The University of Arkansas Press is excited to announce the forthcoming publication of In the Shade of the Pine: Artists, Writers, and Trees in America, 1825-1876 by Christiana Payne.
In the Shade of the Pine explores the cultural and ecological significance of trees in the visual and literary imagination of American artists and writers of the mid-nineteenth century. From Thomas Cole’s exploration of the Catskills in the 1820s through to Albert Bierstadt’s portrayal of the splendid trees of California in the 1860s and 1870s, this richly illustrated study explores how artists and writers in the period responded to the cultural, spiritual, and ecological meanings of trees. Examining their work through primary sources, it discusses how the paintings and drawings of Asher Brown Durand and Frederic Edwin Church, the photographs and wilderness activities of William James Stillman, and the environmental writings of Susan Fenimore Cooper and Henry David Thoreau show a nationalistic pride in American trees, whose beauties they studied and recorded in both words and images.
A visually compelling, historically grounded account of how trees shaped the intellectual and emotional landscapes of a generation—and how their representations laid the groundwork for the ecological consciousness to come—In the Shade of the Pine offers timely insight into the deep-rooted cultural histories that trees bring as sources of meaning, memory, and moral insight in an era of ecological precarity.
In the Shade of the Pine will be published in the Spring of 2026.