Gallery 760 - History, Landscape, and National Identity, 1850–75

Part of The American Wing

Gallery Highlights

  • The Valley of Wyoming
    The Valley of Wyoming

    Jasper Francis Cropsey (American, Rossville, New York 1823–1900 Hastings-on-Hudson, New York)

    Date: 1865
    Accession Number: 66.113

  • Washington Crossing the Delaware
    Washington Crossing the Delaware

    Emanuel Leutze (American, Schwäbisch Gmünd 1816–1868 Washington, D.C.)

    Date: 1851
    Accession Number: 97.34

  • George Washington
    George Washington

    Hiram Powers (American, Woodstock, Vermont 1805–1873 Florence)

    Date: 1838–44, carving after 1844
    Accession Number: 1982.443.2

  • The Parthenon
    The Parthenon

    Frederic Edwin Church (American, Hartford, Connecticut 1826–1900 New York City)

    Date: 1871
    Accession Number: 15.30.67

  • Andrew Jackson
    Andrew Jackson

    Hiram Powers (American, Woodstock, Vermont 1805–1873 Florence)

    Date: 1834–35; executed, 1839
    Accession Number: 94.14

  • Heart of the Andes
    Heart of the Andes

    Frederic Edwin Church (American, Hartford, Connecticut 1826–1900 New York City)

    Date: 1859
    Accession Number: 09.95

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Peter Jay Sharp Foundation Gallery
After 1850, artists of the Hudson River School looked for inspiration farther from home, seeking to measure the experience of their own regional and national landscapes against wilderness experiences in the West, the Arctic, and the Andes. They also traveled to Europe, confronting and interpreting long-venerated Old World sites. During the Civil War era, landscape painting attained unprecedented status in American art. Leading artists, including Frederic Edwin Church and Albert Bierstadt, employed larger canvases to promote expanding notions of landscape that rivaled history paintings (such as Emanuel Leutze's Washington Crossing the Delaware) in both scale and message. Their entrepreneurial spirit resulted in the "great picture"—a reference to size but also to the maker's ambitions, America's cultural aspirations of eminent domain, and the quest to preserve the Union. Artists showed large paintings—as well as sculptures—in theatrical settings and charged admission to see them. More Neoclassical sculpture of this period is on view in The Charles Engelhard Court (700 and 701).

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