“Oh beautiful for spacious skies” and “purple mountain majesties” are familiar lyrics in American lore. They were written by Katharine Lee Bates in 1893, and her observations are foreshadowed in many of the mid-19th-century paintings on view in “Nature and the American Vision: The Hudson River School” at the Milwaukee Art Museum.
One by one, the large-scale landscape paintings unfold. Many showcase luminous skies, sun-kissed trees and contented livestock. They recount pleasant afternoons on bluffs overlooking a harbor or by a pond where cows are contentedly drinking water. Others document the grandeur of American landmarks, like Louisa Davis Minot’s depictions of Niagara Falls or Albert Bierstadt’s paintings of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. In those days, the bounty of America seemed inexhaustible and exemplified the sublime—a sense of the awesome and unfathomable power of nature.
The New-York Historical Society organized this exhibition, which includes some of the most important works in their care. An example is Thomas Cole’s The Course of Empire, a series of five epic pieces representing the cycle of a civilization that grows into an awesome power and meets its end in terrible destruction.
The Course of Empire is the finale in the exhibition. It begins with the nascent stages of communal living, showing the struggle in nature of the hunter and gatherer. In The Arcadian or Pastoral State, the humanities emerge with the making of music and art. Poring over the details yields delights like lively musicians playing flutes for dancers, or a young boy drawing a red stick figure on a stone. The series explodes with the culmination of empire, where nature is subsumed by an expanse of buildings and the pageantry of lavish processions decked out in gold and silken robes.
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Cole takes us over the edge with the final paintings. Civilization dissolves in horrible chaos and murder in the penultimate painting, and the fifth piece is one where humanity is absent and nature reclaims dominance. The series is framed by the emergence of power and decadence and serves as a query regarding excess—one to be answered even in the 21st century.
Through May 8 at the Milwaukee Art Museum, 700 N. Art Museum Drive.
