Alexander von Humboldt and the United States

What does Humboldt have to do with American art and culture? Humboldt spent exactly six weeks in the United States. But the timing of that six weeks, and the people that he met, helped shape American art and culture for the rest of the 19th century.

Humboldt was one of the most widely and profoundly admired men of the 19th century.

The wonderful Humboldt, with his solid centre and expanded wings, marches like an army, gathering all things as he goes. How he reaches from science to science, law to law, folding away moons and asteroids and solar systems in the clauses and parentheses of his encyclopedic paragraphs!

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1845

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Humboldt and then-president Thomas Jefferson shared a particular passion for the bones of the recently discovered mammoth, the largest terrestrial creature, at that point known to man. Jefferson invited Humboldt to come join him in Washington, DC.

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Excavated 1801–02 by Charles Willson Peale bone, wood, and papier mâché, approx. 118 × 177 × 65 in. Hessisches Landesmuseum, Darmstadt, Germany

Charles Willson Peale assembled the first nearly complete skeleton of a mammoth (later understood to be a mastodon), excavated from a pit near Newburgh, New York. On Christmas eve in 1801, Peale opened the Mammoth Room at his museum to the public, ushering in 1802 as the year of the mammoth in the United States.

Newspapers chronicled the creation of a mammoth cheese, followed by a sequence of mammoth-designated foodstuffs concocted to celebrate the discovery. Jefferson himself was designated "the mammoth chief." Before Humboldt left the United States, he was honored with a celebratory dinner beneath this skeleton in Peale's Mammoth Room.

Over time there were various theories about the orientation of the tusks. Rembrandt Peale hoped the massive size of the tusks meant the mammoth had been a carnivore. He published this engraving, suggesting that a carnivorous mammoth might have had tusks that swept downward, like a saber-tooth-tiger. His father, Charles Willson Peale, questioned the logic behind this orientation.

The mastodon skeleton served as the centerpiece of the exhibition. It resided within a rotunda-like circle of pillars, and could be seen from various points throughout the exhibition.

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Alexander von Humboldt spent six weeks in the United States, from May 23 to July 7, 1804. His interest in the relatively new country reflected his desire to see its democratic style of government flourish, to extend his South American explorations into the newly acquired Louisiana Territory, and to harness North American data in his emerging picture of the world's ecosystems. When he landed in Philadelphia, Humboldt met leading scientists, who were members of the American Philosophical Society (APS).

After spending a week among his peers, Humboldt and his traveling companions—French botanist Aimé Bonpland and the Ecuadorian nobleman Carlos Montúfar—traveled to Washington, DC, with artist and APS member Charles Willson Peale to meet President Thomas Jefferson.

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Jefferson was eager to meet Humboldt. One reason was their shared commitment to American democracy; the other was a map that Humboldt had drawn while he was in Mexico the previous year. It contained detailed information about the interior of North America, territory that had just become part of the United States through the Louisiana Purchase. Humboldt shared this map with Jefferson, strengthening the president's hand in negotiations with the king of Spain over the new boundary between Mexico and the United States.

This gesture of generosity endeared Humboldt to Jefferson and launched friendships with American statesmen, artists, authors, and naturalists that tied the United States close to Humboldt for the next fifty years.

This is the published version of the map Humboldt had lent to Jefferson in 1804, updating the world’s cartographic knowledge of North America. Explorers Stephen Long and John C. Frémont carried this map and several of Humboldt’s books with them as they traveled through the interior of North America.

Both men made sure Humboldt had access to the results of their expeditions, which Humboldt then incorporated into his lectures and books. The copy made from Humboldt’s original map is on view across the room.

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Humboldt had traveled to Washington specifically to meet Thomas Jefferson, but even that visit had multiple aims. Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia was a case study for American independence, with much of the argument reliant on facts about the physical geography and natural history of his home state. Jefferson had deployed the data he had amassed to argue for the robust prospects for the new nation's politics as well as its agricultural potential. His evidence included America's status as a home to the mammoth (later understood to be a mastodon), and his home state's Natural Bridge, in his own words "the most sublime of nature's works."

Using the American landscape as an inspiration for the nation, Jefferson took the first steps toward defining the United States' national goals in metaphorical terms based on natural monuments instead of architectural wonders. Looking beyond Virginia, Jefferson lauded Niagara Falls as the Eighth Wonder of the World.

The information Humboldt had amassed while traveling in the Americas expanded Jefferson's defense of the United States. The two men became influential allies in extolling the natural wonders of the Americas and inspired artists to do the same through painted depiction of these sites. In large part thanks to the popularity of those images, by the 1820s the Natural Bridge and Niagara Falls had replaced the mastodon as emblems of the scale and scope of America's ambitions.

