Landscape with Two Indians
Artist: William Mason Brown (American, 1828-1898)
Date: about 1855
Dimensions:
45 7/8 × 69 3/8 in. (116.5 × 176.2 cm)
Medium: oil on canvas
Place of Origin: United States
Classification: Paintings
Credit Line: Gift of Arthur J. Secor
Object number: 1922.109
Label Text:Offering a visual remedy to the grime and pollution of the rapidly encroaching industrialization and urbanization of the mid-19th century, William Mason Brown imbues this landscape with the nostalgia of a disappearing past. In addition to using soft golden light, Brown includes two Native American figures as indicators of the untamed, dramatic landscapes of the West. Their diminutive scale negates and dismisses Indigenous peoples’ identities, making them essentially props signifying an “untouched” wilderness.
William Mason Brown belonged to the second generation of the Hudson River School, an artistic movement that celebrated America’s natural spaces in connection with national identity. Lending visual credence to American expansion and Manifest Destiny (the belief in the evitability and justness of white Americans’ expansion across the continent), artists such as Brown, Thomas Cole, Frederic Church, and Albert Bierstadt infused their work with romanticism and idealization to firmly imbed American identity within nature.
William Mason Brown belonged to the second generation of the Hudson River School, an artistic movement that celebrated America’s natural spaces in connection with national identity. Lending visual credence to American expansion and Manifest Destiny (the belief in the evitability and justness of white Americans’ expansion across the continent), artists such as Brown, Thomas Cole, Frederic Church, and Albert Bierstadt infused their work with romanticism and idealization to firmly imbed American identity within nature.
Not on view
In Collection(s)