Riverscapes and National Identities

By Tricia Cusack

Painted riverscapes such as Claude Monet’s impressions of the Seine, Isaak Levitan’s Volga views, or Thomas Cole’s Hudson scenery became iconic not least because they embodied nationalist ideas about place and about culture. At a time when nationalism was taking root across Europe and the United States, the riverscape played an important role in transforming the abstract idea of the nation into a potent visual image. It not only offered a picture of the nation’s physical character, but through aspects such as style, the figures portrayed, and the nature of the implied spectator, it presented a cultural ideal.

In this highly original book, Tricia Cusak explores significance of painted riverscapes to the creation of national identities in nineteenth and early twentieth century Europe and America. Focusing on five rivers, the Hudson, the Volga, the Seine, the Thames, and the Shannon, the author outlines the history of the development of national landscapes, elaborating on the distinctive nature of riverscapes. Drawing on the symbolic potential of rivers to represent life and time, the riverscape provided a metaphor for the mythic stream of national history flowing unimpeded out of the past and into the future.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Syracuse University Press
• Release date: Mar 2, 2010
• ISBN: 9780815650683

Book preview

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Copyright © 2010 by Syracuse University Press

Syracuse, New York 13244-5290

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First Paperback Edition 2019

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ISBN: 978-0-8156-2904-7 (paperback)978-0-8156-3211-5 (hardcover)978-0-8156-5068-3 (e-book)

Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover as follows:

Cusack, Tricia, 1945–

Riverscapes and national identities / Tricia Cusack.

p. cm. — (Space, place, and society)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-8156-3211-5 (cloth : alk. paper)

1. Rivers.2. Rivers—Social aspects.3. Nationalism.4. Water and civilization.I. Title.

N7725.R58 C87 2010

304.2'3—dc22

2009041322

Manufactured in the United States of America

In memory of my parents, Jack and Olly Desmond

Tricia Cusack has taught art/cultural history at Cardiff Metropolitan University, the Open University, and the University of Birmingham, UK. Her research examines how visual art embodies social ideas and myths, contributing to the construction of cultural and national identities. She has taken a particular interest in riverscapes, as well as the shorescape, the seaside, and the ocean. In addition to the present book, she has published three edited volumes, Framing the Ocean, 1700 to the Present: Envisaging the Sea as Social Space (2014, 2017); Art and Identity at the Water’s Edge (2012, 2017); and Art, Nation and Gender: Ethnic Landscapes, Myths and Mother-Figures, coedited with Síghle Bhreathnach-Lynch (2003, 2017). Tricia has articles in many and diverse journals, including Art History, Irish Review, Journal of Tourism History, New Formations, National Identities, Nations and Nationalism, Nineteenth Century Studies, and the Canadian Journal of Irish Studies. She has a chapter forthcoming in Empty Spaces: Perspectives on Emptiness in Modern History (London, Institute of Historical Research).

Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

1. Introduction

Riverscapes and National Identities

2. The Chosen People

The Hudson River School and the Construction of American Identity

3. The Victorian Thames

England’s Silver Stream or Britain’s Monster Soup?

4. Impressions of Leisure on the Seine

National Identity and Forgetting in the French Third Republic

5. Our Russian Essence

The Volga Riverscape and Cultural Nationalism

6. Shannon Riverscapes

Myth and Modernity in the Making of Ireland

7. Naturalizing the Nation

Sacred Riverscapes and the Flow of History

Works Cited

Index

Illustrations

1.Proof for banknote vignette

2.View of the Round-Top in the Catskill Mountains

3.The Voyage of Life: Youth

4.Hudson River Scene

5.Outing on the Hudson

6.View of Troy

7.View near Lansingburgh, Looking Toward Troy, on the River

8.The Rescue

9.Autumn—On the Hudson River

10.American Progress

11.Commerce, or the Triumph of the Thames

12.The Thames near Marble Hill, Twickenham

13.St. Paul’s from Blackfriars, the Embarkation of the Lord Mayor at Blackfriars

14.Monster Soup Commonly Called Thames Water

15.Father Thames Introducing His Offspring to the Fair City of London: A Design for a Fresco in the New Houses of Parliament

16.Father Thames

17.Drowned! Drowned!

