America’s exotic landscape and discoveries of unfamiliar peoples, plants and animals fueled Europeans’ imaginations for nearly two centuries prior to the American Revolution. The English and Europeans had long studied the earth’s natural productions as a means to categorize and understand the world in which they lived, and America provided an unspoiled laboratory for learned men across the ocean to substantiate or dispel their own theories and beliefs. American colonists were eager to supply their foreign correspondents with their own observations, specimens and seeds.

While Europeans anxiously sought information and new species of flora and fauna from the New World, they regarded the American environment as hostile, condemning the climate, natives, animals and even immigrants as degenerate. America’s founding fathers, in particular, responded defensively. Conflicting theories about nature were also reflected in the work of artists such as Charles Willson Peale and his sons, Titian and Rembrandt.

After the Revolution, Americans approached their natural environment with a greater sense of confidence. America’s nature and her vast frontier lands began to represent the American Dream. Exploring the western landscape and recording new species of wildlife provided Americans with a sense of national pride. Dr. Pritchard’s talk will describe how Americans recorded and viewed nature and their landscape in ways that amplified their unique beliefs and values.

The moment America and Great Britain signed the Treaty of Paris in September 1783, Americans began traveling abroad, touring important houses, dining with the elite and viewing great gardens and landscapes. They applied the newest architectural, landscape and agricultural ideas to their own properties.

They renovated older city houses, adding elliptical rooms projecting into gardens. New country houses, some with multiple oval saloons, heralded a fresh perspective, leading to a more leisurely and elegant lifestyle inside. This new architecture also invited guests outside to the gardens that featured new imported botanical specimens as well as ranges of hot houses and greenhouses. Often these elegant saloons opened onto a raised veranda under a colonnaded portico, and sometimes the garden was even brought inside with various odoriferous potted plants. Light and portable painted furniture frequently graced these rooms, including sets of card tables and pier tables for entertainments and various provisions for jollyment.

Along with this new style of living and entertaining came an intense interest in agriculture and animal husbandry among these wealthy families. The term “gentleman farmer” takes on new meaning as one explores what they were growing, the quantities of vegetables and fruit trees they planted, and the edibles with which they experimented.