American Painting of the Nineteenth Century: Realism, Idealism, and the American Experience With a New Preface

337 Pages·2007·10.047 MB·English

by  Novak, Barbara

American Painting of the Nineteenth Century
Oxford University Press wishes to thank
the Henry Luce Foundation for generously
assisting the publication of the trilogy
American Painting of the Nineteenth Century,
Nature and Culture, andVoyages of the Self.
American Painting of the
Nineteenth Century
Realism, Idealism, and the American Experience
(cid:1)
THIRDEDITION
WITHANEWPREFACE
Barbara Novak
2007
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Novak, Barbara.
American painting of the nineteenth century : realism, idealism,
and the American experience : with a new preface / Barbara Novak.
p. cm.
Previously published: Boulder, Colo.: Perseus Books (Icon
Editions), 1979.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13:978-0-19-530949-2 (pbk.)
ISBN-10:0-19-530949-9 (pbk.)
ISBN-13:978-0-19-530942-3
ISBN-10:0-19-530942-1
1. Painting, American—19th century.
I. Title.
ND210.N68 2006
759.13'09034—dc22
2006017219
987654321
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
For My Mother and Father
This page intentionally left blank
Contents
Preface to the New Edition ix
Preface to the Previous Edition xi
Preface to the Original Edition xiii
Acknowledgments xv
CHAPTER1 Prolegomena to the Nineteenth Century:
Copley and the American Tradition 1
CHAPTER2 Washington Allston:
An American Romantic Tradition 25
CHAPTER3 Thomas Cole:
The Dilemma of the Real and the Ideal 41
CHAPTER4 Asher B. Durand:
Hudson River School Solutions 59
CHAPTER5 Luminism:
An Alternative Tradition 71
CHAPTER6 Fitz H. Lane:
A Paradigm of Luminism 89
CHAPTER7 Martin Johnson Heade:
Haystacks and Light 103
vii
viii Contents
CHAPTER8 William Sidney Mount:
Monumental Genre 115
CHAPTER9 George Caleb Bingham:
Missouri Classicism 125
CHAPTER10 Winslow Homer:
Concept and Percept 137
CHAPTER11 Thomas Eakins:
Science and Sight 159
CHAPTER12 Albert Pinkham Ryder:
Even with a Thought 175
CHAPTER13 William Harnett:
Every Object Rightly Seen 185
CHAPTER14 The Painterly Mode in America 197
CHAPTER15 Epilogue:
The Twentieth Century 217
Notes 239
Brief Biographies of Eighteenth- and
Nineteenth-Century Artists 271
Bibliography 285
Illustration Credits 295
Index 305
Preface to the New Edition
I am pleased that ideas and issues defined in the original edition of American
Painting of the Nineteenth Century have proved durable through the vicissi-
tudes of the vigorous scholarship and expanded modes of inquiry of the past
thirty-eight years. Defining—or attempting to define—the art produced by
any particular culture is an ongoing process and ours is no exception.
In his public lectures and essays, Emerson emphasized the optimism of
the early nineteenth century. He raises, in retrospect, the question of how a
culture subscribes to and builds its national ideal and the degree to which
quotas of reality are incorporated and/or suppressed. In an extraordinary
consonance, the optimistic ideal dominated the culture of which the artists
were a part. They, in turn, reflected and shaped its optimistic profile. Leslie
Fiedler has written of the American belief that “what we dream rather
than what we are is our essential truth.” The question may be phrased:
When does a dream become reality and take on the transformative power
of American optimism? For the most part, the artists, like most of their
nineteenth-century viewers, believed in an inherent American goodness.
Their paintings literally reached toward the light. The sun became a spiri-
tual emanation.
Valuable research has enlarged our understanding of the context of our
earlier art in terms of political and social realities, often harsh, that were
subsumed in the dynamic of the optimistic “engine.” That optimism was
obviously purchased at a high price, and much recent scholarship, using the
many modes of interpretation now available, has measured its actual cost.
ix