SOURCE: Robinson, David. “The Career and Reputation of Christopher Pearse Cranch: An Essay in Biography and Bibliography.” Studies in the American Renaissance (1978): 453-72.

In the following essay, Robinson surveys critical and biographical literature depicting Cranch as a Transcendentalist, poet, and painter.

Christopher Pearse Cranch assured himself at least a small place in American literary history through his caricatures of Emerson's Nature, which suggested that the Transcendentalists shared a certain sense of humor about their common enterprise, and even about their leader Emerson. But just as his drawings suggest a different mood from the high moral seriousness usually associated with Transcendental philosophy, Cranch's entire career as a minister, poet, and artist encompasses a variety of interests and pursuits which, taken together, deepen our appreciation both of his own talents, and of the movement which he consistently and enthusiastically championed, even at some cost to himself. Henry James' observation that...