18.Somerset House, St. Paul’s and Blackfriars from Waterloo Bridge

19.The Embankment

20.On the Thames

21.La Grenouillère (Croissy)

22.Boating

23.Red Boats, Argenteuil

24.Oarsmen at Chatou

25.The Seine at Argenteuil

26.Boats on the Seine

27.The Seine at Port-Marly

28.On the Volga

29.Barge-Haulers on the Volga

30.Evening. The Golden Ples

31.On the Volga

32.Above Eternal Peace

33.Map of the Shannon

34.The Last Circuit of Pilgrims at Clonmacnoise, Co. Offaly

35.Night’s Candles Are Burnt Out

36.Killaloe

37.Visit the Shannon Works!

38.View of Dam from Power Station Side with Figures in the Background

39.Shannon Electricity Scheme. Excavating at the Tail Race Ardnacrusha

40.The TVA Way

Acknowledgments

2010

I would first like to thank Nicholas Alfrey, whose talk on the River Trent at Birmingham University some years ago initially got me interested in the cultural meanings of rivers. I was able to pursue this interest by delivering various conference papers with a rivers theme, the first on the Shannon at the Association of Art Historians’ Annual Conference at Oxford Brookes University in 2001, one on the Hudson at the Art Historians’ conference at the University of London in 2003, with a seminar paper on the Volga at Manchester Metropolitan University the same year. In 2006, I organized and chaired an international panel on Riverscapes and the Formation of National Identity at the Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association in Philadelphia, and presented a paper on the Seine. All of these forums provided valuable feedback for the present book, and I would like to thank the delegates who contributed to them.

I have been in contact with many individuals in museums, galleries, and other institutions and would like to thank them all, and especially the following for their patience in long correspondence and/or for providing valuable new information: Tammis Groft and Allison Munsell (Albany Institute of History and Art); Kevin J. Avery (Metropolitan Museum of Art); Francis Marshall and Jenna Collins (Museum of London); Lori Eurto (Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute); Marina Ivanova (State Tretyakov Gallery); and David Beasley (the Goldsmiths’ Company). I would also like to specially thank Brendan Delany (ESB Archives) for his generous support.

Many museums, galleries, and other bodies have kindly permitted reproductions of their works and they are all acknowledged in the text. I am especially grateful to the following organizations that generously waived reproduction fees for scholarly use or provided images free of charge: the British Museum; Electricity Supply Board (ESB) Archives, Ireland; Gallery Oldham; Harvard Art Museum, Fogg Art Museum; Library of Congress; Limerick Museum; Museum of London; the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute; the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA), London; the State Museum of Fine Arts of the Republic of Tartarstan; the State Tretyakov Gallery; Wakefield Art Gallery.

Thanks to Olga Cusack and Natasha Rulyova who helped with Russian translations and Natasha also for her comments on the Volga chapter. I would like to thank Mary Selden Evans, executive editor of Syracuse University Press, for her marvelous enthusiasm and support throughout this project, as well as the series editor, John Rennie Short. I wish to thank family members who provided valuable critical readings of chapters, as well as supplying enormous encouragement: my son Rhodri, my niece Kira, and especially my husband Igor.

Finally, I would like to acknowledge ESB Archives for their support with the publication of this book.

2019

Reissuing Riverscapes and National Identities required checking permissions to reproduce its forty images. This proved to be a marathon task and one that exposed the exorbitant fees now charged by some galleries and companies for reusing an existing photographic image. It also demonstrated the generosity of many galleries and bodies that were happy to support the project for a modest or no fee: for this, I am most grateful.

Thanks again to my niece Kira Cusack, this time for her enormous help in translating communications with galleries in St. Petersburg and Moscow. I also want to thank Brendan Delany (ESB Archives) again for his advice and help with a large copyright fee. Thanks to Kelly Lynne Balenske, assistant editor at Syracuse University Press, who has been terrific to work with, supportive, efficient, and untiringly patient dealing with the queries, minor amendments, and larger changes generated in seeking permissions. Finally, thanks to my husband Igor, always unremittingly encouraging and supportive.

