Published in the 1850s and 1860s, these country scenes express a yearning for a timeless, rural harmony that was fast disappearing in industrialized, urban America. Even in the most idealized of these scenes, however, economic, racial, and regional tensions are discernible. Prints of farm life feature wealthy landowners overseeing the labor of tenants. Each scene features a country villa and an affluent family at leisure.
Gentlemen farmers ride, hunt, and fish, while wives and children adorn porches and gardens.
In the background, tenant farmers, hired hands, and domestic servants work the land and serve their employers. The well-tended country houses seen in these prints conform to those designed and published by Alexander Jackson Downing, a leading spokesman for the therapeutic and moral benefits of rural life. The Four Seasons of Life. The farmer holds center stage, with his family gathered round him and the fruits of his labor meticulously displayed. The house and farm buildings impose geometric order on the landscape, and two hired hands are hard at work.