A lot of American 19th-century artists considered that the essence of the origin of their country was reflected in the landscape. With nature as the starting point, they developed their own artistic current which distanced itself from the European traditi

A lot of American 19th-century artists considered that the essence of the origin of their country was reflected in the landscape. With nature as the starting point, they developed their own artistic current which distanced itself from the European tradition by making nature their primary source of inspiration and by representing nature as the promised land whereas in Europe man's relationship with nature and not nature itself was at the center of attention. Americans were not interested in the landscape marked by man's presence but they regarded nature as a virgin territory, a landscape that had not been sullied by human kind, in which the hand of God, its creator, could be seen. They combined this religious feeling for nature with the idea of national identity.