New York Historical Society

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The Canvas of a Young DemocracyMaking American Taste opens the renovation and expansion

of the New-York Historical Society by James Balestrieri

The question of taste in American art has

been highly charged almost since the arrival

of the first Europeans. Indeed, the terms of

the debate have changed little over the intervening

centuries, as a stroll through the New-York Historical

Societys upcoming exhibition, Making American Taste:

Narrative Art for a New Democracy, will attest. The

New-York Historical Society is in the final stages of a

renovation and expansion designed to reintroduce the

public to this best kept, worst kept secret among the

many glorious cultural institutions in New York City.

Linda Ferber, vice president and senior art historian of

the New-York Historical Society, who co-organized

the exhibition with guest curator, Barbara Dayer

Gallati, was kind enough to offer her insights.

The first Europeans to settle in America brought

with them a healthy skepticism of the trappings of

elites, of aristocracies, of inherited wealth. Artif

there were to be art at allought to be useful. Art

ought to educate, elevate, allude to an ideal plane,

create a national mythology, bolster faith; art ought

not to distract the viewer from the strenuous task of

nation-building. Most of all, it ought not to divide

viewers into an elite, educated to understand art,

and an underclass left out of the interplay between

the artwork and the knowing eye. The question of

government involvement in the arts was as vexed

then as it is today.

And yet, having no native school of art, the first

American artists looked to Europe for training and

inspiration and required the patronage of wealth to

support their nascent efforts. Before long, the rising

mercantile class in America clamored for an American

art, an American culture, seeing it as an essential

arm of the young republic. These dichotomies,

November 11, 2011-August 19, 2012

New-York Historical Society

170 Central Park West at Richard Gilder Way

New York, NY 10024

t: (212) 873-3400

www.nyhistory.org


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Louis Lang (1814-1893),Return of the 69th (Irish) Regiment, N.Y.S.M. from the Seat of War,

1862, oil on canvas, New-York Historical Society, Gift of Louis Lang, 1886.3

PHOTO COURTESY WILLIAMSTOWN ART CONSERVATION CENTER, 2010.


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between suspecting art and embracing

it, between cultural nationalism and

cultural continentalism, between useful

art and art for arts sake arose at the

very outset.

The underlying question posed by

the exhibition is the same one that

will underscore this column and the

magazine as a whole as it unfolds from

issue to issue: what is American art?

More specifically: what is American

about American ar t? Whatever is it

is, it can be found on the honed edge

of the dichotomies, as American artists

endorsed or repudiated or sought to

reconcile their various claims.

When artistic merit derives from

skill at arranging and representing

the contours of observed reality,

allegory conveys deeper meanings

through systems of symbols apparent

to patrons and viewers. Art that aspires

to transcend reality seeks to represent

ideal visions of human action, faith,

and so on. The 18 th and early 19th

centuries in Europe and America

was, thus, the age of the emblem.

But what might have been readily

understood then has become elusive

to us now. Making American Taste

brilliantly begins to recover some of

the codes in these early works, lost

legends to dusty and forgotten maps.

The beautifully researched catalogue,

written by Barbara Gallati, Linda

Ferber, Ella Foshay and Kimberly

Orcutt, will serve, as Ferber says, as an

instant standard reference to a host

of magnificent American artists who

once enjoyed wide acclaim but who

have slipped from public memory as

tastes and times have changed.

Americas first star in the artistic

firmament was Benjamin West. Born

in Pennsylvania in 1738, he showed an

early aptitude for drawing and made

his way to Italy in 1760, where he wassomething of a sensation. Journeying

to London, West helped found the

Royal Academy and became president

in 1792. A close friend of King George

III, West entertained and taught many

American artists, including Morse,

Stuart, Dunlap, Peale and Trumbull.

Wests 1771 painting,Aeneas and

Creusa, and its companion, Chryseis

Returned to Her Father, exemplify the

prevailing aesthetic of the age. Themes

from antiquitythese paintings depictemotional peaks in the Aeneid and

Iliad, respectivelyand the Bible were

thought to represent the pinnacle of

artist ic endeavor. InAeneas and Creusa,

Troy has fallen to the ruse of the

wooden horse. Aeneas determines that

he will die with his family. But omens

fall from the sky and Aeneas believes

that they are telling him to take his

family and leave Troy, that their destiny

lies elsewhere. Aeneas bears his father

Anchises on his back and takes hisson, Ascanius, by the hand. Aeneass

wife, Creusa, walks behind, but they

are separated in the chaos, and Creusa

dies. Aeneas, so Virgil writes, sails away

to found the Roman Empire. This is

a tale of leaving home, of departing

to found a new and better country.

Sound familiar?

Beyond the surface masteries of

form and color and the epic episodes

to which they refer, works like these

in the exhibition invite us to speculate

on their possible allegorical meaning.

Speculation: the Boston Massacre

occurred in 1770. America was restless

and on the boil. News of the unrest

had made England uneasy. Might the

English court and public have seen

prophecy in the paint?

