American Progress by John Gast (1872)
The above painting by John Gast is a famous depiction of 'Columbia' as the female personification of America, bringing enlightenment and progress from the already enlightened east to the still darkened west. Enlightenment is represented by the book she holds in her right hand, and progress and civilisation by the telegraph wire she holds in her left. Painted in 1872, the Columbia is portrayed as a mythological figure wearing the graceful toga of ancient Greek statues, calling upon the courage and pioneering spirit of those seeking freedom and new lands to settle in the ever-expanding frontier westward, as Martha A. Sandweiss, a historian on the American frontier and Westward expansion, explains in her essay. This great migratory movement towards the west was justified as an example of 'manifest destiny', which was not a fixed policy but rather a general notion under which white Protestant settlers were to have been given a divinely ordained 'mission' to migrate towards the unsettled west in order to bring civilisation and order as part of divine pattern that shaped their destiny on the New Continent.
The Lady Columbia, a single star shining on her forehead, is seen lighting the way Westward, floating over farmers and settlers, wagon and stagecoach, which are symbols of the pioneering spirit of the white Protestant immigrants; she also floats over steam trains and telegraph poles which denote modern technology, whilst the bisons and natives are fated to obscurity and extinction in the forefront. The west was thus to be 'conquered' by the chosen under 'manifest destiny'. Following Barthes' analysis in The Rhetoric of the Image, the Lady Columbia, connoted as a mythological figure, and the rhetoric she is associated with, trigger a process of symbolic anchoring that fuses this association till a denoted meaning arising from that association is immediately conjured: The Lady Columbia is, indeed, an allegorical representation of of American progress and enlightenment under 'manifest destiny'!
It is worthy of note that the name 'Columbia' was first used in a weekly publication 'of the debates of the British Parliament in Edward Cave's The Gentleman's Magazine [in 1738]. Publication of Parliamentary debates was technically illegal, so the debates were issued under the thin disguise of Reports of the Debates of the Senate of Lilliput, and fictitious names were used for most individuals and placenames found in the record. Most of these were transparent anagrams or similar distortions of the real names; some few were taken directly from Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels; and a few others were classical or neoclassical in style' (source 1). Although the 'Columbia' has been portrayed as early as 1796, John Gast's painting remains the most iconic representation of the Lady Columbia in an early modern rendition.
The Lady Columbia, a single star shining on her forehead, is seen lighting the way Westward, floating over farmers and settlers, wagon and stagecoach, which are symbols of the pioneering spirit of the white Protestant immigrants; she also floats over steam trains and telegraph poles which denote modern technology, whilst the bisons and natives are fated to obscurity and extinction in the forefront. The west was thus to be 'conquered' by the chosen under 'manifest destiny'. Following Barthes' analysis in The Rhetoric of the Image, the Lady Columbia, connoted as a mythological figure, and the rhetoric she is associated with, trigger a process of symbolic anchoring that fuses this association till a denoted meaning arising from that association is immediately conjured: The Lady Columbia is, indeed, an allegorical representation of of American progress and enlightenment under 'manifest destiny'!
It is worthy of note that the name 'Columbia' was first used in a weekly publication 'of the debates of the British Parliament in Edward Cave's The Gentleman's Magazine [in 1738]. Publication of Parliamentary debates was technically illegal, so the debates were issued under the thin disguise of Reports of the Debates of the Senate of Lilliput, and fictitious names were used for most individuals and placenames found in the record. Most of these were transparent anagrams or similar distortions of the real names; some few were taken directly from Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels; and a few others were classical or neoclassical in style' (source 1). Although the 'Columbia' has been portrayed as early as 1796, John Gast's painting remains the most iconic representation of the Lady Columbia in an early modern rendition.