Build Your Own World. So Fast Will Disagreeable Things...Vanish (Illustration for Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Nature")

Art Historical Context

**Build Your Own World. So Will Disagreeable Things...anish** is a captivating pen and brown ink drawing by Christopher Pear Cranch, created between 1830 and 1892. Cranch, a multifaceted artist, poet, and Transcendental thinker, crafted this illustration for Ralph Waldo Emerson's seminal essayNature* (1836), a cornerstone of American transcendentalism. The title quotes Emerson directly, urging readers to construct an inner world of harmony where "disagreeable appearances" like swine, spiders, snakes, pests, and societal ills dissolve. Held in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Drawings and Prints department (gift of Whitney Dall Jr., 1976), this intimate 5 13/16 x 8 9/16-inch sheet exemplifies 19th-century literary illustration. The artwork likely depicts a whimsical, symbolic scene blending men, buildings, pigs, and snakes—visualizing Emerson's philosophy of transcending the material world's chaos through imagination and spiritual insight. Cranch's precise pen work in brown ink captures the era's Romantic ideals, merging detailed linework with fantastical elements to make abstract ideas tangible. As a Transcendentalist associate of Emerson, Cranch used such drawings to bridge literature and visual art, influencing how audiences engaged with nature's redemptive power. This piece highlights the cultural ferment of antebellum America, where art served philosophical awakening, inviting visitors to ponder building their own worlds amid life's "disagreeable things."