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Landscape Paintings

A couple of class periods ago, our class went to the Amon G. Carter Museum of American Art to look at landscape paintings. Because of construction, apparently many of the paintings we intended to see were not on display. However, we still got to see some stunning landscape paintings and a plentiful amount of other paintings that seemed to honor nature and man's interaction in it. I really enjoyed the paintings depicting the American west, with its cowboys, Native Americans, and cattle. 

One painting that I could have stared at forever was Sunrise, Yosemite Valley, and Albert Bierstadt painted it around 1870. Yosemite is one of the most breathtaking places in America, and it took me back to when I visited there with my family a few years ago. It struck me how easily I recognized the scene. A man painted his view in 1870, and I came upon the same scene about 140 years later. I felt like I was really sharing an experience with the artist because I had the same memory and feeling about the same view as he did so long ago. The trees and greenery do not look exactly the same today as the ones in the painting, but the rock, layout, and feeling of the scene has endured.

The painting captures Yosemite's valley from its edge. You feel like you are standing in the shadow of the cliff behind you as you look out into the brighter valley, for a soft darkness shades the foreground. It does not completely conceal the land though, and you can see faint swatches of rock, grass, bushes, dirt. A huge cliff rock face rises to the left and extends out to the distance. It begins dark gray, lined with scratches of white where the sunlight catches the rock, and disappears into golden yellow as it reaches the horizon. To me, the valley resembles a cornucopia, winding around the mountain, warm and plentiful yellow light spewing from its core. Because the viewer can see all of this in one look, the sight almost distracts from its own grandiosity and I forget that I am tiny if inserted in to the painting. The trees that look normally-sized would be huge if I was placed next to them. My favorite part of the painting was the light. It felt like if I just ran forward, around the trees and towards the flat lake in the open, I would peer into heaven itself. 

Landscape paintings are some of my favorite artworks to look at. In Arkansas, we have Crystal Bridges Museum to visit and see some of the best painted American landscapes in the country, and I love going there. I will be sure to return to Amon Carter when they finish construction and put more paintings out.

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