This is the second volume in a series that traces, century by century, the role of Asia in the making of Europe. The rise to world dominance of the Western nations in modern times and the rapid industrial growth of the West, which outpaced the East in technical and military achievements, have led to a historical eclipse of the ancient and brilliant cultures of Asia. Historican Donald F. Lach, in his influential scholarly work, Asia in the Making of Europe, points out that an eclipse is never permanent, that this one was never total, and that there was a period in early modern times when Asia and Europe were close rivals in brilliance and mutual influence.

The visual arts

Nature and Culture: American Landscape and Painting 1825-1875

Is landscape theory

Apostle of Taste: Andrew Jackson Downing, 18151852. David Schuyler. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996. Though early manifestations of genius in the fine and performing arts are so common as to obviate notice, it is rare that a cultural tastemaker makes a mark at a very young age. Those who speak with authority about higher culture tend to have both experience and authority behind their pronouncements. Yet, by the time Andrew Jackson Downing perished in a steamboat fire at the age of thirty-six, he had a national reputation as a landscape designer, an architect, a writer, and a leading proponent of scientific farming and agricultural education. Even granting the hyperbole that accompanied the early death of a popular individual, it is a strong indication of the degree of his influence and reputation when such a major political figure as Senator Charles Sumner-neither connected by geography or background-would laud Downing's contributions by noting that he knew of "no man who at that early age had rendered services of such true beneficence to his country." Schuyler's biography is the first to document the life, activities, and impact of the young horticulturist who, in partnerships of varying sorts with the architects Alexander Jackson Davis and Calvert Vaux, helped define the style and the materials of buildings, their gardens, and the community in which they were created. Much more than a biography, or even an intellectual biography, this clearly and concisely written volume defines the contributions of Downing and his parents, while placing his aesthetics and worldview in the context of their time. The author traces and explains the obvious roots in the English Arts and Crafts movement and in the larger field of British aesthetics of the early nineteenth century, with all the built-in ambivalence to the industrial revolution and the accompanying social changes. So, while advocating the construction of private residences, far from the physical and social pollution of city and factory, Downing was a passionate and scientifically oriented horticulturist and experimental farmer. He proposed the development of a native wine industry, he thought about the types of plants that would best work for America, and showed particular recognition of historical roots in the work of John Bartram. Further, Schuyler indicates, Downing also studied but rejected the work of the formalists in landscape design, favoring and advocating the picturesque but carefully planned work of Humphry Repton and John C. …

Apostle of Taste: Andrew Jackson Downing, 1815-1852

John Ruskin and Aesthetic Thought in America, 1840–1900

Like many of her contemporaries, Margaret Fuller had great hopes for the West. The Western lands, open for America’s future, held the promise of what America could become. In Summer on the Lakes, Fuller sketches what she hopes America will become. Using the landscape aesthetics of her age, such as the work of Andrew Jackson Downing and the Hudson River School of landscape painting, Fuller describes the ideal landscape as one that is more feminine and nurturing, one in which humankind lives in harmony with nature. Fuller’s landscape descriptions both point to a better future for America and critique the values of her contemporaries. Fuller contrasts America’s more male vision of conquest of the land with her feminine ideal of harmony with nature—a cultivated garden—to show what America’s future should be, as it builds westward.

https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0787/8/1/31/pdf

Kathleen Healey

Papers

“‘The Mighty Meaning of the Scene’” Feminine Landscapes and the Future of America in Margaret Fuller’s Summer on the Lakes, in 1843