Hudson River School: This was the first native artistic group in the United States. It was strongly nationalistic in the way that it celebrated American beauty in landscapes. Many artists travelled to the interior of America, which was not yet densely settled, and romantically depicted the views in a nationalistic spirit. Another significant aspect of this group was that all artists were American trained, meaning that the U.S. didn’t borrow artistic styles from Europeans, and American artists were free to develop their own themes.
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"View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm—The Oxbow. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/08.228" 
"The Beeches. Metropolitan Museum of Art. http://images.metmuseum.org/CRDImages/ap/original/DT75.jpg"
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"The Rocky Mountains, Lander's Peak. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. h2_07.123.jpg"
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Genre Artists: American artists in the 1830s, due to a more varied artistic demand, strayed from portrait commissions and began to depict scenes of everyday life. They favoured depictions of family life in rural settings, reinforcing a positive American identity. Later, artists turned to backcountry America and the West to paint a wider view of American life. Artists included subtle political statements in their work, especially messages having to do with the treatment of immigrants, women, and blacks. During the years of the Civil War, many artists had the urge to stay away from militant or political topics in their work and focus on women – who began to take new roles in society – and children, which expressed the longing for pre-war innocence. Artists were free to express distinctly American issues and life through their work, creating with it a sense of united American identity.
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| "Cider Making. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/images/h2/h2_66.126.jpg" |
"Young Mother Sewing. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/images/h2/h2_29.100.48.jpg"
Architecture
Jefferson preferred Classical Revival over Georgian style because choosing the former severed the ties between England and the United States. Georgian architecture was employed in almost all English-speaking or English-influenced countries, and Jefferson rejected the style because of its correlation with Great Britain. He still employed classical Roman, Greek, Chinese, and Italian styles, but modified these traditions to his own taste. Much of the material was also made in Charlottesville rather than imported from Europe. Jefferson believed in developing as an independent nation, and he founded the idea of purely American architecture. In the University of Virginia, for example, he built Neoclassical pavilions, symbolizing the classics as a base for a proper education. He also erected the Rotunda, which, although inspired by the religious Pantheon in Rome, served as a shrine to knowledge. The United States prides itself on being a country founded in secularism and democracy; the latter was displayed with the revival of Greek style. The fact that Monticello and the University of Virginia were built in relatively rural areas expressed Jefferson’s reverence in a self-sufficient, agrarian America.
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| "Monticello West Lawn with Pond. Like, link, share. http://likelinkshare.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/BigImg_Monticello_WestLawnwithPond_1.jpg" |
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| "Rotunda of UVA. Tamar Ziff, fourth-year" |
Literature: Before the War of 1812, surges of creative literary talent were focused on political papers and nonfiction arguments on domestic crises. The only literature available to U.S. citizens was texts imported from Europe, and international literary circles scoffed at American writings. However, because of the surge in nationalism after the war, America became a considerable force in the global arena. The “era of good feelings”, in which there were no competing political parties, diverged writers’ attention from politics and gave them the freedom to explore different topics. Through these uniquely American pieces, the rest of the world became acquainted with American lifestyles and a national culture generated.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Emerson’s first book, Nature (1836) first reached only a small audience, but its discussion of nature, divinity, and individualism was what founded the Transcendentalist Movement. The movement believed that truth was not discovered by observation alone, social and religious individualism, self-reliance, discipline, and in each person’s undeniable “inner light”, which can guide the way to truth and divine contact. It called for Americans to abandon conventional, European lifestyles and to embrace experimentation. This line of thought influenced many later authors, including Jack London and Louisa May Alcott, and helped break culturally from European influence.
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| "Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Armstrong Economics. http://s3.amazonaws.com/armstrongeconomics-wp/2015/04/Emerson-Ralph-Waldo.jpg"
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Puritan background was very obvious in his most famous book, The Scarlet Letter (1850), where he delves into the psychological effects of sin, the omnipresence of evil, and the Calvinist obsession with sin. He rejected optimistic Transcendentalism and his works are famous for their directness and clarity. His use of symbolism in The Scarlet Letter was masterful, as he turned a seemingly meaningless piece of garment into a sign of moral wrongdoing. Hawthorne managed to criticize classical Calvinist belief by portraying the “adulteress” as a good person, not just a sinner, but he also acknowledged this thinking as the founding of America. The universality of guilt and choices and a melancholy literary style was adopted by Herman Melville and Edgar Allen Poe, two other affluent American writers.
"Hawthorne. Literature Run. https://literaturerun.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/hawthorne.jpg"
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
“Paul Revere’s Ride”, one of Longfellow’s most widely read and influential poems, was published on the eve of the Civil War, December 18, 1860. It was about Paul Revere’s heroic call in the Revolutionary War, to warn the citizens of Lexington and Concord that the British were marching towards them. Longfellow’s intention was to create a national hero (in the poem, Revere’s importance was exaggerated) in times of fragmentation and national upheaval. Readers embraced Paul Revere as a symbol of the hopeful beginnings of the republican experiment and as an example of a great past. The poem served to remind Americans of the unity of the country before the tension between the North and the South, and how togetherness freed the people from the tyranny of the British not too long before. Longfellow also influenced the theme of “freedom” in American literature
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