Landscape with Foreground Trees (from Sketchbook) 1835 - 1839

Francis William Edmonds created this pencil drawing, Landscape with Foreground Trees, sometime in the first half of the 19th century. Edmonds was part of a generation of American artists coming into their own as the country was expanding. This quick sketch, created en plein air, depicts a serene, untouched landscape. While Edmonds’s work has an undeniable aesthetic quality, it also serves as a historical document of the social and political context of its time. Landscape paintings were often commissioned by wealthy landowners to showcase their holdings and the abundance of American resources. In this context, Edmonds' drawing might seem like an assertion of ownership and dominance over nature. To understand this work fully, we can explore the history of landscape painting in America, the Hudson River School, and the writings of philosophers like Emerson and Thoreau. Only then can we consider the role of this sketch within a broader cultural and institutional landscape.