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American Art

The Acadians in the Achafalaya, "Evangeline"

Joseph Rusling Meeker

Brooklyn Museum photograph

Brooklyn Museum photograph

1 of 2

Object Label

In the years immediately before the Civil War, Northerners associated dense, steamy swamps with the moral decay of Southern society and the plight of runaway slaves. Here, Joseph Rusling Meeker conveyed the more Eden-like, post–Civil War vision of the swamps. He took his inspiration from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s earlier epic poem Evangeline, A Tale of Acadie (1847). Longfellow tells of young Evangeline, one of the French Acadians expelled from Canada by the British in 1755, who searches for her lost lover amid a “dreamlike” and “strange” landscape. Adhering to Longfellow’s descriptions, Meeker evoked the lush flora of Louisiana’s Bayou Plaquemine, where Acadians sought refuge.

Caption

Joseph Rusling Meeker (American, 1827–1887). The Acadians in the Achafalaya, "Evangeline", 1871. Oil on canvas, 31 5/8 x 42 1/16 in. (80.3 x 106.8 cm) frame: 40 x 50 x 3 3/4 in. (101.6 x 127 x 9.5 cm). Brooklyn Museum, A. Augustus Healy Fund, 50.118. (Photo: Brooklyn Museum)

Gallery

Not on view

Collection

American Art

Title

The Acadians in the Achafalaya, "Evangeline"

Date

1871

Medium

Oil on canvas

Classification

Painting

Dimensions

31 5/8 x 42 1/16 in. (80.3 x 106.8 cm) frame: 40 x 50 x 3 3/4 in. (101.6 x 127 x 9.5 cm)

Signatures

Signed lower right: "JR Meeker, 1871"

Inscriptions

Inscribed verso under lining canvas: "The Acadians in the Achafalaya,/ "Evangeline"/ RM [in monogram] 1871."

Credit Line

A. Augustus Healy Fund

Accession Number

50.118

Frequent Art Questions

  • How did the depiction of the swamp bayou as peaceful, beautiful, and as a place of refuge act as a political commentary in this piece?

    The best way to answer that is probably to look at the perspective of the artist himself. Meeker was born and raised in New Jersey, but was deployed in a Navy Gunboat in Louisiana Swamp country during the Civil War. So his viewpoint was that of a Union soldier captivated by the natural beauty of the region.
    By applying a traditional, Hudson River School style approach to the landscape, he focused on the light and nature before him. This created a swamp viewed more with awe than fear. It's not so political as it is a different perspective on a region many saw as sinister and foreboding at that time. Though you are right in that many Hudson River artists saw the natural world/frontier as a refuge from the complications and corruptions of the civilized world. The movements founder, Thomas Cole, was very much against Jacksonian Democracy, Manifest Destiny, and threats to develop America's untamed wild side.
    Wow! Thank you so much for that answer. I see now that the piece is more about the landscape than the societal structure surrounding it.

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Artists and makers

Joseph Rusling Meeker

2 works in the collection