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As the United States became part of Humboldt’s worldview, he paired its singular features alongside unique formations elsewhere on the globe. His expressed admiration for the American landscape conveyed affirmation that the New World held treasures worthy of renown. In his Views of the Cordilleras, Humboldt extolled Natural Bridge and Niagara Falls as American Natural Wonders, in contrast to the man-made Wonders that defined European civilization. What Natural Bridge was to Virginia, Niagara Falls became for the nation. These two North American landmarks together came to stand for the United States.

In 1822, cartographer Henry S. Tanner engraved the most up-to-date map of the country. Maps like Tanner’s contained more than geographic information. They were an expression of national identity and ambition. In the map’s cartouche, Natural Bridge and Niagara Falls appear together, elided into a single landscape. Together these two landmarks defined the scale and scope of America’s cultural ambitions.

Jefferson owned the Natural Bridge and the land surrounding it. In 1791 he urged American artist John Trumbull to travel there, in order to “take to yourself and your country the honor of presenting to the world this singular landscape, which otherwise some bungling European will misrepresent.” Frederic Church, the leading landscape painter of his day, painted the landmark after visiting Natural Bridge with his friend and patron Cyrus Field, who would also accompany the artist on his seven-month trip to South America.

1857, oil on canvas

Church’s Niagara was considered the finest landscape painting of its day. Church experimented with the scale and proportions of his canvas and adjusted his focal point to absorb a wide range of terrestrial and atmospheric phenomena that would convey the range of his travels, observations, and insights. Humboldt saw the panorama format as ideal for “increase[ing] . . . the force of these impressions” from nature.

What Humboldt accomplished in writing served as inspiration for what Church would create in paint. One critic termed Church’s Niagara the eighth Wonder of the World. Like the mastodon, Niagara Falls represented an impressive feature often interpreted as a national and cultural icon. 

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This is the study for Church's major painting dedicated to Humboldt called The Heart of the Andes. The finished painting, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, measures six feet by ten feet.

A small theater in the exhibition featured a video about the painting that you can view below.

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Church painted his most ambitious picture, Heart of the Andes, after his second trip to South America. He intended this painting as an homage to Humboldt. The artist had made plans to send the painting to Berlin for Humboldt to see as a testimonial to the Prussian’s sustained influence on the artist’s career, when he learned of Humboldt’s death in 1859.

Church incorporated as much specific information as possible, drawn from his own observations and from Humboldt’s writings. Humboldt’s plant geography map, commonly called his Naturgemälde, served as the template for this painting, distilling Humboldt’s concept of the “unity of nature.” 

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Alexander von Humboldt believed in the equality of all races and would advocate for the abolition of slavery throughout his life. His views were shaped by his training in ethnography and his experiences among the indigenous peoples of South America. He despised colonial rule and enslavement equally. In his letters and books he wrote eloquently that what he admired about America was, that in a democracy, "the people can really breathe with more freedom."

In 1845 Humboldt declared that "nature is the domain of liberty"—one of his key precepts. Just five years later, California entered the Union as a free state—widely seen as a victory for abolitionists. Explorer John C. Frémont became one of California's first senators. He had come to Humboldt's attention for his daring exploits and for naming landmarks for the Prussian baron. Humboldt subsequently arranged for Frémont to receive the Prussian Medal of Science; in the letter accompanying the honor, Humboldt extolled California as a place that had "so nobly resisted the introduction of Slavery" and Frémont as "a friend of liberty and of the progress of intelligence."

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Humboldt's support for Frémont's presidential campaign in 1856 reinforced the growing belief that the California landscape, and, more specifically, Yosemite were visual metaphors for freedom. Both John C. Frémont and his wife Jessie Benton Frémont, whose portraits are on view in this gallery, collected sculptures by John Quincy Adams Ward and John Rogers, along with Albert Bierstadt's paintings and Carleton Watkins' photographs of California as emblems of American liberty. By 1864 President Abraham Lincoln had signed legislation designating Yosemite as a sanctuary for all Americans, reaffirming the power of natural icons to signify American values.

John C. Frémont was an American explorer who idolized Humboldt. Known to many as “the Pathfinder,” he cherished his other nickname, “the American Humboldt.” Frémont came to Humboldt’s attention during the 1840s when he named multiple landmarks for him in Nevada and California, including the Humboldt River and the Humboldt mountain range. In 1856 Frémont ran for president as the first candidate of the new Republican Party, on an anti-slavery platform endorsed by Humboldt. Despite Humboldt’s vocal support, Frémont lost to James Buchanan, but his strong showing paved the way for the ascent of the Republican Party in 1860, when Abraham Lincoln was elected president.

Have you ever seen the name Humboldt on a street sign or school?

