Yao Nianda, Wilderness, Canvas and Nation: Hudson River School and the Building of the U. S. National Identity

　　In the early 19th century when people of the United States were seeking cultural independence, painters of the Hudson River School created an American art faction based on landscape paintings. They not only produced numerous artworks appreciated by the European art critics, but also provided Americans with artistic material for building their national identity. Painters used landscape paintings to construct a geospatial image of the America and established a connection between it and the superiority of the United States over Europe in religion and politics. The artworks of the Hudson River School echoed the political ideas of that time and visualized the cultural meaning of the wilderness. Through those efforts, painters successfully supported the republican government and the Westward Movement culturally. Meanwhile, paintings compressed the American landscape into geographic symbols, which inspired people's imagination of shared geographic space, enhanced the sense of geographic belonging. Accordingly, the Hudson River School made a significant contribution to the process of the building of the U. S. national identity.