building the american landscape - Univerza v Novi Gorici

the large whitewashed factory>>. The ominous sounds of machines, like
the sound of the steamboat bearing down on the raft or of the train
breaking in upon the idyll at Walden, reverberate endlessly in our
literature. 150
In other words, if we can once again catch a glimpse in this special relationship of
yet another side to the relationship between town and country, we must not
underestimate the role played by the unbridled force of the machine.
Whereas a pathetic faith in America’s skills of redemption became stronger, the
first, parallel, critical reflections on its conquests began to emerge. The antagonist
theme of conflict between man and nature became more evident in nineteenth
century America during the years of Independence. Industrialisation, effectively
represented by the image of the train flying along the tracks, incorporated a force,
which threatened the pastoral image of the landscape, yet at the same time
provided the means to travel through it.
However, the train was not to completely abuse the rights of nature at first, even
though it was an element of discord.
One of the most well‐known paintings by Georges Innes (1825‐1894), a painter of
classically inspired landscapes, provides excellent food for thought [Figure 66].
When the Lackawanna Railroad Company commissioned a work by Innes in 1844 to
show the construction of the railroad in the landscapes, he was faced with the
stimulating task of being able to provide a critical interpretation of what was being
constructed. We have to imagine, as Leo Marx suggests in his interpretation of the
picture, that the painter was not exactly enthusiastic about portraying a train
bursting into the landscape. Nevertheless, he was able to match the buyer’s needs
with his own aspirations and feelings towards nature. The resulting picture, entitled
Lackawanna Valley, manages to combine a bucolic landscape and the new world,
conjured up by the railroad, without any particular clashes.
The train stands out against a pastoral landscape, in which animals graze
undisturbed in the foreground, but the new means of transport does not really
appear to be a breach, but rather it fuses everything together. Its puff of steam is
reproduced by a cloud, and the hills and trees help to define a landscape where the
150 Ibid., p. 15‐16 (Italian translation pp. 18)
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