By mid-century, painters were flocking to the area, and their works often depicted literal views of the mountains and the unique granite formations within the region. To view how literal these depictions were, we have provided a number of Photo Comparisons to actual scenes in the White Mountains.

Many American artists, including Champney, spent some time in Europe. In a few cases, like George Loring Brown, an artist would spend most of his life in foreign countries, particularly in Europe. There they depicted life in the city or the suburbs, rather than nature in its raw and undeveloped state, avoiding the earlier Romantic and wild landscapes of the Hudson River School artists. Back in New Hampshire, however, artists were working during a period of nationalist fervor. Inspired by the doctrine of Manifest Destiny, the American public was hungry for national emblems and patriotic expressions. Using traditional European principles of the picturesque and beautiful, artists of the White Mountains created paintings filled with symbols of an optimistic and expanding nation: the orderly village with a church spire gleaming, farmers gathering produce, boys fishing. They viewed nature as divine. Unlike their European contemporaries, they did not include crosses or overt symbols in their landscapes; nature itself provided a religious experience. The community of artists in the North Conway area attracted tourists. Soon, during the 1840s, a number of railroads began to approach the White Mountains. During the fifties, the region practically became Boston's backyard. Grand hotels and railroads grew simultaneously and synergistically. The railroad made it possible to ascend Mt. Washington without climbing, via a cog railroad celebrated as a grand technological achievement. These developments began to overshadow the White Mountain artists' picturesque agrarian paradise, where contemplation had been more important than action. The next decade brought more tourists and artists. During the early 1860s, the works of those artists gave little hint of the Civil War taking place to the south.