Nature and the natural world play a big role in "Rip Van Winkle" - - both as a setting for Rip's adventure and as part of the narrator's discourse. Throughout the history of American culture, nature has come to stand for many things - - a resource to be exploited, a landscape to be enjoyed, truth, innocence, savagery. The early to mid-19th century school of painters known as the Hudson River School was among the first group American artists to attempt to make the American landscape meaningful. Examine the paintings above (click on the images to get a bigger version) - - how do they represent nature? what aspects or features of nature are emphasized? why was landscape painting, along with portrait painting, so important to early American literary and visual artists?
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