Florida Reflections Picturing Paradise: From John James Audubon to the Florida Highwaymen

Primary tabs

Program Description

The Florida landscape has provided aesthetic inspiration to artists for centuries. Titian Ramsay Peale and John James Audubon came in search of native flora and fauna, followed by Harriet Beecher Stowe, Martin Johnson Heade, George Inness, Winslow Homer, and Henry Ossawa Tanner, who were lured by its natural beauty and warm climate. This presentation offers a succinct and engaging history of Florida’s landscape painters.

Keri Watson is an associate professor of art history at the University of Central Florida and co-executive editor for Panorama: Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art. She is the author of This is America: Re-Viewing the Art of the United States (2023) and editor of the Routledge Companion to Art and Disability (2022).

This program is part of the Florida Reflections: Conversations on Florida's Contribution to the American Tale Series. A part of the America 250 Celebration. Find out more at https://floridahumanities.org/florida-reflections/

Florida Reflections was developed by Florida Humanities and is part of By the People: Conversations Beyond 250–a series of community-driven programs created by humanities councils in collaboration with local partners. The initiative was developed by the Federation of State Humanities Councils and the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. Funding is provided in part through the Thomas M. & Irene B. Kirbo Charitable Foundation, the Gulf Coast Community Foundation and the Community Foundation for Brevard. Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this program do not necessarily represent those of Florida Humanities or its partners.