American Painting of the Nineteenth Century, Realism, Idealism, and the AmericanExperience by Barbara NovakReview by: Lloyd GoodrichThe Art Bulletin, Vol. 56, No. 1 (Mar., 1974), pp. 141-143Published by: College Art AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3049213 .

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BOOK REVIEWS I41

provocative, but it is not possible to draw all the conclusions from them one would desire. His differentiation of Boston and Massa- chusetts country furniture is convincing, however, because the Boston pieces have a more sophisticated appearance as a result of their subtler design.

The new American style of the end of the seventeenth century - called the William and Mary style - was introduced at the time the records show the word "cabinetmaker" coming into more general use. Earlier, those making furniture were "joiners" and

they did house carpentry as well. Now specialization was required since the new style involved greater delicacy, walnut replacing oak, and veneers and intricately turned parts replacing the heavier elements of earlier pieces. In tracing the use of the word "cabinetmaker," Mr. Forman found it was not applied to the older joiners but reserved for the men who earned the designation because of their skills. In the early eighteenth century, joiners continued to be active in rural areas and the contrast between the rural and urban was more marked. Mr. Forman's paper does a splendid job of relating documents to surviving pieces in order to interpret work of a period that needs more study.

Charles Hummel reported on "The Dominys of East Hampton, Long Island, and their Furniture" in a succinct account of several

generations. His book, With Hammer in Hand (Charlottesville, Va., 1968), covers the same ground more fully in some ways, but for the conference the focus was changed from the family to its patrons in an effort to discover whether their social and economic back- grounds were distinctive. The Dominys were clearly country craftsmen and their account books give us a picture of their activity which was divided between farming, clocks and furniture-making. They were not full-time craftsmen if they produced only what was noted in their account books; Mr. Hummel's statistics on their out- put shows it was low. Nonetheless, they were able and their work consists of high-level retardataire design. Since most comparable pieces are not datable, it is particularly instructive to see that simple work datable to I750 because of its ornament appeared in the records as products of the I790's. The Dominys supplied clocks and furniture to their neighbors regardless of their status so that we find the names of the most affluent figures from the eastern end of Long Island in their account books. The Dominys made Queen Anne furniture into the early nineteenth century and their chairs of the late eighteenth century were typical country pieces that at first glance would seem much earlier. The Dominy account books preserved at Winterthur have been used for fine interpreta- tions by Mr. Hummel and prove that the earliest historians were partially correct in assuming that rural craftsmen produced fine, simple work in designs that were out of fashion but had become traditional.

While the Dominys made the simple country furniture that was most economically constructed in local woods without carving, in New Hampshire the Dunlaps were more ambitious. Charles S. Parsons, who is working on a more extensive study and played a significant role in the Dunlap exhibition at the Currier Gallery in Manchester, New Hampshire, described the Dunlaps' activity. Once more account books have survived to show the broader aspects of their shop. They made wooden utensils and interior paneling as well as furniture, and worked out the distinctive scheme of decoration used on both. The most important Dunlap furniture is decorated with flowering ogee moldings and S-scroll skirts that must have been inspired by elaborate Georgian design. Seen close-up the motifs are unlike typical Georgian decoration but from a distance they look convincing. Case pieces are occasion- ally crowned with lattice-work cornices in the Chinese Chippen- dale spirit. Mr. Parsons outlines the context in which the Dunlaps worked, that of rural communities at a distance from the urban centers, Boston and Portsmouth. The first Dunlap had emigrated from Ireland in 1741 and the succeeding generations thrived in a relatively confined area of New Hampshire. Their work seems to have filled a need for opulent decorated furniture among people not concerned with keeping up with the latest fashions.

Nancy Goyne Evans turned her attention to "Unsophisticated Furniture Made and Used in Philadelphia and Environs, 1750- i8oo." She studied records and descriptions extensively as well as

compiling a group of examples that originated in the Philadelphia area. It is interesting to see that, using the mention of imported woods as an indication of fashionable design, Mrs. Evans has found evidence of stylish furniture in rural homes along with the more usual country pieces, and, conversely, of plain pieces made and used right in the center of Philadelphia. David Evans and William Savery, both famous for labeled stylish mahogany furni- ture, are mentioned as the makers of simple utilitarian pieces. Occasionally, the purchaser of the simple pieces was an affluent individual who owned the most elaborate furniture too. In quoting numerous sources, Mrs. Evans makes a convincing case for the basic theory that there was an extensive range of furniture designed in Philadelphia and that by emphasizing the more finely executed examples, historians miss significant facets of furniture design.

