Approaching Storm
Medium
Painting
Classification
Painting
Department
Smithsonian Collection
Museum
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Credit
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of G. William Miller
Accession Number
1983.95.62
Tags
full lengthstormlumber
About this artwork
This windy scene of a lone figure struggling in the face of a storm would have held special meaning for nineteenth-century viewers, who believed that their nation's landscape was infused with God's presence. In 1886, the year he painted Approaching Storm, Edward Mitchell Bannister wrote an essay titled "The Artist and His Critics," in which he argued that spiritual expression is the artist's ultimate goal. (Hartigan, Sharing Traditions, 1985)