Table of Contents

Introduction 1. THE COLONIAL ERA Art in an age of puritanism The Well-Dressed Puritan Icons and the Metaphor of Painting Cotton Mather on Art Thomas Smith's Reflection on Death Dissenting opinions: alternatives to puritan practice Quaker "Rules" on Tombstones John Valentine Haidt's Theory of Painting Art and the Spanish Conquest Advertisements Peter Pelham Scrapes a Mezzotint Runaway "Limners" John Durand Work forWomen Public Spectacle Early responses to portraits Pioneering artists John Smibert Documents BenjaminWest onWilliamWilliams Taste and theory Of the Knowledge of Painting The Use and Advantages of the Fine Arts Poems on portraits Training and the lure of europe John Singleton Copley: Ambition and Practicality CharlesWillson Peale in London and Philadelphia 2. REVOLUTION AND EARLY REPUBLIC Defining art John Adams on the Arts Public Art for the New Republic: Charles Willson Peale's Triumphal Arch The Place of the Arts in American Society An Early Scheme for a Museum of Sculpture Sculptors for the Capitol Wertmuller's Danae and "Nudities" "Native" Subjects vs. Continental Taste A Plan for Government Patronage of History Painting Citizens: documents on portrait painting Bushrod Washington Commissions a Portrait GeorgeWashington: The Image Industry Ralph Earl and Reuben Moulthrop: Connecticut Itinerant Painters Joshua Johnson Advertises Gilbert Stuart: Eyewitness Accounts President Monroe Discusses American Artists Charles Willson Peale's Advice to Rembrandt Peale Chester Harding: Self-Made Artist Artistic identity, artistic choices Benjamin West: A NewWorld Genius Conquers the Old Benjamin West, Patriarch of American Painting John Trumbull Paints Revolutionary History Washington Allston's Southern Roots Washington Allston and the Miraculous Sublime Washington Allston in Boston Washington Allston's "Secret Technique" Washington Allston's Idealism John Vanderlyn's Bid for Fame John Vanderlyn Paints an American Epic John Vanderlyn's Panorama Samuel Morse's The House of Representatives Rembrandt Peale's The Court of Death The establishment of artistic categories Landscape Charles Willson Peale's Moving Pictures Timothy Dwight Views Greenfield Hill The American Gothic Landscapes of Charles Brockden Brown The Earliest Guide to Sketching Landscape Still Life: Raphaelle Peale Genre: John Lewis Krimmel Early institutions Philadelphia Charles Willson Peale's Museum The Columbianum Quaker City Arts Organizations, c. 1810 New York: The American Academy of the Fine Arts Boston: John Browere's Gallery 3. ANTEBELLUM AMERICA: VALUES AND INSTITUTIONS Art in a democratic nation The Importance of the Genres Art in a Mercantile Culture Charles Fraser Considers Art, Society, and the Future William Dunlap Champions the Arts Ralph Waldo Emerson's Living Art The Anti--"American School" Joel HeadleyWaves the Flag of American Art On Mechanics and the Useful Arts Building institutions The National Academy of Design The Founding The Early Years Growing Polarization The American Art-Union Collectors and patrons Thomas Cole and His Patrons Thomas Cole Laments the Taste of the Times William Sidney Mount Chooses a Subject Instructions for Collectors James Fenimore Cooper Commissions a Statue Art and Private Property 4. ANTEBELLUM AMERICA: LANDSCAPE, LIFE, AND SPECTACLE The american landscape Literary Landscapes James Fenimore Cooper's Forest Primeval Educating the Gaze: Benjamin Silliman on Monte Video The Glory of an American Autumn Romantic Nature For the Birds: John James Audubon and American Nature Thomas Cole and the American Landscape The Poetry of Landscape: Thomas Cole in Verse Thomas Cole and the Course of Empire American Sites: Tourist Literature Tourists in the Landscape The Railroad in the Landscape Transcendental Nature Emerson's Transcendent Natural World Nature, Wild and Tame Asher B. Durand Formulates the American Landscape The Hudson River School in Public Facing Nature: Jasper Cropsey and Sanford Gifford The National Landscape in Repose: John Frederick Kensett Fitz Henry Lane, Marine Painter Extraordinary American life Ralph Waldo Emerson on Native and National Art William Sidney Mount and the Celebration of National Character William Sidney Mount's Thoughts on Art, Life, and Travel Abroad The Significance of Bumps on the Skull Walt Whitman on American Painting David Gilmour Blythe on Modern Times Lilly Martin Spencer: Making It in New York Artists of color and the representation of race The Public Display of Slavery William Sidney Mount's Ambivalence on Race Frederick Douglass on African American Portraiture The Verses of Dave the Potter J.P. Ball's Panorama of Slavery An Imaginary Picture Gallery Eastman Johnson's Negro Life at the South