ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the personal and poetic influence of William Cullen Bryant on antebellum landscape painting in the United States. Focusing on the “semiological economy” among the arts and analyzing Bryant's strategic employment of various publications and philanthropic institutions, it argues that he developed a model of lyric poetry that described the proper attitudes to take to the reception of landscape and its representation. Close readings of certain key poems and the different fora in which they were published, along with their pictorial accompaniments, serve to exemplify how a model of the interrelations among forms of landscape representation was devised. As well, works by his major peer, Asher Durand, that depict Bryant directly or illustrate his poems are analyzed to determine which features of his poetry were most directly influential on the conception of landscape painting that Durand promoted as president of the National Academy of Design.
