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About
Picturesque American:
Or, The Land We Live in, A Delineation by Pen and Pencil of the Mountains,
Rivers, Lakes, Forests, Water-Falls, Shores, Canons, Valleys, Cities and
other Picturesque features of our Country, with Illustrations on Steel and
Wood by Eminent American Artists
William Cullen Bryant,
Picturesque America
"Preface" to the 1874 edition
It is the design of the publication entitled Picturesque America to
present full descriptions and elaborate pictorial delineations of the
scenery characteristic of all the different parts of our country. The
wealth of material for this purpose is almost boundless
It will be admitted that our country abounds with scenery new to the
artist's pencil, of a varied character, whether beautiful or grand, or
formed of those sharper but no less striking combinations of outline which
belong to neither of these classes. In the Old World every spot
remarkable in these respects has been visited by the artists; studied and
sketched again and again; observed in sunshine and in the shade of clouds,
and regarded from every point of view that may give variety to the
delineation. Both those who see in a landscape only what it shows to
common eyes, and those whose imagination, like that of Turner,
transfigures and glorifies whatever they look at, have made of these
places, for the most part, all that could be made of them, until a desire
is felt for the elements of natural beauty in new combinations, and for
regions not yet rifled of all that they can yield to the pencil. Art
sighs to carry her conquests into new realms. On our continent, and
within the limits of our Republic, she finds them -- primitive forests, in
which the huge trunks of a past generation of trees lie mouldering in the
shade of their aged descendants; mountains and valleys, gorges and rivers,
and tracts of sea-coast, which the foot of the artist has never trod; and
glens murmuring with water-falls which his ear has never heard. Thousands
of charming nooks are waiting to yield their beauty to the pencil of the
first comer. On the two great oceans which border our league of States,
and in the vast space between them, we find a variety of scenery which no
other single country can boast of. In other parts of the globe are a few
mountains which attain a greater altitude than any within our limits, but
the mere differenc3e in height adds nothing to the impression made on the
spectator. Among our White Mountains, our Catskills, our Alleghanies, our
Rocky Mountains, and our Sierra Nevada, we have some of the wildest and
most beautiful scenery in the world. On our majestic rivers- among the
largest on either continent -- and on our lakes -- the largest and noblest
in the world -- the country often wears an aspect in which beauty is
blended with majesty; and our prairies and savannas the spectator,
surprised at the vastness of their features, finds himself,
notwithstanding the soft and gentle sweep of their outlines, overpowered
with a sense of sublimity.
By means of the overland
communications lately opened between the Atlantic coast and that of the Pacific,
we have now easy access to scenery of a most remarkable character. For those who
would see Nature in her grandest forms of snow-clad mountain, deep valley, rocky
pinnacle, precipice, and chasm, there is no longer any occasion to cross the ocean.
A rapid journey by railway over the plains that stretch westward from the Mississippi,
brings the tourist into a region of the Rocky Mountains rivalling Switzerland
in its scenery of rock piled on rock, up to the region of the clouds. But Switzerland
has no such groves on its mountainsides, nor has even Libanus, with its ancient
cedars, as those which raise the astonishment of the visitor to the that Western
region -- trees of such prodigious height and enormous dimensions that, to attain
their present bulk, we might imagine them to have sprouted from the seed at the
time of the Trojan War. Another feature of that region is so remarkable as to
have enriched our language with a new word; and canon, as the Spaniards
write it, or canyon, as it is often spelled by our people, signifies one
of those chasms between perpendicular walls of rock-chasms of fearful depth and
of length like that of a river, reporting of some might convulsion of Nature in
ages that have left no record save in these displacements of the crust of our
globe. Nor should we overlook in this enumeration of the scenes of the desert,
as it is seen in all its dreariness, not without offering subjects for the pencil,
in those tracts of our Western possessions where rains never fall nor springs
gush to moisten the soil.
When we speak of the scenery in our country rivaling that of Switzerland,
we do not mean to imply that it has not a distinct an peculiar aspect. In
mountain-scenery Nature does not repeat herself any more than in human
countenance. The traveller among the Pyrenees sees at a glance that he is
not among the Alps. There is something in the forms and tints by which he
is surrounded, and even in the lights which fall upon them, that impresses
him with the idea of an essential difference. so, when he journeys among
the steeps, and gorges, and fountains of Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon, he well
perceives that he is neither among the Alps nor the Pyrenees. The
precipices wear outlines of their own, the soil has its peculiar
vegetation, the clouds and the sky have their distinct
physiognomy.
Here, then, is a field for the artists almost without limits. It is no
wonder that, with such an abundance and diversity of subject of the pencil
of the landscape-painter, his art should flourish in our country, and that
some of those by whom it is practised should have made themselves
illustrious by their works. Amid this great variety, however, and in a
territory of such great extent, apart s of which are but newly explo9red
and other parts yet unvisited by sketchers, it is certain that no country
has within its borders so many beautiful spots altogether unfamiliar to
its own people. It is quite save to assert that a book of American
scenery, like Picturesque America, will lay before American readers
more scenes entirely new to them than a similar book on Europe.
Paintings, engravings, and photographs, have made us all, even those who
have never seen them, well acquainted with the banks of the Hudson, with
Niagara, and with the wonderful valley of the Yosemite; but there are
innumerable places which lie out of the usual path of our artists and
tourists; and many strange, picturesque, and charming scenes, sought out
in these secluded spots, will, for the first time, become familiar to the
general public through these pages. It is the purpose of the work to
illustrate with greater fullness, and with superior excellence, so far as
art is concerned, the places which attract curiosity by their interesting
associations, and, at the same time, to challenge the admiration of the
public for many of the glorious scenes which lie in the by-ways of
travel....
William Cullen Bryant
About the printing of the pictures:
These pictures were made with steel and wood engravings that were then
hand colored. Picturesque American consisted of two large, leather
bound volumes. Artists sketched the scenes depicted. Engravers would
then carve out a steel or wood engraving plate that would be used
to stamp out a black and white image. Color was then added to each
picture by hand.
Page Created April 7, 2001