Thomas Doughty and the American Landscape

After reading Joseph Bruchac’s “To Love the Earth: Some Thoughts on Walt Whitman”  I became more interested in the art that may have affected Whitman.  The connection between nature, art, and poetry is direct and dependent.  I feel as though we cannot have art without nature, nor can we have poetry without nature.  Nature sustains and supports itself through works of art and the recognition it gains with poetry.  Poets often write about the way nature is depicted in art.  Walt Whitman was a major supporter of the Brooklyn Museum and wrote about it often, celebrating its efforts towards the arts, in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Brooklyn’s main newspaper.  Walt Whitman was the editor of this periodical in 1846.

Whitman used his influence at the paper to encourage and caress the up-and-coming museum that had just opened in 1842.  Whitman’s reviews of art from the museum were a great attribute to the newspapers.  He called the Brooklyn Museum, “decidedly the most interesting feature of Brooklyn life, it has so insinuated itself in the affections of a large class of our citizens that its absence would create a blank much to be deplored.”

Whitman focuses his reviews on nature, as expected.  He especially commends the work of Thomas Doughty, who was the first primary American landscape painter.  Whitman writes, “there are some pieces which are perfect gems of art.  Doughty, the prince of landscapists, has two of his exquisite productions; one of which was exhibited a year or two since in the Louvre at Paris.”  I found it very interesting that the painter that gets Whitman most excited, is the painter so well known for his, specifically, American landscapes.  Here, the bond between art and poetry have found balance again.  Two artists, one of paint and one of word, finding such beauty and salvation in American soil.  They both have a connection with nature and Whitman had the ability to recognize it.

*http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/features/whitman/whitman-and-art.php