Water Elms c. 1870s - 1880s

Carl Brenner created this tranquil print of ‘Water Elms’ sometime in the second half of the 19th century. This scene of the countryside evokes the Barbizon school of painting, which favored rural subjects. In his native Kentucky, Brenner was associated with a group of artists who shared an interest in depicting regional landscapes. As urbanization and industrialization increased, such images helped to promote the idea of the countryside as a place of recreation and spiritual renewal. In order to understand Brenner’s image more fully, we might look at how the idea of the landscape was being deployed in the United States at this time. What role did visual images play in shaping attitudes toward nature and the environment? What did it mean to represent the natural world in a period of rapid social and economic change? These are just some of the questions a historian of art might ask.