Thread by @CJSlaby

Today I encountered my dissertation, or at least a part of it, in the wild, so to speak. I was on a tour @TheWadsworth of the traveling exhibition Frederic Church: A Painter's Pilgrimage, which begins with the museum's own Church painting, [Thomas] Hooker & Company Journeying...

through the Wilderness from Plymouth to Hartford, in 1636 (1846). The tour was a decent size; spouse, mother-in-law, and me were by far the youngest people; I think most people were local; the group was overwhelmingly white. Perhaps none of this matters, but I'm noting it.

The tour was meant to be interactive & questions and conversation were encouraged. Early on, still in front of the painting shown above, an older man (I think) asks: "Were American Indians (still?) in the area?" Remember, he's asking this in the context of Church's painting.

The tour guide, after a beat, replied "I think so." I think they were caught a little off guard by the question. Now, this is pretty much exactly what *I* study and spend my time thinking about: the intersection of Native American, environmental, & art history.

But I realize that most people looking at or thinking about Frederic Church paintings, so-called Hudson River School paintings, or nineteenth-century American landscape paintings more generally are not thinking about Indigenous peoples, unless they're actively depicted.

But, looking at this big, beautiful, romanticized, mythologized, fictional account of the founding of Hartford by a very well known and beloved American landscape painter, someone thought about Indigenous peoples. Great! Yes! This *is* actually a logical set of questions to ask.

Now, I'm not actually sure what specifically was being asked. There are three possibilities, three versions of the question that this guy was asking: 1) Were there (still) Indians around when Hartford was founded (in the 1630s)?

2) Were there (still) Indians around when Church made the painting (1840s)? 3) Are there Indians depicted in this painting?

The correct answers, in reverse order are: no, there aren't any Indigenous peoples depicted in the painting (at least not that I'm aware of); yes, there were Indigenous peoples in/around Hartford during the 1840s; yes, same for the 1630s.

The key point, though, is continuity. And the thing that I had to keep myself from shouting out loud is: they're still here today! Again, I don't necessarily fault the tour guide for not answering exactly as I would have, or the individual for asking the question.

Whether painters (or artists or anyone) depict them or not, whether they're there or not, they're still there. They're still here. Why are Indigenous peoples present (and absent) in the ways that they are in American landscape painting?

How do the actual realities of the Native American and environmental pasts complicate what we think and know about American landscape painting? And how do these works of art contribute to these other fields of knowledge? What is said & not said, known & unknown, seen & unseen?

I think these are great & important questions. I don't have any grand answers, at least not yet. That's why I'm writing my dissertation on this stuff! #EcocriticalArtHistory #envhist #envhum