THE CUMBERLAND RIVER

Ralph E. W. Earl’s The Cumberland River captures a bend in the river near Nashville, Tennessee, and invites viewer along for a quiet trip down the river on a raft.  Earl is perhaps best known for his many portraits of Andrew Jackson (1767-1845), whom he met as he was working on a large-scale painting of the Battle of New Orleans. Earl later married Jackson's daughter and lived with the Jackson family both at their plantation in Tennessee, The Hermitage, and later at the White House, where he painted portraits of the president and White House visitors.  Delighting in the picturesque qualities of the meandering river, the high cliff banks, and fallen tree in the foreground, The Cumberland River betrays Earl’s familiarity with European landscape conventions from his time studying in London and Paris, but translated here to a distinctly American scene that evokes the westward settlement of the United States.