American Master Drawings and Watercolours by Theodore E. StebbinsReview by: STANHOPE SHELTONJournal of the Royal Society of Arts, Vol. 126, No. 5261 (APRIL 1978), pp. 305-306Published by: Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and CommerceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41372765 .

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APRIL I978 NOTES ON BOOKS

the Palladians was to replace an artisan- mannerist style, and Taste, so lampooned by Hogarth and others, was to triumph. Taste, with a capital 'T', was dictated by Burlington and his Palladians.

The astonishing fact, as the authors show, is that Palladianism survived to the present age. Some of the last examples in this book, including Heron Bay, Barbados, date from 1947. Heron Bay is a variant of the Villa Maser, with which the book under review begins, and it is with that splendid house that it ends. That Palladian influences were carried on across the Atlantic long after they had died in England and in Europe is perhaps significant, for a style that had been approved by the founding fathers of the American Revolution gained a respectability far beyond its natural life in a changing Old World. It is ironic that the same style represented some- thing quite different to Irish Nationalists and to English Radicals.

JAMES STEVENS CURL

American Master Drawings and Watercolours By Theodore E. Stebbinsjr. London , Harper & Row , 1977. £37.50 board ; £ 11.9s paper This book, conceived by The Drawing Society Inc. of America, is a project of some magnitude. It is a survey comprising well over 450 pages, outlining distinctly and soberly the process and progress of American draughtsmanship and covering a period from the sixteenth century to the present day. In the very early days of this American history of drawing, the artists whose work is surveyed are American in subject matter only. Explorer-artists like Jacques le Moynes de Morgues (1533-88) and John White (1577-93) are called the founders of watercolour drawing in America.

The book covers the fields of folk and country artists, professionals, amateurs, naturalist- explorers and of course illustrators. The work of 240 artists is reproduced and many others are discussed. The book is well printed on good paper, in a style and manner that many definitive works on English drawings and watercolours might well emulate. It is a record embracing artists of all sizes and weights over a long period and is perhaps best judged as a work of reference. As such it is an excellent and needed production.

Very few drawings, it seems, survive from the first half of the eighteenth century. The soil of that period was not very fertile for artists. But the artistic impulse found outlets in unlikely places. Benjamin West, for example, was of a Quaker family, which deplored pictorial images. He and John Singleton Copley were both really fine draughtsmen who in the course of time were influenced by and trained in the English tradi-

tion. However, through Gilbert Stuart, John Vanderlyne and Thomas Turnbull (termed the neo-classics), French influence is shown to have overridden that of London masters like Romney, Fuseli, Gainsborough, etc. What surprises one is that artists of this period in America were not apparently impressed by the revolutionary watercolours of Sandby and Cozens. Americans, who at that time leant heavily on British constitutional and philosophical precedents, seemed nevertheless to rely more on the French for drawing and painting inspiration.

The nineteenth century saw a maturing of all branches of the arts - writers, painters, philo- sophers and music makers of the time exchanged news and formed into schools, though no one of any greatness in the field of drawing emerged until Audubon. Allston, Jarvis, Wentworth, the Peales and Wilson were obviously held in high respect in their day as Romantic School draughts- men, but Audubon with his birds and later beasts made art history. He is dealt with in long and loving detail.

And then we come to folk and country drawings, which somehow have become a very American cult. These not unexpectedly are given a pride-of-place chapter in which it is interesting to read that the great majority of American painters before 1850 began in this folk tradition. Then there are the Fraktur and the Shaker artists, many of whose works reproduced in the book seem to have anticipated Paul Klee. The clarity of vision of many of these country and folk artists amounts, as the author says, to a kind of 'magic realism'.

American landscape art is naturally made a subject in itself. It is tied forcefully to the Hudson River School, whose inspiration was entirely from the English watercolour tradition. The works illustrated are consequently not only more familiar to the Anglo-Saxon eye in style and subject, they are easier to compare with European and especially English work. Looked at with generously focused eyes, a somewhat unformed American drawing style can be seen to be slowly developing and shaping itself on the American scene, but with a view most of the time to what was being created in Europe.

