Rocky Shore 

William Bradford captured this rocky shore in oil paint, though we're unsure of the specific date. Bradford was an American painter, photographer, and author. He is best known for his paintings of ships and the Arctic regions. Bradford’s choice of subject matter places him in the artistic and social context of Manifest Destiny, the 19th-century doctrine that the expansion of the United States throughout the American continents was both justified and inevitable. His paintings and photographs were not just landscapes, they were a form of visual propaganda, reinforcing the idea of American dominance and control over nature and its resources. Historians can examine shipping records, explorers’ journals, and museum archives to understand this painting as both an aesthetic object, and a socio-political document of the time. Art is never created in a vacuum, and its meaning is always contingent on the social and institutional context in which it's made and viewed.