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American Progress, a painting of profound historical significance, has become a seminal example of American Western Art.Serving as an allegory for manifest destiny and American westward expansion, this 11.50 by 15.75 inches (29.2 cm × 40.0 cm) masterpiece was commissioned in 1872 by George Crofutt, a publisher of American Western travel guides and has since been frequently reproduced.
Nature in the Era of Manifest Destiny was prophecy, and Church as the "interpreter" of Niagara was therefore painting as American prophet. Niagara is the American's mythical Deluge which washes away the memory of an Old World so that man may live at home in a New World. The painting is an icon of psychic natural purgation and rebirth.
Within the right hemisphere of the painting is a depiction of a valley, representing the Valley of Darkness and symbolic of the troubles faced by explorers. The imagery is familiar imperial iconography and is regarded as a symbol of American exceptionalism and the realization of Manifest Destiny , ultimately leading to the evolution of the ...
This is an accepted version of this page This is the latest accepted revision, reviewed on 9 January 2025. Cultural belief of 19th-century American expansionists For other uses, see Manifest Destiny (disambiguation). American Progress (1872) by John Gast is an allegorical representation of the modernization of the new west. Columbia, a personification of the United States, is shown leading ...
John Gast's 1872 painting American Progress depicts Columbia as the Spirit of the Frontier, carrying telegraph lines across the Western frontier to fulfill manifest destiny. After the United States gained independence from Britain in the American Revolutionary War, the new capital city of South Carolina was Columbia.
Bierstadt's painting hit a nerve with contemporary Americans by portraying the grandeur and pristine beauty of the nation's western wilderness. It was a reference to the idea of Manifest Destiny, where the Rocky Mountains represented both natural beauty and an obstacle to westward expansion. [9]
Progress (The Advance of Civilization) is a painting by Asher B. Durand, one of the most important works of American art, that was in private hands since its creation in 1853. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] In 2018, it was gifted to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) in Richmond, Virginia , by an anonymous donor, becoming the highest valued gift of a single ...
The West as America, Reinterpreting Images of the Frontier, 1820–1920 was an art exhibition organized by the Smithsonian American Art Museum (then known as the National Museum of American Art, or NMAA) in Washington, D.C. in 1991, featuring a large collection of paintings, photographs, and other visual art created during the period from 1820 to 1920 which depicted images and iconography of ...