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Show 130 Susan L. Woodward and Jerry N. McDonald, Indian Mounds of the Middle Ohio Valley: A Guide to Adena and Ohio Hopewell Sites (Newark Ohio: The McDonald & Woodward Publishing Company, 1986), pp. 27-28. Hugh Honour mentions that "in the early nineteenth century, if pre-Columbian antiquities were studied in Europe at all, it was for the evidence they provided of the early history of civilizations about which some very strange theories were propounded." For example, beginning in 1831 Lord Kingsborough commissioned copies of all the Mexican codices then in Europe to be published in a series of folio volumes, in order to prove his theory that Mexico had been colonized by the Israelites. The New Golden Land, p. 178. The romantic images that such speculation conjured up in the minds of Europeans were fostered both in art and literature. The British poet Robert Southey wrote a poem in 1805, concerning the twelfth-century exploits of the Welsh prince Madoc, that was steeped in such romantic speculation. Some nineteenth-century naturalists surmised that Indians with blue eyes were his descendants. When Maximilian also observed such Indians on the expedition, mention was made of this theory in his journal. 18. Johann Jacob Meier, landscape painter, was born in Meilen am Zurichsee, Switzerland, March 4,1787; he died on December 3,1858. 19. This tradition arose out of a growing awareness by Swiss artists for the beauty of their own Alpine homeland. By the mid-eighteenth century, this interest manifested iteslf in a new genre--the poetic Alpine landscape. The Zurich painter and poet Salomon Gessner (1730-1788), whose extremely popular works were based on a poetic interpretation of the ideals of Rousseau, exemplifies the ease with which artists incorporated both neoclassical and romantic models into their art. Gessner painted small Arcadian landscapes that were imaginative and sentimental, but simple and ordered in design. The realistic elements of this genre must also be noted. Less idealized scenes, often depicting simple country life against the romantic backdrop of the Alps, were also abundant. Still overly romantic in a picturesque, charming, or nostalgic way, these paintings are typical of those painted by the Swiss "little master" Balthasar Anton Dunker (1746-1807), whose Alpine Landscape with Stream and Figures (1791-1792) is very similar to both Meier's work and the very early work of Bodmer. 20. see Appendix E, Chronology, for a list of these early works. |