Boldest & Most Beautiful: CT Valley Painters, Poets, and Parasols, with Peter LeTourneau

Boldest and Most Beautiful: The Connecticut Valley in the Age of Scientists, Painters, Poets, and Parasols, with Peter LeTourneau   
January 23, 2024 @ 10:30-11:45am

Here’s a session on history that played an important – yet often overlooked – role in our country. With landscapes called the “Boldest and Most Beautiful” in the nineteenth century, the Connecticut Valley played a vital role in early American science, art, and culture. The rise of the American School of landscape painting in the early to mid-1800s fostered the practice of touring, illustrating, writing about scenic locations, and ushered in a new national environmental ethic. By the end of the century, the distinctive geological formations of the Connecticut Valley had become national icons and the foundation of landscape tourism in the region. This extensively illustrated session features the landscape paintings of Thomas Cole, Frederic E. Church, and George H. Durrie. Peter teaches environmental science at Marymount Manhattan College, conducts earth science research at Columbia Univ. MA and PhD, Earth and Environmental Sciences, Wesleyan Univ, Columbia Univ, respectively.