Consuming Views - Art and Tourism in the White Mountains, 1850-1900 (Hardcover)

The White Mountains, solid and ageless peaks of granite, rise up across the landscape of northern New Hampshire. Their natural beauty has inspired visitors to the state for centuries. Generations of visitors to the mountains have found something new and meaningful for themselves and for the culture in which they live.
By the middle of the nineteenth century the region's magnificent and varied scenery attracted tourists and artists from around the country as well as from Europe. More than four hundred artists are known to have painted White Mountain scenes before 1900. Artists who visited New Hampshire during the second half of the nineteenth century interpreted White Mountain scenery in ways designed to appeal to and attract tourists and to serve as souvenirs of their mountain visits. Hotel owners encouraged painters to work and to take up residence in the White Mountain hotels. Paintings enriched the tourists' sensibilities and enhanced an appreciation of the landscape, even as a growing middle class was gaining cultural as well as economic power. Merchants, bankers, and attorneys, along with their families, embraced gentility by acquiring, displaying, and contemplating paintings. For some these paintings remained mere symbols of their own rising economic status. For others these objects and images were of more spiritual than economic value.
Each painting included in this book presents a compelling and unique perspective of a White Mountain locale. All thirty-seven paintings featured are reproduced in full color. The artworks are organized geographically, following routes nineteenth century travelers took while touring the White Mountains. The reader will be able to explore the key sites that attracted tourists and inspired artists, beginning and ending with a visit to North Conway, home of the earliest White Mountain artists' community.
Thirty-three authors from many different disciplines have contributed to this publication. Approaching the subject from a variety of perspectives, they reveal the story and significance of White Mountain scenery, of the nineteenth-century artists who depicted it, and of the people (consumers) who acquired, owned, and cherished White Mountain art.