The Oxbow" shows the confidence of Americans of the period in technology and progress, as embodied in the Industrial Revolution, and also the ability of Americans to discipline the wilderness through agriculture, rail roads, and other emerging technologies of the day. Van Gough's landscape shows the European shift in painting from outward depictions of heroic subjects with unerring detailed accuracy to a concern with how the landscape can reveal impressions of the artist's own unique vision. However, one Cole scholar has suggested: "in the lazy turn of the great oxbow -- echoed by the circling birds at the edge of the storm -- we can make out the shape of a question mark: where is all this headed," in short that even in this American confidence there is tension and doubt (Johns, 1996).

The tension of "Starry Night" is within the soul, not in practical questions of where the future lies for a nation. Some have speculated that the "cool dark...

Wild nature is shown to be the cornerstone of human creativity, embodied in the emotions it inspires in the artist, and as nature fuels the imagination, it always has worth; it need not show its practical value to justify its existence as in Cole's "Oxbow."
Works Cited

Johns, Joshua. (5 Apr 1996). "The Oxbow." From a Brief History of Nature and the American Consciousness. Retrieved 8 Jul 2007 at http://xroads.virginia.edu/~cap/NATURE/cap2.html#oxbow

Stokstad, Marilyn. 2005. Art History. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc.

Vincent van Gogh: The Starry Nights." Van Gough Gallery. 2007. Retrieved 8 Jul 2007 at http://www.vangoghgallery.com/painting/starryindex.html