EARLY MORNING AT COLD SPRING and Channel to the mills
These two paintings provide an opportunity to introduce students to American Romanticism and Realism.
Asher Durand's Early Morning at Cold Spring represents American Romanticism, and Edwin Dawes' Channel to the Mills represents Realism, which was a reaction to Romanticism.
Asher Durand's Early Morning at Cold Spring represents American Romanticism, and Edwin Dawes' Channel to the Mills represents Realism, which was a reaction to Romanticism.
Asher Durand, Early Morning at Cold Spring, Monclair Art Museum, Monclair, New Jersey.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HRSOA_AsherDurand-Early_morning_at_cold_spring_1850.jpg
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Edwin Dawes, Channel to the Mills, Minneapolis Institute of Art; https://collections.artsmia.org/art/60/channel-to-the-mills-edwin-m-dawes
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Discussion points / questions / activities
A Scene on the Banks of the Hudson
(by William Cullen Bryant)
Cool shades and dews are round my way,
And silence of the early day;
Mid the dark rocks that watch his bed,
Glitters the mighty Hudson spread,
Unrippled, save by drops that fall
From shrubs that fringe his mountain wall;
And o’er the clear still water swells
The music of the Sabbath bells.
All, save this little nook of land,
Circled with trees, on which I stand;
All, save that line of hills which lie
Suspended in the mimic sky,--
Seems a blue void, above, below,
Through which the white clouds come and go;
And from the green world’s farthest steep
I gaze into the airy deep.
Loveliest of lovely things are they,
On earth, that soonest pass away.
The rose that lives its little hour
Is prized beyond the sculptured flower.
Even love, long tried and cherished long,
Becomes more tender and more strong,
At thought of that insatiate grave
From which its yearnings cannot save.
River! in this still hour thou hast
Too much of heaven on earth to last;
Nor long may thy still waters lie,
An image of the glorious sky.
Thy fate and mine are not repose,
And ere another evening close,
Thou to thy tides shalt turn again,
And I to seek the crowd of men.
- Prompt students to point out differences they notice in the two paintings. In Durand's Early Morning at Cold Spring (1850), the natural surroundings are beautiful and idyllic, and a solitary individual is looking out at an open expanse of water. The Romantic movement concerned itself with the individual in Nature, and the experiences and passions of the subjective imagination (often in solitude). Furthermore, landscapes were often idealized, and arranged out of the painter's imagination. There was probably not a view exactly like the one depicted in Early Morning at Cold Spring, with the trees arranged in such a way, a single spire visible in the distance, etc.
In Channel to the Mills (1913), on the other hand, factories and mills loom large in center of the painting, and a train (symbol of industrial progress) also chugs along, billowing smoke. Instead of being a paradise untouched by industrialization, this is a realistic depiction of the scenery as it was in Minneapolis at the time. Furthermore, unlike Early Morning at Cold Spring, there are no humans in the painting; the relationship of humans to nature is not something with which Dawes is concerned. Channel to the Mills feels less open and free than Early Morning at Cold Spring--even the water in Dawes's painting is less free, being arranged in a channel, shut in. Dawes's painting represents Realism and the growth of industry in urban centers, while Durand's painting represents Romanticism, and the idyllic ideal of a fresh, untouched America. - "Channel to the Mills treats Minnesota's most frequently painted cityscape, the flour mills that line the banks of the Mississippi River in Minneapolis and which produced the city's wealth for decades. Dawes's major work, the painting plays the curves of water and smoke against the geometric battlements of the massive stone mills" (Michael Conforti, Minnesota 1900: Art and Life on the Upper Mississippi, 1890-1915, p. 117)
- William Cullen Bryant's poem provided inspiration to Durand for Early Morning at Cold Spring:
A Scene on the Banks of the Hudson
(by William Cullen Bryant)
Cool shades and dews are round my way,
And silence of the early day;
Mid the dark rocks that watch his bed,
Glitters the mighty Hudson spread,
Unrippled, save by drops that fall
From shrubs that fringe his mountain wall;
And o’er the clear still water swells
The music of the Sabbath bells.
All, save this little nook of land,
Circled with trees, on which I stand;
All, save that line of hills which lie
Suspended in the mimic sky,--
Seems a blue void, above, below,
Through which the white clouds come and go;
And from the green world’s farthest steep
I gaze into the airy deep.
Loveliest of lovely things are they,
On earth, that soonest pass away.
The rose that lives its little hour
Is prized beyond the sculptured flower.
Even love, long tried and cherished long,
Becomes more tender and more strong,
At thought of that insatiate grave
From which its yearnings cannot save.
River! in this still hour thou hast
Too much of heaven on earth to last;
Nor long may thy still waters lie,
An image of the glorious sky.
Thy fate and mine are not repose,
And ere another evening close,
Thou to thy tides shalt turn again,
And I to seek the crowd of men.
REFERENCES
Conforti, Michael. Minnesota 1900: Art and Life on the Upper Mississippi, 1890-1915. University of Delaware Press, 1994.
Conforti, Michael. Minnesota 1900: Art and Life on the Upper Mississippi, 1890-1915. University of Delaware Press, 1994.
