Natural Bridge 

Here we see David Johnson's striking landscape titled Natural Bridge. Although undated, it is an oil on canvas that captures the monumental rock formation in Virginia that was once surveyed by Thomas Jefferson. Johnson situates us at the base of the bridge, positioning viewers in the silent drama of nature, yet this landscape tradition elides its violent history. These majestic scenes romanticize nature while often obscuring the displacement and erasure of Indigenous peoples from their ancestral lands. The figures depicted here at the base of the bridge are diminutive, perhaps tourists or settlers, subtly reinforcing a narrative of dominion over the land. Johnson was part of the Hudson River School, known for its transcendentalist leanings, emphasizing the sublime and spiritual qualities of the American landscape, yet this idealism carries the weight of colonial expansion and its legacies.