Mt. Ktaadn

On view in the American Art before 1900 galleries

Frederic Edwin Church traveled to northern Maine soon after the publication of Henry David Thoreau’s essay “Ktaadn and the Maine Woods.” In this canvas, Church brings the landscape that Thoreau called “ex­ceedingly wild and desolate” subtly under control by imagining its civilized future. Cattle, sawmill, bridge, buggy, and men harmoniously coexist, domesticating the landscape without appearing to disturb its natu­ral beauty. The soaring mountain remains outside the bounds of such cultivation. Church optimistically evokes the divine destiny of a young country by bath­ing the land in the sunset’s spiritual glow.