While reading the background on Eric Hudson, I was immediately struck by a quote written by art critic Royal Cortissoz following Hudson’s death. It read, “When he died last year this staunch New Englander, acquainted with the old masters but saturated by a sturdy Americanism, left behind some of the most admirable pictures of the sea that our art has produced” (9). It was not so much the praise that he received that caught my attention, but rather the term “sturdy Americanism.” In saying that Hudson was the embodiment of Americanism, Cortissoz seems to be implying that a “real American” is one that models Hudson as well as the lobstermen and landscapes that he photographed. This is fascinating to me, as America has for decades been synonymous with development and industrialization, yet Cortissoz reverses this script and says that true Americanism is a lifestyle rooted in nature, or, as Earle Shuttleworth puts it, “rugged beauty” (12). If this is the case, then would Cortissoz look at people who view landscape as wealth as true Americans? As D.W. Meinig describes in The Beholding Eye, some people believe that “‘development’ is normally thought of as ‘improvement’” (41). The concept of constraining the ideals of Americanism to one definition is obviously incredibly complex and far-fetched, but landscape most definitely plays a crucial part in whatever that definition may be, especially when regarding “development.” Is development synonymous with improvement, or is natural beauty meant to be looked at as a sacred and wholly American? Personally, I would tend to side with Hudson, as it seems like Americans are constantly idealizing the wilderness and the people who inhabit it, but it can easily be argued that the progressive taming of nature is what has inherently defined our society.