More anxious to work with ideas than statistics, Wendell D. Garrett investigated "The Matter of Consumers' Taste," but took a very novel approach. Most interested in the changing status of the furniture maker through the period between 1750 and 1850, he showed how the individual craftsman lost ground as mass- production was introduced, and he looked into the place of the artisan on the American scene. Pointing out the most recent studies of craftsmen, he goes a long way in raising questions of what influenced style and determined quality in furniture. Mr. Garrett explains what has to be left unanswered for now, and is helpful in suggesting directions for further research. Too little is known about the changes in taste that took place during the course of the eighteenth century.

With an art-historical approach, Peter Mooz's paper, "A Commentary on Style in Country Art," is a careful effort to treat furniture designs in the same way as paintings. The influence of a key work of art on a particular school is demonstrated, and it seems to work as well as it might with fifteenth-century Italian Madonnas. Employing examples of both architecture and furni- ture, designs are traced from complex, elaborate and urbane rep- resentations to simple, country efforts. Mr. Mooz offers ground- work for the extensive examination of both rural and urban, or simple and stylish design.

A completely different way of evaluating design is found in the paper by Bruce R. Buckley, a folklorist who was asked to react to what he saw and heard. Buckley did not have the opportunity to study or work out a point of view, but he applied his training and his own personal outlook to what he heard. The results are fresh and point up the fact that the folklorist puts what he sees in a context that differs from that of the other participants. The folk- lorist seeks out the permanent factors while historians attempt to discern the more timely elements. Rural design was influenced by both, and its restraint and retardataire aspects are most easily explained in terms of the more stable elements which determine design.

Taken together, the papers raise questions that should stimulate students of furniture history to make more searching investigations in the field of design. Even though the conclusions are not startling or particularly novel, they confirm established theories and make more intensive study possible.

MARVIN D. SCHWARTZ

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

BARBARA NOVAK, American Painting of the Nineteenth Century, Realism, Idealism, and the American Experience, New York, Washington and London, Praeger, 1969. Pp. 350; 272 ills.

(I 7 in color). $13.95 cloth; $6.95 paperback.

This is not the usual survey of the art of a nation and a period. "This volume has two main purposes," Professor Novak writes. "First, it is an attempt to isolate more specifically certain charac- teristics in American art that we can with some confidence denote as American . . .. The second purpose is didactic, and has to do with the nature of the available literature on American art. Surveys cataloguing countless nineteenth-century artists abound, and they are useful. Normally, the student of American art has to go directly from a survey to a monograph . . . to find a more

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142 THE ART BULLETIN

thorough consideration of a major figure. My aim has been to

provide an intermediary literature of intensive essays on some of the key figures, and I have deliberately omitted many interesting artists."

So rather than a comprehensive survey of nineteenth-century American painting, this is an intensive study of a selected number of painters who embody certain recurring traits which Professor Novak believes constitute an indigenous tradition, not derived from European sources. In defining these traits she has aimed "to establish a perspective of ideas against which [the artists] can be studied." Her main emphasis is on the interrelation of "ideal" and "real" in subject matter and viewpoint; and in more purely artistic terms, with the interrelation of idea and object, of concept and percept. These relations, sometimes conflicting, sometimes

achieving a synthesis, form the dominant theme of the book. In a "Prolegomena to the Nineteenth Century" she goes back

to the American work of Copley from 1765 to his departure from the Colonies in 1774. "The roots of an enduring American vision," she says, "were first put down with [his] mature paintings .... In

Copley's art of this period, the unique relation of object to idea that characterizes so much American realism from colonial times to the present assumes forceful and explicit form." To her, Copley was basically a conceptual artist, like his limner predecessors - one whose art was founded on the idea of the object, but for whom the idea was so modified by his intense perception of physical qualities of tactility, weight and texture as to "make the real somehow more than real." This "conceptual realism" she sees as a continuing characteristic of most of the nineteenth-century painters on whom she concentrates.

