As America was growing used to its independence within the 17th century, many authors began to acknowledge the country’s beauty. Walt Whitman, Philip Freneau, and William Cullen Bryant were particularly skilled at using poetic imagery drawn from nature to establish the mood of their pieces. Just so, painters at this time used their preferred medium to achieve this same task. The Hudson River School Movement was defined by artists such as John Frederick Kensett, Thomas Cole, Frederic Edwin Church, and Sanford Robinson Gifford, whose pieces portrayed the beauty of the natural world through intense detail and vibrant colors. Both the poems and the paintings were created within or around the 1800s, revealing the zeitgeist of America as its wonder towards nature was expressed more through these mediums. Therefore, many paintings from the Hudson River School Movement can serve as supplementary pieces for early American poetry.
Whitman is particularly noted for using natural imagery and connecting it to broader ideas such as life, suffering, or loss. “As I Ebb’d with the Ocean of Life” is a monologue that Whitman seems to perform before an ocean and its crashing waves. Kensett depicts a similar scene in his 1869 Coast Scene with Figures, painted not ten years after Whitman’s poem was published. Whitman appeals to the ocean, calling it an “ocean of life” (l. 1) and “so mysterious” (l. 21). Following the use of these terms, Whitman describes the feeling of being lost in a world where there is so much he cannot comprehend: “I perceive I have not really understood any thing, not a single object, and that no man ever can, / Nature here in sight of the sea taking advantage of me to dart upon me and sting me, / Because I have dared to open my mouth to sing at all” (l. 32-34). Similarly, Kensett paints an ocean stretching to the edge of the horizon, thereby manifesting the immensity of Whitman’s ocean and its symbolic meaning. Not only that, but Kensett, in his own way, portrays the sort of silent dialogue in which Whitman participates in. In lines 51-54 of the poem, Whitman speaks directly to the sea, saying, “Ebb, ocean of life (the flow will return,) / Cease not your moaning you fierce old mother, / Endlessly cry for your castaways, but fear not, deny not me, / Rustle not up so hoarse and angry against my feet as I touch you or gather from you.” The latter half of this section describes the sounds Whitman hears the ocean make, as if it had words of its own to speak. Kensett’s painting depicts a particularly large wave just about to crash on the shore. It could be said that, in the context of Whitman’s poem, the ocean is standing at attention as Whitman speaks or, perhaps, is just about to speak itself through the large crash it will make on the shore. Both Whitman and Kensett approach their works by considering the personality of their subject; an ocean that is larger than life.
Another Whitman poem, “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking,” pairs well with Frederic Edwin Church’s 1863 Coast Scene, Mount Desert (Sunshine off the Maine Coast). Whitman’s poem tells a heartbreaking story about a bird who has lost his mate. The poem begins with the perspective of a young boy, who observes two mockingbirds by the sea. The images begin happily as the boy interprets the bird’s song in lines 32-33, which say, “Shine! Shine! Shine! / Pour down your warmth, great sun!” (Whitman 1123). After this image, themes of nighttime become more prominent in lines 47-48 as the bird searches for his mate: “And at night under the full moon in calmer weather, / Over the hoarse surging of the sea, […]” (1224). Church’s Coast Scene offers a good depiction of not only the natural setting but also the mood of Whitman’s poem. Church portrays rough waves crashing onto rocks in his piece, and he does this so vividly that the viewer can almost hear the raspy sound of sea foam forming under the intense tide. Whitman’s piece also shows the image of a rough sea, and it repeats itself throughout the poem. In line 57, he describes “slapping waves” (1224), which helps the reader to visualize their harsh movements and implies that the tide is violent like in Church’s painting. Another aspect of Church’s painting similar to Whitman’s piece is the sky. Though the sun only appears once in the poem, it makes a very strong appearance in Church’s painting. The viewer can tell from its vibrancy that it must be shedding warmth onto the scene in the painting, much like in the beginning of the poem. However, Whitman dwells more on the image of nighttime and darkness when he says in lines 55-56, “Yes, when the stars glisten’d, / All night long on the prong of a mos-scallop’d stake […]” (1224), and “Silent, avoiding the moonbeams, blending myself with the shadows” (1224). Though Church’s Coast Scene depicts a sunrise, the elements of darkness such as shadowy cliffs and thick, purple clouds parallel the vivid setting and different moods of Whitman’s poem.
Like Whitman, Freneau is skilled at portraying emotion through vivid setting. “The Hurricane” shows the tensions and impending doom felt by a crew at sea, facing the terror of an oncoming storm. The speaker of the poem seems to envy a man who is safe at home as he hears the storm coming in and also the animals that run for shelter (Freneau 3). Although there are no visible humans or animals in Thomas Cole’s 1836 Seascape with Waterspout, the details in his painting give the same impression of terror and anxiety. In lines 25-26, Freneau writes, “While death and darkness both surround, / And tempests rage with lawless power.” These lines are an apt description of the right half of Cole’s painting that is consumed by a large storm cloud, which seems to be approaching the ship on the left. The narrator in Freneau’s piece is apparently on a ship because he speaks about the tempests and how “Our feeble bark must bear them all” (1. 6). In the second stanza, he also says, “No rest the unsettled ocean knows” (l. 12). Cole’s visual depiction of rough waves breaking over a rock in the right corner pairs well with the restlessness of the ocean in Freneau’s poem. Another part of Cole’s painting shows a broken piece of wood aligned with the ship in the distance, as if revealing the fate of the ship once it gets caught in the storm. Freneau’s last line, “And ruin is the lot of all,” captures the unfortunate destiny Freneau’s “feeble barque” and also makes for a fitting epitaph for Cole’s painting.
