The Arts at Eagle Hill: “Views of Nature” ... Art programs
focusing on landscapes, nature, and natural history
The fine arts are playing an ever greater role at Eagle Hill.
The phrase, “Views of Nature”
“Views of Nature” is the title of a book of essays (1808) by
Alexander von Humboldt. It is based mostly on the diary he kept during
his famous journey through the American tropics. His goals were to write
about natural history in a way that would both inspire emotional
enjoyment and appreciation of nature and be an incentive to study
nature. In his book “Cosmos” (1845-1858), Volume 2, Humboldt expanded
upon his thesis, showing that artists, through landscape painting,
similarly can achieve higher spiritual goals and thus can help transform
man into a more noble and thoughtful being. Delineative art, he
maintained, can combine the visible and the invisible. “The striving for
such a bonding forms the last and noblest aim of art.” His writings
influenced many writers and artists, among them Frederic Edwin Church,
some of whose most memorable landscape paintings resulted from his own
trips to the American tropics to experience for himself the intangible
feelings about which Humboldt wrote.
In “Views of Nature” and in “Cosmos II,” Humboldt maintains that the aesthetic enjoyment of nature through the arts, especially through the depiction of natural scenery, enables man to transcend the purely objective domain of the scientific delineation of nature. “In order to depict nature in its exalted sublimity, we must not dwell exclusively on its external manifestations but must trace its image” as it is reflected in the mind and the feelings of man.
Workshops ... Residencies ... Retreats
Throughout human history, nature has been a source of inspiration.
Each age has found its artistic responses, ones that spring as much from
an emotional response to nature as from the intellectual backgrounds and
artistic trends prevalent during each age.
The Eagle Hill Institute, with its facilities on the summit of Eagle Hill overlooking the coast of eastern Maine, offers an inspiring and aesthetically pleasing setting within which artists can explore “views of nature” through art. Workshops and residencies and retreats give artists a wide range of opportunities to be creative, learn, and share with others their insights about nature and art. Art historians are also welcome to apply for residencies and retreats for reading, studying, and/or writing purposes.