The Mountains in Art History

About this book

The Mountains in Art History is the first English-language work to focus on the mountains as subject matter and source of aesthetic and spiritual inspiration for painters. This collection of original essays is written entirely by Wesleyan University students of art history. The essays examine how artistic representation of mountains has varied through the lens of specific depictions in English and American literature, and consider how images of mountains functioned in conjunction with religion, the sublime, and Romanticism. These essays by student authors adeptly ruminate on works by individuals such as William Wordsworth, John Frederick Kensett, Alexander van Humboldt, Emil Nolde, and Arnold Fanck. Includes an introduction by professor Peter Mark and a helpful appendix of the course syllabus and narrative description.

Contents

- Introduction: “Coming Round” Again
- Mountains in Italian renaissance Depictions of “The Sacrifice of Isaac”
- Analyzing Frederick Church’s The Heart of the Andes with Joseph Addison’s Neoclassical and Prototypical Theory of Artistic Criticism
- Wordsworth’s Alps
- John Ruskin, Turner, and the Romantic Pursuit of Truth
- The Power of the Sublime in the Mountains
- The Intersection of Alpine Passes and Landscape Painting
- Terrible Beauty: Artistic Representations of the White Mountains in the Nineteenth Century
- Thanatopsis: A Vision of Change in Nineteenth Century America
- The South American Mountains of Alexander von Humboldt and Frederic Edwin Church
- From Postcards to Watercolors: Emil Nolde (1867-1956) and the Medium of the Mountains
- Arnold Fanck and German Bergfilm
- This Wild Country: Jack Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums and the Mountains
- King Ortler: Climbing as Experience, a photo essay
- Images (by essay)
- APPENDIX: THE COURSE SYLLABUS ARHA 296: The Mountains and Art History
- Professor Peter Mark
- Course Narrative
- Syllabus
- Reading List
- Acknowledgements

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Biography

A cultural historian of West Africa, Peter Mark is a lifelong hiker, cross-country skier and mountain climber, and an avid reader and collector of mountaineering literature. He is a professor of art history at Wesleyan University.