On Beauty: Amanda Holcombe

When you come across a painting of a landscape, you tend to be immediately bored. Let’s face facts, there are tons of paintings of landscapes out there; plenty of sweeping views of mountains with waterfalls or lakes with pine trees and fishermen in a boat in the middle of the lake. They become predictable. However, when I was looking through Gardner’s “Art Through the Ages”, the piece of art that struck me most within its pages was indeed, a landscape.

            The painting is entitled, Twilight in the Wilderness and was painted in the 1860s by Frederic Edwin Church. The sweeping red, orange, and pink clouds take up most of its space. The lighting of the twilight creates a dramatic effect upon the rocks and trees to the right side of the painting. The rest of the space is filled with mountains and between the mountains is a still, reflective river. I don’t enjoy this landscape because it is delightful and peaceful, and makes me want to go to where ever it is and have a lovely picnic. I enjoy it yes, for its natural beauty. I enjoy that what is portrayed on the canvas cannot be created or manufactured by man. And that what is depicted by oil paints has, depending on your views, been there for hundreds or thousands or millions of years before an artist decided to render it on canvas and call it art. I find that some landscapes can indeed be thought-evoking if you just give it a moment. Really look at how the light hits the bark of the trees, and creates shadows on the rocks. Appreciate the reflections on the water and the escape a painting of land can provide. The book in which I found this painting says this: “Twilight in the Wilderness dates to the 1860s, when the Civil War was tearing apart the country. Yet this painting does display evidence of turbulence or discord. Indeed, its does not include even a trace of humanity. By constructing such an idealistc and comforting view, Church contributed to the national mythology of righteousness and divine providence-a mythology that had become increasingly difficult to maintain in the face of conflict.”

            I agree with this. Nature has always been an escape for man, and I think it has been thus because it is a little humbling to be human it the midst of so much nature. I find the beauty of this to be timeless. And what is depicted in it is priceless.