Weeds and Wildflowers: Drawing, Landscape, and Abolition in New York, 1850–1870

Abstract

Examining the relationship between landscape, drawing, and antislavery reform in the U.S. during the nineteenth century, my dissertation offers an interpretive history of The Society for the Advancement of Truth in Art. Active in New York during the 1860s, this collective focused on the moral implications of drawing, notably by sketching plants. They deployed this practice in response to two contexts: the political landscape of Northern abolitionism, and an art world in which nature and nation were intimately entangled. Analyzing an underexamined chapter in which artists heralded new modes of affective, empathetic arts practice, deeply attentive at once to nature and social justice, my work on The Society revises our sense of landscape in American art and what counts as political imagery.