The eleven artists selected are Allston, Cole, Durand, Lane, Heade, Mount, Bingham, Homer, Eakins, Ryder and Harnett -

who for her embody, in different ways and degrees, the inter- action of ideal and real, of concept and percept. For the first two the interaction was primarily in subject matter and artistic

philosophy, and was destructive: Allston's literary bent and his

aspiration toward the Grand Manner, and Cole's moralism and love of the sublime conflicted with their authentic plastic gifts, and in only a few works, the author feels, did they achieve a resolution of the conflict. Cole's successors of the Hudson River School pro- longed the unresolved conflict into a grandiloquent academic formula. But the author discovers a different kind of vision in Durand's informal studies from nature, "among the most remark- able group of plein-air studies in American nineteenth-century painting," and an early manifestation of luminism.

For her, luminism, as represented particularly by Lane and Heade, "is one of the most truly indigenous styles in the history of American art." She sees it as a unique combination of the charac-

teristically American "awareness of things" and transcendental idealism, expressed in the feeling for light as "an iconic symbol of God's immanence." "To the transcendental mind, object and idea were one, and all matter was an extension of God. Thus, the

landscape artists, and especially the luminists after Copley, could value the smallest fact in nature - the

leaf, the pebble in the fore-

ground of a Heade landscape - and embrace also the larger equivalence of God with nature."

A clear distinction is drawn between luminism and Impres- sionism. "If we say that Impressionism is the objective response to the visual sensation of light, then perhaps we can say that luminism is the poetic response to the felt sensation." For her, luminism is

conceptual, Impressionism is perceptual, and outside of the American tradition with which she is concerned.

The chapters on Lane and Heade and on luminism in general form one of the most penetrating analyses so far written on this

highly individual development in American painting, which was first defined and explored by John I. H. Baur in 1954, in Perspec- tives U.S.A. In the book's subsequent chapters, from Mount

through Harnett, luminist characteristics are identified, but the

emphasis is more on the concept/object relation, which for the author remains the touchstone for critical judgment - even in the case of Ryder, the most purely conceptual artist of them all.

Throughout the book, each artist is considered in the context of his individual character and ideology, with a wealth of illumina-

ting first-hand material. Full use is made of statements by the painters themselves, such as the remarkable Mount manuscripts in the Suffolk Museum at Stony Brook, Long Island. But the text is by no means confined to consideration of the artists' work and statements. In her exploration of the ideas that governed them, the author draws extensively on the writings of their contemporaries. Her discussion of the relations between the artistic philosophy of the period and the artists' achievements - or lack of them - is revealing, such as "the insidious effect of Reynolds' Discourses on American aspiring history painters," particularly Copley and Allston.

For Professor Novak the interrelations of ideal and real extend far beyond the art of painting into the whole realm of American idealism in philosophy and religion, and she draws many parallels between painting and contemporary American thought, particu- larly Transcendentalism. In certain ways the book is a study of the ideas underlying the painting of the period as much as of the painting itself. At times this extended discussion of general ideas tends to overwhelm the consideration of art as art - which is to be regretted, since her analysis of purely artistic qualities is marked by a fine comprehension and sensibility.

Professor Novak's concentration on the concept/object relation- ship as the key element in an essential American tradition raises several questions. It excludes, among other tendencies, emotional expression and sensuous creation through the direct physical language of color, tone and two-dimensional pattern; and pictorial design not concentrated on the object. But there were expression- ist, chromatic and tonal tendencies in nineteenth-century American painting that have as much claim to being characteristically "American" as conceptual realism. The romantic tradition, which though numerically outnumbered by realism was still as character- istic of the American mind, is underrated: Allston, Cole and Ryder are highlighted, but Page, Rimmer, Quidor and Hunt are merely mentioned in passing, and Fuller, Newman and Blakelock not at all. In genre, Mount, Bingham and the young Homer receive full attention, but Blythe is only mentioned, and Johnson is not.

