Curriculum Materials: Art in America
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Image 9 Henry Lewis Questions: |
Henry Lewis
Henry Lewis was one of many 19th-century American painters who, inspired by the swelling national pride of the expansion era and by the grandeur of the American landscape itself, painted NATURALISTIC scenes of the wilderness. A growing commercial market in the industrialized eastern United States also encouraged many painters to document and glorify the western wilderness.
Henry Lewis made this landscape painting of St. Anthony
Falls in his studio in Dusseldorf, Germany. He based it on
a sketch he had done seven years earlier when he floated
down the Mississippi River on a makeshift pontoon made from
two canoes and a platform. A commercial pragmatist, Lewis
wanted to paint a huge
PANORAMA of scenes of
the river on a long roll of canvas. As it unfolded, the
painting would give viewers the sense of actually floating
down the river. With this panorama, he could fulfill the
role of the 19th-century artist as documenter of the land
while also capitalizing on the public's eagerness to see
such grand paintings.
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