Contents
List of Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Figures in a Western Landscape
Samuel Seymour: Science and Imagination
Managing Distance
The Poetics of Geologic Reverie
The Dream of Ethnological Connection
Titian Ramsay Peale: Science and Selfhood
Managing Nature
The Art of Predatory Looking
Natural History as Family History
Conclusion: Looking Close and Seeing Far
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Kenneth Haltman is the H. Russell Pitman Professor of Art History at the University of Oklahoma. He is co-editor of American Artifacts: Essays in Material Culture (2000), translator and editor of major works by French phenomenologist Gaston Bachelard, and, most recently, a contributor to Nexus of Exchange: Philadelphia and the Visual Culture of Natural History, 1740 to 1840, edited by Amy R. W. Meyers (forthcoming).
“It is difficult to imagine a more learned account of this
material. Looking Close and Seeing Far is a signal contribution to
studies of American Romanticism—a lucid, exemplary account of the
richness of an art of not-knowledge, of an art about failings and
strivings to know a place (the American West) as much as that place
itself.”—Alexander Nemerov,Yale University
“University of Oklahoma art historian Kenneth Haltman has collected
the surviving images and skillfully weaves a tale of science and
art, of eastern sensibilities and western wonders, in this
exhaustively researched volume.”—Bloomsbury Review
“Looking Close and Seeing Far deepens and complicates our
understanding of the art of the western surveys and the
relationship between art and science in the early national period.
My major concern about this eloquent and beautifully produced book
is that because it addresses lesser-known artists, working in
less-valued media, in a little-studied period, it will not be as
widely read as it deserves to be.”—Rebecca Bedell CAA Reviews
“Haltman (Univ. of Oklahoma) offers a meticulously researched,
carefully written, handsomely illustrated, and perceptively argued
study that examines in particular the unique contributions of
Samuel Seymour and Titian Ramsay Peale in providing both a visual
record and artistic impression of the topography, geology, flora,
fauna, and Native peoples encountered.Haltman carefully examines
their paintings and drawings to understand the cultural, artistic,
and intellectual context in which they were created and the
artistic conventions and symbolism that they followed or abandoned.
The detailed notes, comprehensive bibliography, and attractive,
appropriate plates further add to the value of this work.”—P. D.
Thomas Choice
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