While this painting, Ralph Wheelock’s Farm by Francis Alexander, was created forty years after Crèvecoeur published his Letters from an American Farmer, it depicts an America that is similar to the one Crèvecoeur presents.

Compare and contrast how Crèvecoeur and Alexander view agrarian life in America. What changed in the forty years between the creation of Crèvecoeur’s and Alexander’s works, and how might that context affect your reading of this painting?

Ralph Wheelock’s Farm (oil on canvas), Alexander, Francis (1800–81)/Private Collection/Bridgeman Images