Artists: advice and careers Rufus Porter's Recipe for Mural Painting Thomas Seir Cummings on Miniature Painting A Folk Artist Overcomes a Disability Thomas Sully's Hints to Young Painters 5. ANTEBELLUM AMERICA: PUBLIC ART AND POPULAR ART The U.S. government as patron: decoration of the capitol Horatio Greenough's George Washington Lobbying for Capitol Commissions The Liberty Cap as a Symbol of Slavery Artists Weigh In on Art in the Capitol Art in public Hiram Powers's The Greek Slave The Public Display of the Nude George Templeton Strong Visits the National Academy Too Many Portraits? Henry James Remembers a New York Childhood Popular art, edification, and entertainment Responses to the Daguerreotype Taste and Print Culture Daniel Huntington's Mercy's Dream Gift Books and Sentimental Culture High and Low: Taste in Painting Currier & Ives: Art Hand in Hand with Business OliverWendell Holmes on Stereographs The American Museum 6. ANTEBELLUM AMERICA: EXPANDING HORIZONS International travel and exchange Dusseldorf and the Dusseldorf Gallery The Lure of Italy Manifest destiny Manufacturing history American History, Pro and Con The American Spirit of Emanuel Leutze Emanuel Leutze's Clash of Civilizations Washington Crosses the Delaware: Birth of an Icon Art on and of the frontier The Noble Savage/Vanishing Race George Catlin Portrays the Native Americans Prince Max and Karl Bodmer among the Mandan American Indians as Spectacle American Indians as Pictorial Material Western Life George Caleb Bingham:Western Life andWestern Politics Critics on Bingham, East andWest Life on the Mississippi in John Banvard's Panorama William Jewett's Letters from California Frederic church's sublime landscapes Heart of the Andes After Icebergs with a Painter 7. THE 1860s Taking stock The Photograph and the Face A Sunny View of American Progress in Art James Jackson Jarves's The Art-Idea Henry T. Tuckerman's Book of the Artists Sculpture in Mid-century America Landscape at a crossroads: nature seen through telescope and microscope The American Pre-Raphaelites Albert Bierstadt's Great Picture Variations on a Scene: John Frederick Kensett, Albert Bierstadt, and Thomas Hill Too Many Landscapes Civil war The War and the Artist A Southern View of the Arts duringWar Photographs of Antietam Sanitary Fairs History Painting and theWar Winslow Homer's Prisoners from the Front Race Sojourner Truth Inspires a Sculptor John Quincy AdamsWard's Freedman AnneWhitney's Africa Postwar Painting and Race Art after conflict Memorializing theWar The National Academy of Design: Praise and Condemnation Settling In: Artists in Their Studios The Conditions of Art in America Dissatisfaction with Artists What Does Art Teach Us? Is Religious Art Still Relevant? 8. THE GILDED AGE: LIFE AND LANDSCAPE AT HOME Nationalism and home subjects Eugene Benson's French Gospel for Truly American Art Home Subjects and Patriotic Painting Eastman Johnson's Formula for Success Art in the South Modes of realism Winslow Homer, All-American Damnable Ugly: Henry James on Homer Winslow Homer's Working Methods Winslow Homer's Sea Change Winslow Homer's Savage Nature and Primal Scenes Thomas Eakins in Europe Thomas Eakins's The Gross Clinic Mariana Griswold Van Rensselaer Meets Thomas Eakins Eadweard Muybridge's Serial Photographs Race and representation Robert Duncanson and "Passing" Edward Bannister and George Bickles: Discrimination and Acceptance Winslow Homer: Painting Race Henry Ossawa Tanner Landscapes: east and west The Old Northeast Armchair Tourism and Picturesque America Poetry in Paint: Art in Boston George Inness and the Spiritual in Art George Inness and the Landscape of the Mind The New West William Henry Jackson: Photographing theWest Thomas Moran and theWestern Sublime Frederic Remington'sWildWest Cultural Intersections: Native Art and theWhite Imperial Gaze 9. THE GILDED AGE: ART WORLDS AND ART MARKETS Art on the market French Art in New York Buy American Art as Commodity Artists Broker TheirWork American Artists: Starving or Selling Out ArtWorld Diaries: Jervis McEntee and J. Carroll Beckwith Studio life and art society New Men andWomen in New York Artists and Models William Merritt Chase's Super-Studio Elizabeth Bisland Roving the Studios The Tile Club: Play asWork Artists in Their Summer Havens Varnishing Day 10. THE GILDED AGE: EDUCATION, INSTITUTIONS, AND EXHIBITIONS Education A Cautionary Essay on Art Instruction Boston William Morris Hunt's Talks on Art The Massachusetts Drawing Act of 1870 Chicago Sculpture at the Art Institute of Chicago New York Labor and Art on the Lower East Side LemuelWilmarth on the Life Class Breaking Away: The Art Students League Philadelphia The School of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts The Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art San Francisco A Deaf Artist in San Francisco Art institutions Young Turks: The Formation of the Society of American Artists The Need for American Museums George Inness on Art Organizations The philadelphia centennial and the colonial revival E. L. Henry Dreams of the Past The Centennial Exhibition The Colonial Revival Landscape 11. COSMOPOLITAN DIALOGUES Internationalism The Tariff Controversy Internationalist Backlash The Return from Europe Friedrich Pecht: A German Critic on American Art Americans Abroad Art education Germany The Munich School France Will Low Remembers Barbizon J. AldenWeirWrites Home about Jean-Leon Gerome Elizabeth Boott Studies with Thomas Couture Kenyon Cox Struggles in Paris May Alcott Nieriker's Tips for Study in Paris Student Life at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts A Midwesterner in the City of Light The nude Kenyon Cox's Lonely Campaign for the Nude Anthony Comstock vs. Knoedler & Co. Augustus Saint-Gaudens Resigns Arch-expatriates James McNeillWhistler, Expatriate Extraordinaire Art on Trial: James McNeillWhistler vs. John Ruskin James McNeillWhistler's Platform James McNeillWhistler and the Critics John Singer Sargent, Man of theWorld New women in art Women Sculptors in the Eternal City A Feminist Looks at Harriet Hosmer Women Artists,Woman's Sphere Mary Cassatt, ModernWoman Cecilia Beaux: Becoming the GreatestWoman Painter ShouldWomen Artists Marry? The ArtWorkers' Club forWomen Advice forWomen Photographers 12. NEW MEDIA, NEW TASTEMAKERS, NEW MASSES Critical voices Eugene Benson Earl Shinn on Criticism Mariana Griswold Van Rensselaer Assesses the Progress of American Art Sylvester Koehler Reflects on a Decade of American Art William Howe Downes and Frank Torrey Robinson's "Critical Conversations" The little media Watercolor The American Taste forWatercolor A Child's View of theWatercolor Show Pastel The Society of American Painters in Pastel JamesWells Champney on Pastels Etching The "First" American Etching Two Views on Etching Women Etchers: Mary Nimmo Moran Otto Bacher onWhistler in Venice Wood Engraving Popular art and its critique The Nation vs. Prang & Co. John Rogers, the People's Sculptor The Trouble with Monuments William Harnett's After the Hunt and The Old Violin The Gap between Professionals and the Public John George Brown, the Public's Favorite In the magazines: the new illustrators In Defense of Illustration Howard Pyle's Credo Charles Dana Gibson, All-American Illustrator Women in Illustration amateur or artist? debates on photography Amateurs Pictorialism 13. BEAUTY, VISION, AND MODERNITY The aesthetic movement OscarWilde's American Tour Advice to Decorators Poking Fun at Aestheticism Aesthetic and IndustriousWomen Japonisme John La Farge's Revolution in Stained Glass Impressionism: critical reception American Artists Confront Impressionism French Impressionism Comes to America Impressionism: american practices The Americanization of Impressionism William Merritt Chase, Seeing Machine Childe Hassam on Painting Street Scenes Impressionism: eclectic practices Genealogies of Tonalism Thomas Wilmer Dewing, Choice Spirit Praise for John Twachtman Refinement in Boston: Edmund Tarbell The Sensuous Color of John La Farge Art colonies Summer Colonies Vacationing with Art in Shinnecock Hills Living the Life of Art in Cornish Beyond the threshold: visionaries and dreamers William Rimmer: Angels and Demons Elihu Vedder, Mystical Joker Albert Pinkham Ryder: The Myth of the Romantic Primitive 14. IMPERIAL AMERICA The world's columbian exposition Experiencing the Fair Popular Art at the Fair Mural painting Edwin Howland Blashfield Defines Mural Painting Kenyon Cox Negotiates a Commission Public sculpture The Farragut Monument The National Sculpture Society Karl Bitter on Sculpture for the City A Victory Monument over Fifth Avenue Retrospectives and prospects California vs. the East Coast The Clarke Sale Cements the Value of American Art American Art Poised for a New Century Surveying the Century: Samuel Isham and Charles Caffin Acknowledgments List of Illustrations Index

About the Author

Sarah Burns is Ruth N. Halls Professor of Fine Arts at Indiana University. She is the author of Painting the Dark Side: Art and the Gothic Imagination in Nineteenth-Century America (UC Press), Inventing the Modern Artist: Art and Culture in Gilded Age America, and Pastoral Inventions: Rural Life in Nineteenth-Century American Art and Culture. John Davis is Alice Pratt Brown Professor of Art at Smith College. He is the author of The Landscape of Belief: Encountering the Holy Land in Nineteenth-Century American Art and Culture.