The Desert: Further Studies in Natural Appearances
(Since its first appearance in 1901, John C. Van Dyke's Th...)
Since its first appearance in 1901, John C. Van Dyke's The Desert has been considered one of the classics of American nature writing. Before its publication, Americans thought of deserts as scorpion-infested wastelands - with names like Devil's Domain and the Lands That God Forgot. All this changed as The Desert drew attention to the extraordinary beauty that existed in the American West: rolling sand dunes, golden vistas, vibrant sunsets, and remarkable plant and animal life. Van Dyke's book captured the nation's imagination at a time when attitudes about the land were changing. It provided a vocabulary that continues to be used as an appreciation of deserts increases and ever greater pressures lead to new calls to protect these fragile environments.
John Charles Van Dyke was an American art historian, educator, and librarian. He was the first professor of the history of art at Rutgers College (now Rutgers University).
Background
John Charles Van Dyke was born on April 21, 1856, in New Brunswick, New Jersey, United States. He was a son of John van Dyke (1807-1878) and Mary Dix Strong. He had a brother, Theodore Strong Van Dyke. He was a descendant of Jan Thomasse van Dyke, who emigrated from the Netherlands to New Amsterdam in 1652. His father was a congressman and supreme court justice of New Jersey, and his mother, Mary Dix Strong, was the daughter of Rutgers mathematician Theodore Strong (1790-1869). His cousin was Henry Van Dyke (1852-1933), the minister, diplomat, and professor at Princeton University.
Education
In 1868 John Charles Van Dyke's family moved to Minnesota, United States. He attended Columbia Law School.
In 1877 John Charles Van Dyke was admitted to the bar in 1877. He never practiced law, however, and settled in his native New Brunswick, New Jersey. In 1878 he moved back to New Brunswick, first serving as assistant librarian of the Gardner A. Sage Library, New Brunswick Theological Seminary, and in 1886 as a director of the library. At the library, Van Dyke began research art personally and writing criticism. He was a frequent contributor to the Century Magazine beginning in 1884. He was appointed lecturer of modern art at Rutgers College in 1889, and from 1891 to 1929 the first professor of the history of art there.
When he was appointed the library’s director in 1886, he had already published his first book on art appreciation. How to Judge a Picture: Familiar Talks in the Gallery with Uncritical Lovers of Art, and a book on literature appreciation, Books and How to Use Them: Some Hints to Readers and Students.
A few years after his directorship began, he became the first art history professor at Rutgers College (now Rutgers University). As an art scholar with a growing critical reputation, Van Dyke traveled extensively and became acquainted with international art museums, influential art patrons, and such eminent figures as Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and James Abbott McNeill Whistler. He also became Andrew Carnegie’s art adviser, putting him among the cultural elite.
By the publishing of Van Dyke’s classic, The Desert, the American conception of the desert had begun to change from the dangerous and intractable wilderness of the western pioneers to the romantic, mysterious and wondrous region of the post-industrial age. Despite The Desert’s acclaim, Van Dyke’s immense standing as an art critic and scholar often occluded its greatness. His early books on art include Principles of Art, Art for Art’s Sake: Seven University Lectures on the Technical Beauties of Painting, and A Text-Book of the History of Painting. He published Studies in Pictures: An Introduction to the Famous Galleries, meant to help students appreciate and critique art.
In What Is Art?: Studies in the Technique and Criticism of Painting, Van Dyke attempts to confront misconceptions about art's definition. He fears that since art is primarily perceived through museums and galleries, viewers incorrectly build their aesthetic understanding upon history and commercialism. Van Dyke also wrote ten editions of an art series published by Scribners, titled New Guides to Old Masters, authoring critical notes on various international art institutions, including the Rijksmuseum, the Hague Historical Museum, the Frans Hals Museum, the Kaiser Friedrich Museum, the Royal Gallery in Dresden, the National Gallery in London, the Prado, the Old Pinakothek in Munich, the Stadel Institute, the Louvre, the Imperial Gallery in Vienna and the Budapest Museum.
Van Dyke also wrote several often poetic volumes that expounded on natural beauty. In Opal Sea, he fancifully explores the glory and mystery of the sea. Van Dyke’s preference for natural resurfaces in Mountain: Renewed Studies in Impressions and Appearances, which reveals his perceptions mountain ranges, including the Rockies, the Alps, the Apennines, and the Carpathians. He also explores the outdoor life of the great Northwest in Open Spaces and New Jersey’s Raritan River Valley in The Meadows: Familiar Studies of the Commonplace. His international travel books include New New York, In Java, and the Neighboring Islands of the Dutch East Indies and In the West Indies, his last book, published the year he died. His autobiography, which Wild edited, appeared in 1993. Van Dyke loved beauty in its many forms. The Desert made him the founder of the desert writing movement.
Achievements
John Charles Van Dyke was acclaimed as one of the first and foremost authors to appreciate the American southwest and to shape its landscape literature. His The Desert: Further Studies in Natural Appearances was lauded for its powerfully romantic, lush descriptions of glorious sunsets, wild dust storms, and ancient cities. In 1889 he received a Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Rutgers University.
Finding many differences in style in the eight hundred or more pictures officially ascribed to Rembrandt, John Charles Van Dyke brought these pictures into stylistic groups most of which seemed to correspond to the score of known pupils and imitators of Rembrandt, thus leaving a residuum of only fifty pictures for the master himself.
This invoked great and unwelcome publicity, and virtually he was scoffed out of court. He stood by his guns, however, and in 1927, in The Rembrandt Drawings and Etchings, tried to reduce the list to about a tenth of its traditional proportions. No critic has accepted these puristic views, but many believe that the books brought about a useful ventilation of the mephitic atmosphere of commercial expertise.
Membership
John Charles Van Dyke was a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters.
Personality
Physical Characteristics:
John Charles Van Dyke was a man of magnificent stature, easily carried, with large gray-blue eyes that belied the habitual fixity of his fine olive mask. He wore his clothes well, said the right word and never too much, and exhibited a native dignity and kindliness. He had the gift of companionship, a perfect rectitude, an elevation of character entirely without pretentiousness. In any group of gentlemen, he was a moral and physical ornament.
Connections
John Charles Van Dyke was not married but fathered a daughter, Clare Van Dyke Parr.
