Short essay: contextual analysis
Contextual analysis: The Oxbow
- Unit 4
- 5 points
- About 15 minutes
You describe a required work (image provided) and its context, such as its setting, function or patron, then explain how that context shaped the artist’s choices or the work’s meaning. Some years you also explain how scholars have interpreted it. On the exam: Section II, question 4 of 6: a short essay on a work from the image set (image provided), with a suggested 15 minutes.
The question and its sources
Short essay: contextual analysis. Suggested time: 15 minutes. Answer each part in complete sentences. The work described is The Oxbow (View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm), painted by Thomas Cole in 1836, oil on canvas.
The work, described in words
A large painting in a wide, horizontal format, about 130 × 193 cm (about 4 feet 3 inches × 6 feet 4 inches).
The viewer looks out from a high mountaintop over a broad river valley.
On the left, dark storm clouds and rain sweep over a wild, forested hilltop. A broken, storm-damaged tree juts out in the foreground.
On the right, the sky is clearing. The sunlit valley below is laid out in neat fields, farms and small clumps of trees, with thin columns of smoke rising on the distant hills.
The river makes a tight loop through the valley, the 'oxbow' of the title.
Near the bottom center, a tiny figure of the artist sits at an easel among the rocks and turns to look back toward the viewer.
A diagonal line where the dark wilderness on the left meets the bright valley on the right divides the composition into two halves.
Source: Description written for this practice question. On the exam you would see color images of the work instead.
Suggested time: 15 minutes
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Part (a)
1 pointDescribe one visual characteristic of the work.
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Part (b)
1 pointDescribe one way the American landscape or American society was changing in the 1830s, when the painting was made.
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Part (c)
1 pointUsing specific visual and/or contextual evidence, explain one way the changes in the American landscape influenced Cole's choices in the painting.
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Part (d)
1 pointUsing specific visual and/or contextual evidence, explain ANOTHER way the context in which the painting was made influenced Cole's choices.
0 / 2,500 characters
Part (e)
1 pointUsing specific visual or contextual evidence, explain one way the painting has been interpreted.
0 / 2,500 characters
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