounced “zhee-nyew”) did in his painting Niagara Falls. Gignoux and other European and American artists who painted the American landscape during the 1800s wanted to show the magnificence of the world around them, especially as American settlers began to migrate to the western part of America.
In the east, painters attempted to depict nature without the effects of industry, creating an idealized world where nature and people could coexist, like in John Frederick Kensett’s Camel’s Hump from the Western Shore of Lake Champlain. As Americans began to settle further west, artists sketched and painted landscapes of this expansion, like in Thomas Cole’s The Tempest.
Some of these landscapes include evidence of people. Can you find the figures in each painting? Why do you think each artist chose to paint the figures so small? What do you think the artists tried to convey about nature by including people and buildings?
Many artists painted the American landscape as if it were being seen for the first time, excluding all or most displays of human inhabitants, emphasizing the false idea that European immigrants were the first to discover North America.
However, these paintings leave out a large part of the story. There were thousands, maybe millions, of indigenous people of many different nations living in what is now called the United States of America long before people ever sailed over from Europe.
While European and American artists were painting these landscapes, many thousands of people were being forced off of their native lands by the US government and sent many miles west to “Indian Territory,” a portion of land that is now called Oklahoma.
Frank Henderson, an Arapaho man, created this landscape inspired by his traditional culture, using nontraditional European tools such as ledger book paper and colored pencils. He created this in 1882 while living on a reservation in Oklahoma run by the US government.
What do you notice about this drawing? How is it similar to or different from the other landscapes? What seems to have been most important to Frank Henderson as he made this landscape? What messages might the other artists have been trying to convey in their works, and what do you see that makes you say that?
Get Creative at Home
Create your own landscape! Imagine what the land around your home or neighborhood looked like in the 1800s. Do you think there were more trees and plants? What animals will you include in your landscape?
Gignoux and other artists often sketched out their view before creating the final artwork. On a piece of paper, use your pencil to sketch your landscape.
First, draw your foreground, or the section closest to you — in Niagara Falls, this includes the rocks and shoreline. Then, add in your middleground. Many American landscape artists had large open spaces such as fields or bodies of water for their middleground. Finally, sketch your background. When you’re finished with your sketch, you can use colored pencils or crayons to add color to your landscape.
Look closely at Frank Henderson’s landscape to inspire detailed drawings of animals and plants. What colors, lines, shapes, and patterns can you find in the animals in your yard? How do these animals move and interact with one another? Look closely and see how many details you can find to include in your drawing.
Learn more about the history of your hometown
Research what nations’ people used to live on the land where you currently live or where these artists may have been painting. You may want to use this interactive map from Native Land Digital, an Indigenous-led, Canadian nonprofit organization, as a helpful tool to begin your research.
The land on which the High Museum now stands is the native territory of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. The Muscogee (Creek) Nation today is home to over eighty-six thousand citizens and is located in Okmulgee, Oklahoma.
You can learn more on the Muscogee (Creek) Nation website and more about the forced removal of the Muscogee Nation by the US government in the early to mid 1800s from the National Museum of the American Indian.
Are you currently teaching or homeschooling? Scroll for corresponding Georgia Standards of Excellence.
Relevant Georgia Education Standards
This activity corresponds to Social Studies standards in grades 3, 4, and 8. Students in these grades learn about diverse cultures of many American Indian nations, discuss European exploration of North America, the colonial period, westward expansion in North America, and the impact of European settlement on American Indians.
SS3H1 Describe early American Indian cultures and their development in North America.
SS3H2 Describe European exploration in North America.
SS3H3 Explain the factors that shaped British Colonial America.
SS4H3 Explain westward expansion in America.
SS8H1 Evaluate the impact of European exploration and settlement on American Indians in Georgia.
SS8H2 Analyze the colonial period of Georgia’s history.
