Landscape with Two Indians

Artist William Mason Brown (American, 1828-1898)

Place of OriginUnited States

Dateabout 1855

DimensionsPainting: 45 7/8 × 69 3/8 in. (116.5 × 176.2 cm)
Frame: 61 1/2 × 84 1/2 × 5 3/4 in. (156.2 × 214.6 × 14.6 cm)

Mediumoil on canvas

ClassificationPaintings

Credit LineGift of Arthur J. Secor

Object number

1922.109

Not on View

Label TextOffering 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.Published ReferencesMather, F., "The Hudson River School," American Magazine of Art, XXVII, June 1934, repr. p. 298 (as Dream of Arcadia by Cole).

Lesley, P., "Thomas Cole and the Romantic Sensibility," The Art Quarterly, V, Summer 1942, pp. 218, 219, repr. p. 221 (as An Evening in Arcady by Cole).

Toledo Museum of Art, The Toledo Museum of Art, American Paintings, Toledo, 1979, pp. 27-28, pl. 34.

Exhibition HistoryChicago, Art Institute of Chicago, The Hudson River School, 1945, no. 53, (cat. by F. Sweet; as Dream of Arcadia by Thomas Cole).