A dividing line is drawn between the artists who to the author represent indigenous creation and those "who, in my opinion, relate more to European developments." To the latter a penulti- mate chapter is given, "intended as a sketch for considering these figures who require. . . a volume of their own." Here the focus is on Stuart, Sargent, Whistler and La Farge, and to a lesser extent on Cassatt. Given the declared scope of the book, the secondary role assigned to the more international artists is understandable. But I would like to have seen fuller recognition and some discus- sion of the vital part that foreign influences have played in the growth of American art. To include the internationalists in this chapter and then derogate them, as in the case of La Farge, is inconsistent. More valuable would have been a consideration of La Farge's relation to both luminism and Impressionism. Inness is included (but barely mentioned) among the internationalists because of "his attachment to the Barbizon group," but there is no indication that his evolution from the external romanticism of the Hudson River School to a new kind of subjective romanticism was one of the key developments in nineteenth-century American landscape painting. A similar Barbizon connection (rather minor) may account for the omission of Homer Martin, who would seem to belong in the luminist tradition even though his feeling for light and its emotional effect was focused less on specific objects than on the structure of the earth. Except for Cassatt, the five early American Impressionists receive little attention, for reasons previously stated; but to dismiss Twachtman as a "hybrid" is in

my opinion to downgrade one of the most gifted Americans of his generation, a painter with interesting relations to native modern- ism.

A final chapter is given to a coup d'oeil of twentieth-century painters, particularly in the idea/object context. This approach produces some intriguing comparisons and contrasts, but in the immensely diverse field of our century's art, the criterion seems to me to meet its severest test, not always victoriously.

But as Professor Novak disarmingly says at the very beginning:

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WENDELL D. GARRETT, et al., The Arts in America: The Nineteenth Century, New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1969. Pp. 412; 301 ills. $20.

The last few years have witnessed a strong popular interest in the arts of nineteenth-century America. This period, once the preserve of collectors, antiquarians and restorationists, has more recently become the subject of a number of scholarly art-historical studies and some major museum exhibitions. The one hundredth anniver-

sary exhibition in 1970 of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art entitled "Nineteenth Century America" was accompanied by the

publication of two excellent catalogues, of painting and sculpture, and furniture and the decorative arts. Barbara Novak's American

Painting of the Nineteenth Century surveyed the century's major artists and focused a new light on some of the lesser known painters.

In an effort to reevaluate the art and taste of American society in this period, art historians have shown a greater concern for the social and intellectual history of the complex time. The too long accepted view of the total dependence of nineteenth-century American arts on European values has begun to be challenged in an attempt to put this exceedingly complex historical period into

perspective. The publication in 1969 of The Arts in America: The Nineteenth

Century is the first attempt to survey the major arts of the period in a single volume. The format, with its four contributing authors, is similar to Scribner's earlier entry in the Arts in America series on the Colonial period. The introductory essay by Wendell D. Garrett deals primarily with cultural issues. The architectural section by Paul F. Norton, Allan Gowans's essay on painting and sculpture and a concluding chapter by Joseph T. Butler on the decorative arts complete the survey. The over three hundred illustrations are

unfortunately restricted to black and white, but the selection is excellent and many of the old chestnuts have been replaced by more provocative examples. An unusual and sometimes discon-

certing aspect of the visual material is the use of long captions accompanying the illustrations. Although often interesting in in-

formation, these isolated paragraphs tend to interrupt the flow of the main essay. This is especially evident in the painting and

sculpture section. Wendell Garrett's opening chapter, entitled "A

Century of Aspiration," provides a necessary historical context for the succeeding chapters. It is arranged chronologically with a focus on problems of periodization. The essay offers an intelligent overview of the century and presents a theme which is picked up in the following chapters: the impact of European influence and the struggle for a native American art.

The architectural section contributed by Paul Norton has the

extremely difficult task of tracing not only the historical develop- ment from Jefferson to Wright but the confusing parallel evolution of progressive engineering and historical revivalism. Norton wisely concentrates on public and commercial structures with appropri- ate references to important domestic architecture.

