Art Captions

Author notes

0021. Long Island Farmhouse

CornTown

on Feb. 10, 2010

By William Mount (1807-1868)
Circa. 1862
Hudson River School.

Like Thomas Cole, William Sidney Mount was a member of the Hudson River School. The school was famous for adapting the ideas and styles of European Romanticism and applying it to landscapes. Landscape were usually shown as peaceful when man and nature could co-exist with one another in harmony. The irony was that during this period, most of the Eastern United States wilderness was being removed. In order to find new subjects,many of the painters had to travel west which was only beginning to colonize.
Mount on the other hand, remained and instead of drawing the wilderness, his paintings romantics everyday lives of rural American citizens.