"Visions of Belonging": New England and the Sense of Place

Childe Hassam, "The Ledges, October in
Old Lyme, Connecticut", 1907 

When I arrived Yale Divinity School in the fall of 1979, I fell in love with New England, in the sense of an instant, overwhelming emotion of belonging. That love was bittersweet, because I knew I’d likely not remain beyond the three years of my program. I wrote about those years here.

Given my feelings about New England and my interest in “place,” you’d understand why I grabbed a book I saw in a bookstore this summer: Visions of Belonging: New England Art and the Making of American Identity, by Julia B. Rosenbaum (Cornell University Press, 2006). I had been unfamiliar with the book but the themes of New England and of place made it a necessary purchase.

Rosenbaum is associate professor of art history and director of the American Studies Program at Bard College. Her introduction is an excellent summary of the whole book. Focusing upon the late 1800s-early 1900s, a prolific period for artists associated with New England, she writes about the way New England held deep significance for many Americans. She aims to understand “the regionalist impulse animating artistic production at the turn of the century” (p. 1), and the related debates about regional and national identity. She argues that New England and its artistic representation “provide a case study, a means to apprehend nationhood and the forging of a common culture it provides” (p. 2).

Thomas Hovanden, "Breaking Home Ties," 1890.

By the 1890s, Frederick Jackson Turner had declared the end of the American frontier (p. 2, 152-153), and the 1893 Word’s Fair celebrated the nation’s regional diversity. Historically, the U.S. was in a period of postbellum sectionalism, immigration, and industrialization. In this context, Americans looked for a sense of belonging and of roots that could stand for the whole nation, and New England fit the bill, for interrelated reasons (p. 2). It represented the colonial beginnings of the nation. Writers like Yale’s Timothy Dwight had celebrated New England’s benefits (pp. 5-6). Its places and characters had a secure place in the national art and literature, and the region’s architecture and furniture were esteemed.

Interestingly the World’s Fair---with its many displays featuring different states and regions---was the catalyst by which New England newly inspired Americans (pp. 6-7, 26-31). A few posts ago I discussed the new biography of Norman Rockwell, an artist so associated with New England and whose painting Breaking Home Ties is one of his most popular. It was a painting of the same name, by Thomas Hovenden, that captured people’s imaginations at the Fair and helped spur a discussion about national identity (p. 7, 32-36). Artists associated with New England sought to represent the region’s character and ideals via paintings and (especially in the case of Augustus Saint-Gaudens) statues of historical worthies. The works of Childe Hassam and Willard Metcalf articulated visually “a sense of home and belonging with New England” and “helped to consolidate what I have termed an ‘iconography of belonging’,” notably beloved images of pleasant villages, churches with staples, and attractive landscapes (p. 7). The author also discusses the work of artists like John Twachtman and Julian Alden Weir, and the range of artistic styles used by the several artists.

The book contains color plates of four key works: Hovenden’s Breaking Home Ties (1890), Weir’s The Laundry, Branchville (c. 1894), Hassam’s Church at Old Lyme, Connecticut (1905) and Marsden Hartley, The Last of New England--The Beginning of New Mexico (1918/1919). Other reproduced painintgs include works by Metcalf, Twachtman, Saint-Gaudens, Frederick Edwin Church, Thomas Cole, Theodore Robinson, Wallace Nutting, more paintings by Hassam and Weir, and other artists.

By the 1920s, artistic energy and art criticism shifted to other regions. For instance, artists like Georgia O’Keeffe were associated with the Southwest, the Ash Can School focused upon poorer sections of New York City, and Thomas Hart Benton and Grant Wood were associated with the Midwest. New England lost its cultural prominence but not the abiding appreciation of many Americans. Rosenbaum’s book shows us how crucial to a nation's identity are art and culture, how a sense of place can inform national unity.