Shifting scenes across continents

The exhibition has on display some 50 landscapes primarily from the collection of the Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art at Indiana University, as well as other works on loan from the Indiana University Campus Art Collection, the Terra Foundation for American Art and the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields.

According to Jennifer McComas, the exhibition curator and the Eskenazi Museum of Art's curator of European and American art, few Americans traveled abroad in the early 19th century, and most studied European art through prints since there were no art museums as such, only art schools. This began to change after the American Civil War with the introduction of steamers, which helped to transport more people from the US to Europe for travel and study.

The exhibition reviews the influence that the artist's mentors in Britain, the Netherlands, Germany, France and Italy had on US painters, and the particular effect they had on their depictions of natural landscape. These exchanges helped the artists shape their individual feelings toward the expansive views of the North American continent and develop a distinctive style of grand narration.