Abstract
This essay argues that antebellum Protestant evangelicals used the landscape to produce a modern form of sacred space. Thomas Cole’s The Oxbow (1836) provides a case study of how this “evangelical space” emerged at the intersection of landscape representation, material space, and religious print culture. Viewed in the context of Cole’s earlier religious paintings, published accounts of Mount Holyoke, and contemporary bible illustrations, the painting materializes sacred history in the landscape itself. The essay then connects this cosmic terrain to the spiritualized spaces that filled the illustrated publications of the American Tract Society. The Oxbow thus tells a neglected story about how antebellum Americans used the landscape as a spiritual technology.
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