American Renaissance

     This is a picture called Storm in the Mountains painted by Albert Bierstadt in 1870. This picture really appeals to me because of all the different perspectives it holds. You could either choose to look at the beautiful valley shown by the sun, or you could look at the storm as a dark way of life and then there is the person that looks through the storm to the summit on the other side. I tend to look at it as a whole and look at the beauty of the picture and mountains as a whole.
     This connects to the American Renaissance because you can interpret the picture in the way of a timeline. I view the near sunlight is like the time that has come, antebellum. The clouds signify that the dark days of the War of 1812 have passed and it was time to enjoy life. The summit in the back, to me, signifies the time TO come. It shows how beautiful as a nation we can become. The again I could also say the summit symbolizes the summit, or test, as a nation with the Civil War to come.