The landscape of belief : encountering the Holy Land in nineteenth-century American art and culture / John Davis.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Davis, John, 1961 September 24- author.

Contributor:

Princeton University Press, publisher.

Series:

Princeton series in nineteenth-century art, culture, and society.

The Princeton series in nineteenth-century art, culture, and society

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Art and religion--United States--History--19th century.

Art and religion.

Art, American--19th century.

Art, American.

Palestine--In art.

Palestine.

Middle East--Palestine.

United States.

Genre:

Art.

History.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xviii, 264 pages) : 107 illustrations, portrait

Other Title:

Encountering the Holy Land in nineteenth-century American art and culture

Place of Publication:

Princeton: Princeton University Press, [1996]

Summary:

"This book tells of the nineteenth-century American painters who, along with photographers, archaeologists, writers, evangelists, and tourists, flocked to the biblical Holy Land, a world of striking landscape vistas that reflected, in their eyes, a powerful image of the United States. Here they saw a metaphor for their country: a New World promised land, a divinely favored Protestant nation created by and for a modern "chosen people." Taking these biblical associations as a starting point, John Davis examines the ways in which nineteenth-century Americans looked to the actual landscape of the Holy Land as an extension of their national identity. Through close readings of panoramas, photographs, and conventional easel paintings, he shows how this "sacred topography" became a place to work out the competing ideological debates surrounding American exceptionalism, prophetic millennialism, anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish sentiment, and post-Darwinian science. Drawing on sermons, diaries, travel volumes, and novels, Davis explores the growth of a specific cultural market for landscape imagery of Ottoman Palestine and the manner in which easel painters responded to the popular demand for vernacular representations. Treating little-known painters such as Edward Troy and James Fairman together with major figures including Frederic Church, this volume combines pioneering research and new interpretations"--Publisher's description.

Contents:

The American identification with the Holy Land

The American presence in the Holy Land

Panoramic imagery in the early nineteenth century

Landscape, photography, and spectacle in the late nineteenth century

Miner Kellogg, Mount Sinai, and the New Jerusalem Church

Edward Troye's Holy Land series : the flow of sacred waters

James Fairman : the view from outside

Frederic Church's late career : the landscape of history.

Notes:

Description based on print record and online resource (A&AePortal, viewed on July 3, 2019).

Includes bibliographical references (pages 245-255) and index.

ISBN:

9780300249729

0300249721

OCLC:

1107288670