1

Introduction

Riverscapes and National Identities

Painted riverscapes such as Claude Monet’s impressions of the Seine, Isaak Levitan’s Volga views, or Thomas Cole’s Hudson scenery became iconic not least because they embodied nationalist ideas about place and about culture. At a time when nationalism was taking root across Europe and the United States, the riverscape played an important role in transforming the abstract idea of the nation into a potent visual image. It not only offered a picture of the nation’s physical character, but through aspects such as style, the figures portrayed, and the nature of the implied spectator, it presented a cultural ideal. Such riverscapes were also able to draw on the universal symbolic potential of rivers to represent life and time, and consequently provided a powerful metaphor for the vital stream of national history flowing unimpeded out of the past and into the future. Thus the riverscape represented the nation’s myths about itself, and at the same time it symbolically enhanced the national value of the depicted river.

I want to set the scene for the following chapters by introducing a number of themes that will be intimately interrelated but that for clarity I will treat separately. I outline my interest in riverscapes and my choice of national rivers and period of focus. I also need to define the notion of a riverscape and explain my understanding of nationalism before considering the idea of a national riverscape. However, first I briefly discuss a variety of prenational riverine myths of gods and goddesses and the supplanting of these by monotheistic narratives. In relation to riverscapes, this part illustrates a historical inclination to attribute supernatural qualities to rivers, and it will indicate the tendency of dominant social groups to reinvent riverine mythologies. As well as providing a broad context for studying the national riverscape, this discussion shows how similar trends were repeated, so that the ideological tendencies of dominant social groups, in particular nationalism and religion, surfaced in the modern riverscape, alongside an accumulated detritus of myths and meanings available to be appropriated for the nationalist cause.

Rivers have long been central to cultures; one reason is their necessity for human survival, but another has to do with the nature of flowing water and its appropriateness as a metaphor for time passing, for life, and for death. The sociologist Zygmunt Bauman has argued that the essential shapelessness of liquids and their movement and changeability over time mean that liquids draw attention to time in a way that solids do not (2000, 2). Rivers therefore have presented a potent metaphor for the passage of time, for life, and for renewal in a way that solid landscape cannot do so easily. Not surprisingly, rivers have been associated with fertility and regeneration and sacralized in many religions. The growth of nationalism from the nineteenth century created a demand for representations of the national territory, and as rivers provided significant points of reference, riverscapes proved ideal for this purpose. Many nations and capital cities are closely identified with a national river, for instance London with the Thames, or Prague with the Vltava. Because rivers signify life and renewal they have been appropriated as symbols of national vitality, and in representing the passage of time, they offer an excellent metaphor for the uninterrupted flow or course of national history. For some nations, this course has been regarded as a sacred as well as a historical one, their national mission merging with a spiritual destiny.¹

Clearly every river has its narratives, and some have acquired dominant national meanings through the medium of riverscapes. I have chosen five rivers to explore the relations between riverscapes and national identities. These are the Hudson, the Thames, the Seine, the Volga, and the Shannon rivers, and I will be focusing on the period of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as this was a crucial period for the development of nationalism across many countries. The choice of these rivers will enable varying perspectives to be brought to the relations between riverscapes and national identity. The significance of a national river is not necessarily determined by superlative physical characteristics; in terms of length, for instance, the Thames is a relatively small river, while the Volga flowed across much of the vast area of European Russia. However, a national river had usually acquired earlier importance through its strategic use as a territorial and historical boundary, or as an outlet to the sea facilitating trade and military exploits, with consequent prosperous settlement along its banks.