Though Bryant’s “To a Waterfowl” is focused on a bird, he takes special care in establishing a vivid setting that highlights the poem’s purpose. Bryant uses images such as “glow the heavens with the last steps of day” (l. 2) “rosy depths” (l. 3), and “crimson sky” (l. 7) to describe a sunset. Frederic Edwin Church’s 1852 painting Grand Manan Island, Bay of Fundy also includes a colorful sky, though it is unclear if it depicts a sunrise or sunset. However, elements from Bryant’s poem are still present: the sky around the sun is a shade of rosy pink, and the glowing sun becomes the focal point of the scene because of its vibrancy. Similarly, Bryant draws attention to the sky in his piece in relation to the waterfowl; he uses phrases such as “The desert and illimitable air,” (l. 15), “the abyss of heaven” (l. 25) and “the boundless sky” (l. 30). The language Bryant uses helps the reader visualize the sky’s enormity, much like how the sky takes up a lot of space in Church’s painting to create the same effect. There may not be a visible bird in Church’s Grand Manan Island, but the presence of a colorful sky is just as prominent as it is in Bryant’s poem.
Like “To a Waterfowl,” Bryant’s “The Night Journey of a River” directly addresses a specific aspect of nature. Bryant praises a river for its constant motion, its “allotted task” (l. 13). He continues, “Oh darkling river! Through the night I hear / Thy wavelets rippling on the pebbly beach; / I hear thy current stir the rustling sedge, / That skirts thy bed” (l. 14-17). The gentle language used by Bryant in his poem shows that the river is not exactly a rapid either. The use of words such as “wavelets,” “stir,” “rustling,” and “skirts” imply gentle movement. The stillness and coloration of the river portrayed in Gifford’s 1866 A Passing Storm in the Adirondacks can be compared to the river in Bryant’s piece. Bryant describes the river in his poem as a “silvery train” (l. 19) and, in Gifford’s painting, the river reflects the storm clouds above it, giving it a shiny, grey appearance. Storm clouds are also present in Bryant’s poem; he addresses the river, saying, “sendest up / Perpetually the vapors from thy face, / To steep the hills with dew, or darken heaven / With drifting clouds, that trail the shadowy shower” (l. 30-33). A theme that is recurrent in Bryant’s poem is stillness. He mentions how workers and their animals stop to “share the quiet of the earth” (l. 12), and he again praises the river for its voice “that thou utterest while all else is still” (l. 35). In Gifford’s painting, the river is extremely smooth and reflective, implying a similar stillness. Somehow, it seems that the animals, trees, and mountains in the painting share in this stillness, given the crisp detail and mild colors. Both Bryant’s poem and Gifford’s painting elicit a calm, natural atmosphere by sharing details alluding to stillness.
A lot of the paintings’ content matched that of the poems, such as Whitman and Cole’s nature scenes and Bryant’s and Church’s beautiful skies. Both visual art and poetry require much detail to help the viewer or reader to enter the scenes. The vibrant suns in Church’s pieces, the language and nature imagery in Whitman’s poems, and the depiction of rough waves in both help create this effect. However, it takes even greater skill to portray emotion in a way that the viewer or reader can experience what is going on. Freneau’s “The Hurricane,” Cole’s Seascape with Waterspout, Whitman’s “Over the Cradle,” and Church’s Coast Scene, Mount Desert all depict darkness and desperation, whether through dark clouds and rough waves or startling and aggressive language and imagery. The enormity of the ocean in Kensett’s Coast Scene with Figures helps visualize the overwhelming feeling Whitman portrays in “As I Ebb’d with the Ocean of Life.” Through different mediums, both poetry and visual art have a unique way of sparking emotion in the person experiencing them.
Works Cited
Bryant, William Cullen. “The Night Journey of a River.” The Broadview Anthology of American
Literature Online, Broadview P, 2023, pp. 3-4,
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Bryant, William Cullen. “To A Waterfowl.” The Broadview Anthology of American Literature
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Church, Frederic Edwin. Coast Scene, Mount Desert (Sunrise off the Maine Coast). 1863.
Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Connecticut. Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, www.thewadsworth.org/explore/collection/hudson-river-school/. Accessed 26 Jul. 2024.
Church, Frederic Edwin. Grand Manan Island, Bay Of Fundy. 1852. Wadsworth Atheneum
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Cole, Thomas. Seascape with Waterspout. 1836. Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art,
Connecticut. Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art,
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Freneau, Phillip. “The Hurricane.” The Broadview Anthology of American Literature Online,
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Gifford, Robinson Sanford. A Passing Storm in the Adirondacks. 1866. Wadsworth Atheneum
Museum of Art, Connecticut. Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art,
www.thewadsworth.org/explore/collection/hudson-river-school/. Accessed 26 Jul. 2024.
Kensett, John Frederick. Coast Scene with Figures (Beverly Shore). 1869 Wadsworth Atheneum
Museum of Art, Connecticut. Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art,
www.thewadsworth.org/explore/collection/hudson-river-school/. Accessed 26 Jul. 2024.
Whitman, Walt. “As I Ebb’d with the Ocean of Life.” The Broadview Anthology of American
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files.broadviewpress.com/sites/uploads/sites/133/2023/01/Walt-Whitman-2.2.pdf. Accessed 26 Jul. 2024.
Whitman, Walt. “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking.” The Broadview Anthology of American
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