October 27 -December 4, 2022

“More than a Passing Observation”:
William Louis Sonntag and Landscape Mania in the United States

This exhibition, curated by Julia A. Sienkewicz and sponsored by the Joanne Leonhardt Cassullo Center for Art at Roanoke College, examines the work of landscape painter William Louis Sonntag (1822-1900), placing the artist in a rich context of the landscape mania in the United States during his lifetime. Sonntag, whose career began in Cincinnati, Ohio, was closely identified with his landscape views taken in various locations along the Alleghany Mountains. He was also an important peer and colleague to the African-American landscape painter, Robert S. Duncanson. This exhibition invites viewers to build a deeper understanding of the role that landscape painting played in the nineteenth-century United States, including the close association between “taking a view” and expressing defining ideas about self, society, and nationhood. The exhibition also reconsiders Sonntag’s role in the larger landscape painting tradition, considering his promotion of “western” landscapes along the Alleghenies, his transatlantic travel, and the status of race as an element of his career.

Sienkewicz is an Associate Professor of Art History at Roanoke College. She holds a PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a BA from Mt. Holyoke College. Sienkewicz is the author of Epic Landscapes: Benjamin Henry Latrobe and the Art of Watercolor, as well as articles on topics encompassing landscape history, pedagogy, and community engaged teaching and learning. She is currently at work on her second monograph Forms of White Hegemony: Transnational Sculptors, Racialized Identity and the Torch of Civilization, for which she was the 2022 Terra Foundation Rome Prize fellow at the American Academy in Rome.