The nineteenth century was a crucial period for the development and consolidation of nationalism in Europe and in the United States. Many nations, such as India or the African states, did not obtain national independence until later in the twentieth century, in a fresh phase of nationalism and nation-formation. The rivers selected here represent examples of early nationalizing nations distinct in geographical, cultural, and political terms. France, Britain, and Russia were all imperial nations, but nineteenth-century France was postrevolutionary and politically volatile; Britain a long-established, powerful, and confident democracy; and Russia an autocracy seeking religious and ethnic exclusivity. Unlike Britain and France, which had far-flung colonies, Russia was geographically contiguous with its empire. The United States was a young and still-expanding nation, while Ireland was a postcolonial nation,² gaining independence in the early twentieth century. These nations also differed in the part that religion was enabled to play in the state and in the constitution of national identity. The different geographical and political situations of these countries provided quite different contexts for the development of nationalism and the cultural meanings of their riverscapes. Yet the case studies here can be used as a basis for exploring the relation of riverscapes to nation-formation in its more recent phase; for instance, the Ganges, like the Shannon, might be considered in a postcolonial context. In this introduction, I will clarify the main terms of the study, that is, national riverscapes, nationalism, and national identities, and consider some of the relevant literature published to date, before providing a brief overview of the themes addressed in the following chapters. First, however, I will briefly discuss some of the prenational mythological associations of rivers, as these contributed to their subsequent symbolic power. This overview will also illustrate how rivers have long been invoked to serve different cultural and religious beliefs.

Rivers seem to encourage the telling of imaginative stories, whether about water-spirits or nations. The veneration of rivers and springs is very old and worldwide, and creation myths often begin with water as the source of the world (Kattau 2006, 114; Kalnická 2006, 171). For example, the Native American Onondaga tribe related that before the earth emerged, there was only water, with birds and animals swimming in it (Gerencser 1998). Rivers have played a significant role in what has been called the geography of religion (Park 2004), the ways in which religious expressions have been influenced by geographical features, for instance how the Nile was venerated in Egypt, which it built and watered by flooding. Water was especially important in nature worship, as discussed in an early study by Robert Charles Hope (1893), and individual rivers and wells acquired special deities and assistants in the form of nymphs or naiads. Persians, Egyptians, and Greeks had river deities. For example, the Persian god Airyaman, with an Indian equivalent, Aryaman, was associated with water, fertility, and healing (Carnoy 1918, 294). The Nile, known as the longest river in the world,³ passed through various territories and later different nations, rising in Rwanda, flowing into Lake Victoria in Uganda, north through Sudan, and then across Egypt into the Mediterranean. The Nile in Egypt was associated with the god Osiris and the myth of his resurrection; the cosmogony of Pharaoh Akhenaten (1353–35 BC) invoked an earthly Nile that sprang from the underworld to nourish Egypt and a heavenly Nile that brought fertility to other lands (Shavit 2000, 80). The early Greek river gods, which were also associated with fertility, took various forms including a man-headed bull, which then mutated into the image of a human male with horns before the horn was detached and held as a cornucopia (Gais 1978, 355–59). These river gods were later represented as reclining, like the banqueting men on classical Greek pots (Gais 1978, 360–67). Classical statues of the Nile and the Tiber river gods were similarly depicted as reclining seminude male figures, later imitated in nineteenth-century representations of other river deities such as Father Thames.

Hinduism provided an important version of Indian nationalism and rivers have been central to Hindu tradition: Rivers [in India] are perceived to be nurturing (and sometimes judgmental) mothers, feeding, nourishing, quenching, and when angered flooding the earth (Narayanan 2001). The Ganges was supposed to have descended from heaven, although it is believed to still flow in heaven and in the underworld as well as on earth, and Mother Ganga was associated with generating life and bestowing immortality (Darian 2001, 19, 31, 69). Farmers still place a pot of Ganges water in their fields to encourage fertility (Darian 2001, 37) and the Ganges River is believed to cure disease, expunge sins, and confer immortality (Knotková-Ĉapková 2006, 157): by bathing in the great rivers of India, one is said to be morally cleansed of sins and to acquire merit or auspiciousness (Narayanan 2001). Therefore, regardless of the polluted condition of the Ganges, people ritually bathe in it. The Ganges is personified by the Hindu goddess Ganga, sometimes represented as part-serpent or portrayed as a young white woman seated on a fish holding a water pot and lotus (Darian 2001, 63; Knotková-Ĉapková 2006, 157).⁴ The Ganges was not only celebrated by Hindus, but Bengali Muslims celebrated it as a sacred river in festivals that borrowed from Hindu rituals (Darian 2001, 159).