With Thomas Eakins, an artist of high pictorial intelligence, one is led into the wide field of American illustrators. This is a subject in itself, one which must be seen against its background of a faster communications environ- ment. But as Americans gathered speed one way, artists in France did in another. They presented, almost suddenly, Impressionism ! The work of Whistler, Cassatt, Sargent, Winslow Homer, Prendergast and others less talented is shown reflecting the impact of the Impressionists. An underlying desire to break from the traditional is clearly to be seen in American painting and drawing at the end of the century. Impressionism led on of course to abstract painting and other forms of visual

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JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF ARTS APRIL I978

expression. World War II and the years following saw American art dominated by Surrealism and Abstract Expression. Unrest in Europe attracted leading European artists to the USA and from this point on one is plunged into an art revolution which many have seen making almost instant art history. Great American names like Eakins, Homer, Whistler and Sargent are replaced by Baziotes, Pollock, Rauschenberg, Francis and Dine. Men like these of the mid-twentieth century drew and painted with a new sense of freedom - a freedom which quickly began to divorce American painting from the direct influence of European innovation. The indepen- dence of expression it brought has produced for American painting a leadership in the world, impossible to have imagined even fifty years ago. It was well earned.

STANHOPE SHELTON

Suffolk Houses By Eric Sandon Woodbridge , Baron Publishing , 1977. £15 When I was a child I had a favourite book called All About Railways ; others in the same series were called All About Ships and so forth. Mr. Sandon's book might well have been called All About Suffolk Houses , for there is no aspect of the subject that he has not studied; geology, planning, construction, social history and aesthetics all have their place. This is a book written by an enthusiast for fellow enthusiasts, based on many years of study both on the site and in the reference library, and in Suffolk there is no lack of first-rate material on which an architectural historian can get to work.

The first part of the book, under the headings 'Commoditie', 'Firmenes' and 'Delight', covers the development of planning, construction and design through the ages. Special sections written by Elizabeth Owles and Stanley W. West describe the Roman and Saxon remains found in Suffolk. The second part, called the 'Exemplar', gives detailed, illustrated des- criptions of particular buildings exemplifying the general points discussed in the earlier chapters. The buildings described range from comparatively humble farm houses and cottages, roofed with thatch or pantiles, to masterpieces of medieval carpentry and Tudor brickwork such as Kentwell and Helmingham, and later still the unique and fantastic Ickworth with its extra- ordinary oval plan. Suffolk certainly had its share of eccentric landowners, and although the Bishop of Derry did not live to see Ickworth completed he must have got tremendous fun out of the planning of his house.

Study of the buildings inevitably leads to a study of the owners and builders, and so we are given glimpses of local gentry and also of the

prosperous merchants of towns like Ipswich or Lavenham. The last named still has many of its timber buildings and little modern develop- ment, whereas the devastation of Ipswich during the last few years has been an architectural disaster.

Suffolk lacks stone suitable for building. What there is has had to be imported and has therefore been confined to special details in the more expensive buildings, but the local crafts- men have always made the best of the materials found near to their sites. There is a splendid tradition of timber framing and roof construc- tion, much of it simple and dignified with closely spaced verticals of full storey height, but on occasion there was superb carved ornament on corner posts, brackets and beams. The plasterers reached an exceptionally high stand- ard. Unfortunately their work is perishable and much must have been lost, but some splendid examples can still be found. The bricklayers flourished from the time of the Tudors through the eighteenth century and the local clays can provide both red and white bricks of fine quality. The latter were particularly popular in the late eighteenth century and the early years of the nineteenth, when a number of handsome classical houses were constructed. Famous architects, such as Soane, Taylor and Wyatt, were called in to design major houses but many more were the work of comparatively unknown local men or were designed by their owners.

Mr. Sandon's book is lavishly illustrated, and there are photographs giving general views and details of the houses described, with plans and line drawings to explain the layout and con- structional methods employed. In addition there are some excellent colour plates and full- page reproductions of a delightful set of drawings by John Western, who clearly shares the author's love of his subject. There is a full Bibliography for those who wish to pursue the subject in greater detail, and a Gazetteer gives the map references for the buildings described.

JOHN BRANDON- JO NES

Design for Environment Social Change and the Need for New Approaches in Planning By John C. Holliday Londony Charles Knight , 1977. £7.50 In his book, Holliday critically examines the values of planners and architects and questions their relevance in looking at some major political problems in our present-day society. In particular, he is much taken up with the divide which he sees between those who plan our physical environment and those dealing with social problems arising one way or another from poor environmental conditions. The writer maintains that to overcome this barrier, basic

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