Landscape art and the urbanisation of the United States
Posted on 3 March 2010
Professor Corbett, who is also Director of the Centre for Modern Studies, is one of only a small number of researchers outside the US working in this field.
.jpg "Cotopaxi, Frederic Edwin Church 1855. Courtesy of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.")
His expertise has been recognised by the Smithsonian Institution which has awarded him a Terra Senior Fellowship to spend six months conducting research at the Smithsonian’s American Art Museum in Washington DC.
His research in Washington is part of a wider project, supported by a Major Research Fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust, exploring the relationship between city, landscape, and American painting between 1850 and 1930.
This is an era that sees a significant shift from the painting of American landscapes that dominated the country’s art for much of the 19th Century to the urban-focused movements that emerged at the turn of the 20th Century. Professor Corbett’s research explores what he regards as the significant degree of continuity that can be found through this period.
Among the artists whose work he is considering are Frederic Edwin Church, one of the most famous landscape painters of the mid 19th Century as well as American impressionists such as Childe Hassam whose subject matter included both rural and urban scenes. At the end of the period are artists such as Charles Sheeler, a modernist painter whose work included a series depicting the power sources underpinning industrial America.
.jpg "Delmonico Building, Charles Sheeler 1926. Courtesy of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.")
In addition to exploring the substantial resources of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Professor Corbett’s time in Washington will also be an opportunity to explore the city’s collections of American art and the holdings of the Library of Congress.
The research project has already seen a conference held at York in 2008 that explored the significance of Anglo-American cultural relations for the visual arts produced in Britain and the United States since 1776. The event attracted distinguished speakers from Stanford, Harvard and Yale Universities.
In addition to research papers, the project will lead to a monograph on the subject.
Professor Corbett has been a Visiting Professor at Yale and a Visiting Fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge, and has held research fellowships in Visual and Cultural Studies at the University of Rochester, New York; the Center for British Art at Yale and the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Massachusetts.
About the researcher
.jpg "Professor David Peters Corbett")
Professor David Peters Corbett is Director of the Centre for Modern Studies, Editor of the journal Art History and was Head of the Department of History of Art from 2003 to 2007.
Contact
Email: dmpc1@york.ac.uk
http://www.york.ac.uk/depts/histart/corbett.html
Further information
- All images reproduced with the kind permission of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Find more details of the museum and its extensive collections at http://americanart.si.edu/.
- More information about the work of The Leverhulme Trust can be found at http://www.leverhulme.org.uk/.
- Study in the Department of History of Art.