No Other Land: A Century of American Landscapes

What do you picture in your mind when you hear the word landscape? Heather James Fine Art presents No Other Land: A Century of American Landscapes, exploring the American landscape as a genre from different perspectives including movements, theories, time, and place. In the hierarchy of painting – the systemization of art begun during the Renaissance – landscape occupied a lower position, beating only animals and still lifes (learn more about still lifes in our exhibition, Florals for Spring, Groundbreaking).

For many, landscapes are simple paintings of the outdoors, just depictions that should realistically reflect nature. Nevertheless, landscapes, particularly of America, became a lens through which we can understand its complex geographic, cultural, social, and political identity.

This exhibition looks at almost 150 years of American landscapes, revealing certain themes and ideas that speak as much to a natural environment as well as to the artists and an everchanging nation. In painting landscapes of the United States, artists shaped the cultural and visual identity of a burgeoning nation, particularly as it grappled with the aftermath of a civil war. Each work asks us to tackle deep, existential questions: What is America? Who is America for? What does it mean to see nature?