Alexander von Humboldt and the United States: Art, Nature, and Culture

Eleanor Jones Harvey

Hans-Dieter Sues

The enduring influence of naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt on American art, culture, and politics

Hardcover

Price:: $90.00/£75.00
ISBN:
Published:: Apr 14, 2020
Copyright:: 2020
Pages:: 448
Size:: 10 x 12 in.
Illus:: 215 color + 22 b/w illus.

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Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) was one of the most influential scientists and thinkers of his age. A Prussian-born geographer, naturalist, explorer, and illustrator, he was a prolific writer whose books graced the shelves of American artists, scientists, philosophers, and politicians. Humboldt visited the United States for six weeks in 1804, engaging in a lively exchange of ideas with such figures as Thomas Jefferson and the painter Charles Willson Peale. It was perhaps the most consequential visit by a European traveler in the young nation’s history, one that helped to shape an emerging American identity grounded in the natural world.

In this beautifully illustrated book, Eleanor Jones Harvey examines how Humboldt left a lasting impression on American visual arts, sciences, literature, and politics. She shows how he inspired a network of like-minded individuals who would go on to embrace the spirit of exploration, decry slavery, advocate for the welfare of Native Americans, and extol America’s wilderness as a signature component of the nation’s sense of self. Harvey traces how Humboldt’s ideas influenced the transcendentalists and the landscape painters of the Hudson River School, and laid the foundations for the Smithsonian Institution, the Sierra Club, and the National Park Service.

Alexander von Humboldt and the United States looks at paintings, sculptures, maps, and artifacts, and features works by leading American artists such as Albert Bierstadt, George Catlin, Frederic Church, and Samuel F. B. Morse.

Published in association with the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC

Exhibition Schedule
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC
September 18, 2020–January 3, 2021

The Humboldt connection between nature and American art

Mysteries of the first mastodon

A brush with nature: Alexander von Humboldt and Frederic Church

Hips don't lie: The American incognitum

By Design | Karen Siatras on designing for Humboldt

Awards and Recognition

Finalist for the Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award, College Art Association
Shortlisted for the Alice Award, Furthermore Grants in Publishing
Winner, Secretary’s Research Prize, Smithsonian Congress of Scholars

Eleanor Jones Harvey is senior curator at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. She received her PhD in the history of art from Yale University. Harvey is the author of The Civil War and American Art, The Voyage of the Icebergs: Frederic Church's Arctic Masterpiece, and The Painted Sketch: American Impressions from Nature, 1830–1880. Hans-Dieter Sues is a senior scientist and curator at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. He received his PhD in biology from Harvard University. Sues is the author of The Rise of Reptiles, the coauthor of Triassic Life on Land, and the editor or coeditor of several volumes on vertebrate paleontology.

"[A] rich and beautifully produced catalogue."—Philip Kennicott, Washington Post

"This handsome, beautifully illustrated, engagingly and perceptively written volume was published in association with the Smithsonian American Art Museum exhibition by the same name. . . . Chapter notes demonstrate Harvey's mastery of the primary materials and the sources that chronicle these developments and the secondary literature built on those sources . . . Essential."—Choice

"[An] immersive volume . . . [Alexander von Humboldt and the United States includes] lavishly reproduced portraits of Humboldt contemporaries such as Thomas Jefferson, period maps, animal studies and sculptures related to Humboldt’s life and times."—Danny Heitman, Wall Street Journal

"[A] dense, engrossing project . . . [Alexander von Humboldt and the United States includes]eight scholarly essays beautifully illustrated with paintings, artifacts, and maps. . . . An archetype of the 'public intellectual' bearing enormous, transformative importance, thoroughly considered in word and image."—Library Journal

"[A] grandly executed, profusely illustrated volume."—Edward Rothstein, Wall Street Journal

"[A] magnificent book. . . . a book that begs to be read and reread."—Laura Dassow Walls, Early American Literature

"The detailed picture Harvey paints of the period, and of Humboldt's encounters and often long-lasting relationships with American scientists and politicians, is superb. It is a pleasure to read this eloquent, engrossing, and carefully researched book."—Vera M. Kutzinski, director of the Alexander von Humboldt in English Project and coeditor of Alexander von Humboldt and the Americas