The Boston Harbor Islands Project: Prince Head, Peddocks Island, Joseph McGurl (b. 1958). 2020, oil on panel, 18 x 24 inches. Cavalier Galleries.
PAINTING LANDSCAPES:
Science, Poetry, or Both? by JOSEPH MCGURL Award-winning landscape painter based in Cataumet, Massachusetts. McGurl is currently painting scenes of each of the thirty-four islands in Boston Harbor.
T
he 1820s and 1830s witnessed the birth of the first truly American approach to painting, the Hudson River School, whose leaders—including Thomas Cole (1801-1848) and Asher B. Durand (1796-1886)—prioritized the landscape. Until then, landscape art had ranked low in the hierarchy
of subject matter because it did not illustrate stories or convey moral lessons. Around this time, however, a flood of scientific discoveries began competing with religion, tradition, and myth to offer insights on how the universe works. Soon landscapists were moving toward a new realism in which nature no longer functioned merely as
a stylized backdrop. The Hudson River School epitomizes this bridging of painting, science, philosophy, and religion. Its adherents drew inspiration from such New England Transcendentalists as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Margaret Fuller, who found spirituality in nature and HistoricNewEngland.org
17
