Welcome to the Hillsdale College Online Courses podcast. I am Jeremiah Regan, and I am very pleased to again be joined by Professor Emeritus of Art, Sam Connect.

Sam, today we're talking about Lecture 2 American paintings, landscapes, and cityscapes.

What do depictions of the American countryside and cities help us understand about our country?

Well, we live in our country every day, every waking hour, whether we're driving along or in a workplace or out in the farm or who knows what,

but we are creatures that are conditioned by our environment.

And from the get-go, Americans have not only subsisted with the land and with the ocean, lakes, and rivers, but they have noticed it,

and their livelihood, their existence depends upon knowing the nature that surrounds them.

So it was quite an easy chore for artists to decide to depict our nation's environment, even before colonial

times. But once the nation was established, artists wanted to celebrate it, the scene of many

a struggle, many a life and death, whether in battle and war or in just everyday existence.

So they started to make paintings of the land and the sea and the sky to celebrate this land,

to see it as kind of an American Eden.

The course of landscapes and cityscapes

actually starts with a seascape,

a Boston Harbor scene by Fitz Lane,

which shows some three-masted clipper ships and so on.

And I let off with that painting because of its attention,

not only to glorious effects of sky, weather, time of day, and so on,

but because the artist knew the nuts and bolts of those three-masted ships.

He actually grew up in a sailmaker's shop in Boston,

and so he knew the details

and the fitting together of all those incredible parts

...