The Druids, ancient Celtic priests, are believed to have worshipped running water, which in Celtic culture was considered mysterious, because springs appeared from underground and rivers moved like a living thing, and these were inhabited by divinities capable of either nourishing or destroying life (Hope 1893, viii; Green 1992, 2). The River Seine may take its name from the healing goddess Sequana (chapter 4), who was worshipped at its source near Dijon, Gaul, where wealthy cult establishments were developed in the Romano-Celtic period: a bronze cult figure of Sequana (first century AD) represented her wearing a diadem and standing in a duck-prowed boat, symbolizing her noble and watery status (Green 1992, 2, 212–13). In Britain too, rivers were presided over by goddesses; for instance the name of the Severn may be derived from that of the goddess Sabrina, associated with a myth of a nymph drowned in the river, a theme that also surfaces in the mythology of the Shannon (chapter 6). In late nineteenth-century England, rural dwellers still venerated the water goddesses: Among the rustics only, now, does the nymph or mermaid . . . find belief and inspire awe (Hope 1893, viii).

Different Native American tribes accorded rivers special powers and peopled them with mythic creatures. For instance, the Miwok in California believed certain rivers were inhabited by long-haired river mermaids or water women (Merriam 1910, 228–29). Cherokees in Oklahoma envisaged an underworld from which purifying rivers had sprung, and, subject to the appropriate priestly rituals being addressed to the sacred powers, the river or Long-Man was believed to cure illness (Irwin 1992, 24, 250).

It is striking therefore how rivers seem to have been universally associated with deities to whom their powers of fertilization and destruction were attributed, together with the ability to heal and even to bestow eternal life. Such beings often took the form, or partial form, of other natural objects, such as animals, fish, or river birds, or were closely connected to them. Some of these beliefs and rituals have endured and have been adopted as an important part of national culture, as in the case of the Ganges, but even where they have not, the rivers have necessarily acquired rich traditions of magical narratives.

However, with the rise of the monotheistic religions, many such stories were assigned to the past and rivers were provided with new dominant narratives. Thus the rise of Christianity . . . deemed pagan practices such as water worship heretical and persecuted those who practiced veneration of nature (Kattau 2006, 118), while Christian priests rededicated sacred springs to their own saints (Hope 1893, xxi). Nonetheless, the use of rivers to signify life, renewal, and immortality remained very similar. Thus in Christian mythology, a river sustained the Garden of Eden (Genesis 2:10), while the River Jordan has long been considered sacred by both Jews and Christians, and members of the British Royal Family were traditionally baptized with water carried from the River Jordan (Hope 1893, vii).⁵ Rivers were interpreted or metaphorically opposed to one another in order to claim superiority for a particular religious belief, or to characterize a people or later a nation. Thus the Jordan was contrasted with the Nile as a site of redemption and deliverance . . . a rushing, clear waterline, not a sluggish, turbid meander; a place of purity in the desert (Schama 1995, 264). The Old Testament opposing the idols of Egypt and them that have familiar spirits had warned that the river shall be wasted and dried up (Isaiah 19:1–5). However, owing to a combination of early Jewish and Christian interpretations and classical geography, the Nile was soon located as one of the four rivers originating in Eden, together with the Ganges, the Tigris, and the Euphrates.⁶ By the period of the European Renaissance, Western travelers believed that the Nile originated in Paradise (Schama 1995, 266), and Bernini’s celebrated Fountain of the Four Rivers in Piazza Navona, Rome, commissioned by Pope Innocent X in the mid–seventeenth century, depicted the four rivers of Paradise, which now included the Nile, together with the Ganges, the Danube, and Río de la Plata, claiming these rivers for the Christian story. Nature worship persisted in some parts, so that in Ethiopia, for instance, an eighteenth-century traveler noted the practice of worshiping and sacrificing cattle to the spirit of the Nile’s tributary, the Blue Nile (Tafla 2000, 158–59). In West African Dogon culture, for example, a cult of water worship still shapes collective identities and determines social hierarchies, and the tribal elders just