Religion in American Painting: An Interview with Dr. Peter Mooz.

Art Historian Peter Mooz discusses his new book “Religion in American Painting.” Although artists after the Renaissance gravitated to more secular themes, Dr. Mooz explains that American painters have been painting religion from the time of the first documented American painting in 1663 to today. Dr. Mooz explores the ways 19th-century artists like Thomas Cole, who founded the Hudson River School of painting, pursued religious themes of transcendentalism, and explains the religious symbols in the abstract-expressionist work of Mark Rothko.