Alexander von Humboldt traveled widely throughout his life and inspired people around the world.  David Kidd  of Kingston University London has compiled over 1600 places names that commemorate his name. They include human artifacts and natural features.

The features in the Americas are names after Alexander von Humboldt, the areas in Europe and other countries are named for Alexander or his famed older brother Wilhelm von Humboldt. Wilhelm was very influential in Europe particularly in Germany.

Explore the map on the right to see the global distribution of these locations.

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Humboldt believed that a just society demonstrated respect for all cultures. Five years in the Americas had taught him that local inhabitants often knew more about an environment than government officials. As a result, when Humboldt sought to understand the landscapes through which he traveled, he often relied on indigenous guides. These relationships provided him with greater access to different cultures. Trained at Göttingen by Johann Friedrich Blumenbach to believe that all races were essentially equal, Humboldt used his clout to urge American politicians and explorers to follow his lead. In his view, the information exchanged during encounters with native people advanced global knowledge of the earth and encouraged mutual respect among its peoples.

He had hoped the United States would adopt a similar approach to its relationships with native communities. He was horrified by President Andrew Jackson's Native Removal Act of 1830, which broke existing treaties and forced the relocation of entire communities to make way for white settlements. Two people who became close to Humboldt responded to concern for survival of native communities along the Missouri River.

One was self-taught artist and amateur ethnographer George Catlin; the other was professionally trained Prussian naturalist and cultural anthropologist Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied. In 1832 Catlin made his first extended trip upriver from Saint Louis to study native communities. He returned with more than one hundred paintings: portraits, genre scenes, and landscapes that would form the foundation of his artistic career.

Inspired by Humboldt, in 1833 "Prince Max," accompanied by Swiss artist Karl Bodmer, traveled much of the same route to study the same tribes with the assistance of many of the same people, notably Territorial Governor William Clark and the Mandan chief Mató-Tópe.

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Mató-Tópe took a liking to Prince Maximilian and Bodmer, inviting the pair to spend the winter of 1833 with the Mandan. During that time Prince Max recorded the history of the tribe, Bodmer spent the winter painting various members of the tribe. Mató-Tópe knew how he wished to be seen and negotiated the terms of his depiction. When Bodmer painted him, he chose to be depicted in full dress regalia. The similarities between the formal, full-length portraits by Bodmer and Catlin suggest that the chief exerted a high degree of control, making sure his pose and his appearance conveyed his importance to the artists and within his tribe.

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Humboldt envisioned the United States as an instruction manual for democracy, modeling its founding ideals for the rest of the world. His encouragement extended beyond the sciences to the broader liberal arts and into American politics. Jefferson had introduced Humboldt to the Marquis de Lafayette in 1804 and the two men had become close friends, allied in their support of American democracy over Napoleon's imperial rule. Proclaiming himself as "half an American," Humboldt soon became a magnet for American travelers in Europe. Among his close friends were American authors James Fennimore Cooper and and Washington Irving as well as painter/inventor Samuel F.B. Morse.

Humboldt also had a direct connection to the founder of the Smithsonian Institution, the British chemist James Smithson. The two men met first in London in 1790 and again in Paris in 1814, and Smithson's decision to bequeath his entire fortune to establish the Smithsonian appears to have been encouraged by Humboldt's advocacy for the United States. American statesman John Quincy Adams saw Smithson's bequest as an opportunity to create an institution worthy of Humboldt's praise. The Smithsonian's first secretary, Joseph Henry, had his own ties with Humboldt, stemming from their shared interest in terrestrial magnetism and galvanic theory. During the first decade of the Smithsonian's existence, Henry further cemented the Institution's ties with Humboldt appointing Alexander Dalles Bache and Lorin Blodget to the inaugural executive committee.

The conscious desire to link the Smithsonian to Humboldt's stature comes as no surprise; certainly the Institution's credo, "the increase and diffusion of knowledge," echoes Humboldt's own words and reflects his lifelong interest in developing networks of information linking art, nature, and culture. Through its collections, research, and publications, the Smithsonian has evolved into the institutional equivalent of Humboldt's brain.

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Humboldt and Morse met in Paris in 1831, while the artist was hard at work painting the studies for this massive painting. “Sometimes the great explorer would seat himself beside Morse as he painted at the Louvre, and discourse with the utmost charm from his vast store of observation and thought.” Other times, Humboldt would walk the hallways of the museum and the subject would turn to Morse’s idea for a telegraph. Both men were deeply interested in interconnected networks of knowledge. Morse intended this painting to be its own network of information, a compression of a history of European painting designed to inspire the arts in the United States. Like Humboldt’s book, Cosmos, and Church’s painting, Heart of the Andes, Morse’s painting aspires to serve as a compendium of cultural knowledge.