Although the essay is polemical in its strongly drawn position against the "chaos" of eclecticism, it is balanced by the wide selection of examples. The scope ranges from the traditional pre-

Civil War revivalism of Bulfinch, Latrobe and Strickland to a number of lesser-known factory structures by anonymous archi- tects. These are often illustrated with excellent nineteenth-century photographs and prints. Another exceptionally helpful feature of the visual material in this section is the inclusion of architectural

renderings and plans. For example, in the case of the Gothic Revival mansion of Lyndhurst (pls. 39-41; page 88), we are given in sequence architect A. J. Davis's 1838 rendering, his 1865 con-

ception for enlargement and a recent photograph, all seen from the same elevation.

Professor Norton's praise of the architecture of H. H. Richardson is adequately extravagant. By the selection of both familiar and unusual examples of his oeuvre, including the R. T. Paine House in Waltham, Massachusetts, Richardson emerges as the hero of the

piece. I am pleased to report that contrary to the information which appears under the illustration of the exterior of the Paine House (pl. 82; page 133), it has not "recently been demolished," but ruggedly survives.

The third chapter, devoted to a survey of painting and sculpture, stresses the conflict between native American self-sufficiency and

European influences. The format of the essay with its emphasis on

periodization tends to disrupt the continuity of certain artistic traditions such as landscape and genre painting. Although many artists are discussed, some important exclusions are apparent. Luminism is not mentioned nor are such significant artists as Fitz-

Hugh Lane and Martin Heade. The city of Duisseldorf is cited in the captions under illustrations of the work of George Caleb

Bingham (pl. 182; page 244) but the influence of the Duisseldorf technique on American genre painting is not explained (Diussel- dorf doesn't appear in the index).

Professor Gowans has made a valiant attempt within the limita- tion of space to include such aspects of the popular arts as cartoons and the beginnings of the motion picture. And although some excellent examples of the early photography of Matthew Brady are illustrated, there is unfortunately no mention of Muybridge or Eakins's experiments in motion photography. The illustrations in this chapter are well chosen but suffer not only from the limitation of black-and-white reproduction as previously mentioned but also from the poor quality of paper on which they are printed.

The fourth chapter by Joseph Butler is a summary of the decorative arts. In contrast to the preceding sections this essay is not organized along chronological lines but treats separately the various categories of furniture, silver, glass and ceramics. By focusing in greater detail on furniture Butler is able to develop the

complicated succession of styles that characterize the century. The transition from the handcrafted object to the mass-produced product of industrial society is sensitively observed without the

customary prejudices. Although the familiar theme of America vl.

Europe can be found, the author's main emphasis is on the achieves ments of the "proficient craftsmen and gifted designers." The fina-

subheading of the chapter deals with the evolution of interior

design and offers a selection of period rooms. Some are illustrated

by architect's drawings and nineteenth-century photographs. A number of the examples are selected from period rooms now in- stalled at various museums. Unfortunately, as the author admits, only a surface treatment is possible, yet the section summarizes the incredible variation and change that took place during the

hundred-year interval. As in any survey which sets out to trace such a diverse and com-

plicated period as the nineteenth century, the particular emphasis chosen by the authors is extremely important. In these all too brief

essays the contributors have proven themselves judicious in their choice of themes and extremely knowledgeable in their areas of concentration. As might be expected within the limits imposed by space a number of important subjects are excluded. One would have hoped to see some discussion of city-planning and urban

development as well as a more extensive discussion of photography. But although omissions can be found, the true value of the work lies in its introductory level and its appeal to the general reader.

GERALD BERNSTEIN

Brandeis University

BOOK REVIEWS 143

"I am aware that this book raises more questions than it answers. Those answers will have to come from further research." Her concentration on certain aspects of the nineteenth-century American vision has resulted in a stimulating and challenging book. The artists she has selected, though limited in number, are

certainly among the most interesting of the century - although by no means all the most interesting; and she has devoted to them some of the most understanding criticism so far written. Her very con- centration has brought forth insights and perceptions that might have been diluted by broader coverage.

The text is accompanied by full notes, which in themselves make

rewarding reading, and by brief biographies of the principal artists. The numerous reproductions, while not large-scale, are well chosen to illustrate the ideas presented.

LLOYD GOODRICH

Whitney Museum of American Art

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