Christopher Pearse Cranch
Template:Short description Template:Use mdy dates Template:Infobox Author Christopher Pearse Cranch (March 8, 1813 – January 20, 1892) was an American writer and artist often associated with Transcendentalism and the Hudson River School.
BiographyEdit
Cranch was born March 8, 1813, in Alexandria, Virginia.<ref name=Richardson72>Richardson, Todd. "Christopher Pearse Cranch" in Writers of the American Renaissance: An A to Z Guide. Denise D. Knight, editor. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2003: 72. Template:ISBN</ref> His conservative father, William Cranch, was Chief Judge of the United States Circuit Court of the District of Columbia.<ref>Carpenter, Hazen C. "Emerson and Christopher Pearse Cranch" in The New England Quarterly. Vol. 37, No. 1 (March 1964): 26.</ref> Cranch was the youngest of 13 siblings,<ref name=Richardson72/> including his brother John who would go on to become a painter.<ref name="Dearinger(U.S.)2004">Template:Cite book</ref>
He graduated from Columbian College (now George Washington University) in 1835 before attending Harvard Divinity School and becoming a licensed preacher.<ref name=Carpenter19>Carpenter, Hazen C. "Emerson and Christopher Pearse Cranch" in The New England Quarterly. Vol. 37, No. 1 (March 1964): 19.</ref> During his years at Harvard, he came in contact with people like John Sullivan Dwight and Theodore Parker, through whom he was introduced to Unitarianism.<ref name=Richardson72/> He traveled as a Unitarian minister, preaching in Providence, Andover, Richmond, Bangor, Portland, Boston, Washington, and St. Louis.<ref name=Carpenter19/> Later, he pursued various occupations: a magazine editor, caricaturist, children's fantasy writer (the Huggermugger books), poet (The Bird and the Bell with Other Poems in 1875), translator, and landscape painter. He married Elizabeth DeWindt in 1843.Template:Cn His daughter, Caroline Cranch, was a painter.<ref name="AskArt">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
Though not one of its founding members, Cranch became associated with the Transcendental Club;<ref>Gura, Philip F. American Transcendentalism: A History. New York: Hill and Wang, 2007: 7–8. Template:ISBN</ref> he read Ralph Waldo Emerson's Nature by December 1836 and beginning in June 1837 served as a substitute editor of the Western Messenger in the absence of James Freeman Clarke.<ref name=Carpenter19/> For that journal, Cranch reviewed Emerson's Phi Beta Kappa address at Harvard in August 1837 known as "The American Scholar". He referred to the speech as "so full of beauties, full of original thought and illustration" and its author as "the man of genius, the bold deep thinker, and the concise original writer".<ref>Carpenter, Hazen C. "Emerson and Christopher Pearse Cranch" in The New England Quarterly. Vol. 37, No. 1 (March 1964): 20.</ref> Cranch's connection with the Transcendentalists ultimately diminished his demand as a minister.Template:Cn He soon became disillusioned with his harsh experiences in the west and returned to Boston in 1839.<ref name=Richardson72/>
His poetry was published in The Harbinger<ref>Felton, R. Todd. A Journey into the Transcendentalists' New England. Berkeley, California: Roaring Forties Press, 2006: 126. Template:ISBN</ref> and The Dial<ref>Packer, Barbara L. The Transcendentalists. Athens, Georgia: The University of Georgia Press, 2007: 119. Template:ISBN</ref> among other publications. He sent "Enosis", which Hazen Carpenter noted as perhaps Cranch's most well-known poem, to Emerson for The Dial on March 2, 1840.<ref>Carpenter, Hazen C. "Emerson and Christopher Pearse Cranch" in The New England Quarterly. Vol. 37, No. 1 (March 1964): 24-25.</ref>
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Cranch left the ministry to focus on a career in the arts and spent about 20 years in Italy and France studying and practicing painting.<ref name=Richardson73>Richardson, Todd. "Christopher Pearse Cranch" in Writers of the American Renaissance: An A to Z Guide. Denise D. Knight, editor. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2003: 73. Template:ISBN</ref> As an artist, Cranch painted landscapes similar to the work of Thomas Cole, the Hudson River School, and the Barbizon school in France. In one foray into historical painting, Cranch depicted the burning of P. T. Barnum's American Museum in New York City. Later in life, Cranch painted scenes from Venice and Italy. Cranch's caricatures of Emerson were later bound as Illustrations of the New Philosophy: Guide. Perhaps his most well-remembered and recognized artwork is a hand-drawn caricature illustrating Emerson's concept of the "transparent eyeball".<ref name=Robinson455>Robinson, David. "The Career and Reputation of Christopher Pearse Cranch: An Essay in Biography and Bibliography" in Studies in the American Renaissance. 1978: 455.</ref> In 1850, he was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate Academician, and became a full Academician in 1864.
In 1863, Cranch returned to the United States with his family, including his wife Elizabeth De Windt. Their son George enlisted in the Union Army during the Civil War and was killed shortly thereafter.<ref name=Richardson73/> Cranch spent the last couple decades of his life in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and contributed to publications like Harper's, The Atlantic, Putnam's, and Lippincott's as well as publishing three books of poetry.<ref name=Richardson73/> He died at his home in Cambridge on January 20, 1892, and was buried at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Massachusetts.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
WorksEdit
- Poems (1844)<ref name=Robinson455/>
- The Last of the Huggermuggers, A Giant Story (1855)<ref name=Robinson455/>
- Kobboltozo, A Sequel to the Last of the Huggermuggers (1857)<ref name=Robinson455/>
- The Aeneid of Virgil (translation, 1872)
- Satan: A Libretto (1874)<ref name=Robinson455/>
- The Bird and the Bell with Other Poems (1875)<ref name=Robinson455/>
- Ariel and Caliban with Other Poems (1887)<ref name=Robinson455/>
ReferencesEdit
Further readingEdit
- The Life And Letters Of Christopher Pearse Cranch: By His Daughter Lenora Cranch Scott (1917)
- Stula, Nancy, with Barbara Novak and David M. Robinson, At Home and Abroad: The Transcendental Landscapes of Christopher Pearse Cranch (1813-1892), New London: Lyman Allyn Art Museum, 2007
External linksEdit
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