George Inness, The Lackawanna Valley

0:00Dr. Beth Harris: We're here in the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., in a gallery filled with American landscape paintings, and that reminds us of the importance of landscape for the early United States. Dr. Bryan Zygmont: One of the real showstoppers in this gallery is George Inness's, The Lackawanna Valley. Dr. Beth Harris: One art historian has called this one of the most puzzling paintings in American history. And that might be hard to understand at first because it looks like a very straightforward landscape with atmospheric perspective that leads our eye to the mountains in the distance, the lovely pinkish yellowish light, the tree on the left, and this valley in the center. But then you realize that maybe what's

0:50puzzling about it is this tension between industry and the landscape around. Dr. Bryan Zygmont: There's an idea that's in tension in this composition as it pertains to the kind of detail that we see. The things that ought to be in greatest detail, the things in the foreground, are painted with a kind of looseness. But it's when we move to the middle ground, beginning with, say, the train, and then the architectural buildings that are in the middle ground, where there's a real kind of precision, which seems to differ from the landscape itself.

1:19Dr. Beth Harris: And that brings us to why this painting came into existence in the first place. The Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railway commissioned George Inness to paint this. Dr. Bryan Zygmont: For the staggering sum of $75, Inness paints not only a rail car, but also, importantly, the recently constructed roundhouse, in which the front car of a locomotive would pull in, it would rotate, and then exit that same space, ready for its next journey. This is the primary function of this composition, to visually chronicle this recently constructed building for this railway. Dr. Beth Harris: And we know that vast fortunes were made at this time and for decades to come from the railroad.

2:05Dr. Bryan Zygmont: In the lower part of the composition, you can imagine, five years ago was brimming with tree life, has all been chopped down. And now, from a distance, all we see are tree stumps, the tombstones of a once proud tree. Dr. Beth Harris: For so much of the early history of the United States, there was a sense of the unique beauty of America's landscape. And this identification of this young country, with its landscape, was so close that as the landscape began to change as a result of industrialization, this tremendous feeling of remorse, of lament for what was being lost, at the same time as a feeling of pride in the idea of progress, that as a country, the United States seemed to be making. Dr. Bryan Zygmont: And progress,

3:00we usually think of that as being a word of optimism. But in this painting, I'm left wondering about that. Certainly the Industrial Revolution has begun and will march on, but at what cost? And so this might be progress, but I think it calls the question: is all progress good? And in fact, we only really see one bit of human presence, and it's the figure wearing a bright red vest with white sleeves. You get the idea that he's aware of this train that's approaching him. He can not only see it, he can hear it.

3:29Dr. Beth Harris: And the fact that he is relaxing, so just a contemplative moment in nature. And yet, what he's looking at is loud, and in many ways, by many people, considered really ugly at this moment. Dr. Bryan Zygmont: It is kind of a uniquely American wanderer above the mist kind of painting. But rather than looking out at this beautiful foggy mountaintop, he's looking at a somewhat barren landscape with a loud locomotive coming towards him. And I think the idea that this train is bringing coal to other parts of the Eastern Seaboard is a really important one. And this is an area where coal is being mined so that it can be used to not only power trains, but importantly, to make steel, and the steel was largely being made to make more railroads.

4:19Dr. Beth Harris: And as we look into this valley at the other buildings that surround the roundhouse, we see a factory with a chimney. On the left, a church spire rises, and we see a dirt road with what looks like a cart being drawn by horses or oxen. And a sense of a kind of older way of life that will be replaced by the industrial technology that will grow through the 19th century.

4:46Dr. Bryan Zygmont: There is very much a tension between what was and what will be.