Kenneth Haltman is the H. Russell Pitman Professor of Art History at the University of Oklahoma. He is co-editor of American Artifacts: Essays in Material Culture (2000), translator and editor of major works by French phenomenologist Gaston Bachelard, and, most recently, a contributor to Nexus of Exchange: Philadelphia and the Visual Culture of Natural History, 1740 to 1840, edited by Amy R. W. Meyers (forthcoming).

“It is difficult to imagine a more learned account of this material. Looking Close and Seeing Far is a signal contribution to studies of American Romanticism—a lucid, exemplary account of the richness of an art of not-knowledge, of an art about failings and strivings to know a place (the American West) as much as that place itself.”—Alexander Nemerov, Yale University

• ContentsList of IllustrationsPrefaceAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Figures in a Western LandscapeSamuel Seymour: Science and ImaginationManaging DistanceThe Poetics of Geologic ReverieThe Dream of Ethnological ConnectionTitian Ramsay Peale: Science and SelfhoodManaging NatureThe Art of Predatory LookingNatural History as Family HistoryConclusion: Looking Close and Seeing FarNotesBibliographyIndex

Kenneth Haltman is the H. Russell Pitman Professor of Art History at the University of Oklahoma. He is co-editor of American Artifacts: Essays in Material Culture (2000), translator and editor of major works by French phenomenologist Gaston Bachelard, and, most recently, a contributor to Nexus of Exchange: Philadelphia and the Visual Culture of Natural History, 1740 to 1840, edited by Amy R. W. Meyers (forthcoming).

“It is difficult to imagine a more learned account of this material. Looking Close and Seeing Far is a signal contribution to studies of American Romanticism—a lucid, exemplary account of the richness of an art of not-knowledge, of an art about failings and strivings to know a place (the American West) as much as that place itself.”—Alexander Nemerov, Yale University

• ContentsList of IllustrationsPrefaceAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Figures in a Western LandscapeSamuel Seymour: Science and ImaginationManaging DistanceThe Poetics of Geologic ReverieThe Dream of Ethnological ConnectionTitian Ramsay Peale: Science and SelfhoodManaging NatureThe Art of Predatory LookingNatural History as Family HistoryConclusion: Looking Close and Seeing FarNotesBibliographyIndex

Kenneth Haltman is the H. Russell Pitman Professor of Art History at the University of Oklahoma. He is co-editor of American Artifacts: Essays in Material Culture (2000), translator and editor of major works by French phenomenologist Gaston Bachelard, and, most recently, a contributor to Nexus of Exchange: Philadelphia and the Visual Culture of Natural History, 1740 to 1840, edited by Amy R. W. Meyers (forthcoming).

“It is difficult to imagine a more learned account of this material. Looking Close and Seeing Far is a signal contribution to studies of American Romanticism—a lucid, exemplary account of the richness of an art of not-knowledge, of an art about failings and strivings to know a place (the American West) as much as that place itself.”—Alexander Nemerov, Yale University

• ContentsList of IllustrationsPrefaceAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Figures in a Western LandscapeSamuel Seymour: Science and ImaginationManaging DistanceThe Poetics of Geologic ReverieThe Dream of Ethnological ConnectionTitian Ramsay Peale: Science and SelfhoodManaging NatureThe Art of Predatory LookingNatural History as Family HistoryConclusion: Looking Close and Seeing FarNotesBibliographyIndex