In Chryseis Returned to Her Father,

the daughter of Apollos priest in Troy,

having been seized by the Greek King

Agamemnon, has been returned to her

Robert Walter Weir (1803-1889),Saint Nicholas, 1837-38, oil on wood panel, 30 x 24,

New-York Historical Society, gift of George A. Zabriskie, 1951.76


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father to appease the gods displeasure.

Might this , conversely, be an allegory

for what the English hoped for? The

return of a lost childAmericato

her father?

Second speculation: Might the

original collector of the two Wests,

William H. Webb, have seen them in

this light? Intention and reception have

clouded over in the intervening years.

Robert W. Weirs Saint Nicholas

gave shape to the Dutch vision of

Santa Claus envisioned by Washington

Irving in his 1809 satire Knickerbockers

History of New York. Not quite the jolly

bearded elf we know from Thomas

Nasts 1862 painting, Weirs Kris

Kringle satisfied a need to transform

American civic celebrations to suit

our mounting interest in the family

and children as symbols of national

health and prosperity. Weirs 1837

painting il lustrates Irvings lines: And

when St. Nicholas had smoked his

pipe, he twisted it in his hatband,

and laying his finger beside his nose,

gave the astonished Van Kortlandt a

significant look; then mounting his

wagon, he returned over the tree-tops

and disappeared. (p. 182) St. Nicks

gift to Van Kortlandt, in Irvings tale,

is nothing less than a vision of the

founding of New York, an apparition

formed in the smoke of the elf s pipe.

The carving of the New York City seal

in Weirs painting, hanging over the

mantle where the stockings would be

hung, cements the connection.

Part of the impulse to cement

national myths and civic celebrations

lay in a desire to stave off some of the

rapid social and economic changes of

the early 19th century, particularly those

that took place in the teeming cities.

On the surface, William Henry

Burrs The Intelligence Officefeels like

a simple genre painting. The office

pictured is an employment agency.

The seated lady, eyes averted, inspects

the two standing women, both of

whom are roughly attired. But Burr,

who would go on to author books

that outlined the contradictions in

the Bible, that asserted that Abraham

William Gilbert Gaul (1855-1919),Charging the Battery, 1882, oil on canvas,

New-York Historical Society, Gift of Mr. Donald Anderson, 1954.111


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Lincoln had been the victim of a

Jesuit conspiracy, that Shakespeare

had been the illegitimate son of

Queen Elizabeth, was no mere genre

painter. As the catalogue confirms,

these intelligence offices were often

conduits to prostitutionthe frank,

blank look of the young woman

dressed in red that has faded to

pinkon the left indicates, perhaps,

an already fallen state. The women in

the background, like something out

of Giotto or Raphael, sit gossiping in

judgment.

In the discourse of the day, the

intelligence office was a metaphor

for the increased commodification

of human relations in a democratic,

capitalistic society, one that Emerson

and Hawthorne debated. Emerson

seemed to see this as a necessary, if

regrettable state of affairs, going so

far as to deem the government a kind

of marketplace. He also believed that

it was no substitute for chance and

submission to divine will.

Hawthorne, on the other hand,

in his short allegorical tale, The

Intelligence Office, sees the agency as

a mirror of deeply flawed individual

desire. Addressing the seeker of Truth

the Man of Intelligence replies that

he is no minister of action, but the

Recording Spirit . In this light, Burrs

painting becomes a kind of cosmic

philosophical pinball machineHow

did these people come to be here?

What do they say they want?What

do they really want?Is the Lady a

Lady or a Madam dressed as a Lady?

Who will be responsible for whatever

comes of this?

Louis Langs masterwork, Returnof the 69th (Irish) Regiment, N.Y.S.M.,

from the Seat of the War, N.Y., begins

to ask these questions on a national

scale. Recently rediscovered and

beautifully restored, the large-scale

canvas documents the return of the

Irish Brigade after the Union defeat

at the Battle of Bull Run in 1861. It

is the centerpiece of the exhibition.

Executed within little more than a

year after the br igades return, the

work included portraits of some ofthe actual figures who led the 69th.

Brig. Gen. Thomas Francis Meagher,

for example, is mounted center right.

General Corcoran, taken prisoner by

the Confederate troops, graces the

broadside held up by the newsboy at

the extreme right. This fascinating

piece of reportageCNN for the

Civil War, as Ferber put itshows

the men vanquished but unbowed,

valiant even in defeat, wounded, brave,

weeping. According to Ferber, it ispossible that the work was intended

to be made into a print, and that the

Draft Riots of 1863in which Irish

New Yorkers resisted the draft and

murdered many black citizensmay

have cast a shadow on the efforts of the

69th and doomed the enterprise. But

the essence of the painting lies in the

individuals depicted, as if each has a

part to play, some heroic distinction

however smallto contribute to the

war effort.

The Civil War, however, seemed to

elude the grand heroic manner. Too

many individualsthe very sense of

individualityvanished in the tragic

immensity of the carnage. It was, in

many ways, the first modern war.

The scales were tipped away from

individual heroism toward anonymous

death. Contemporary critics and

reviewers, sensing this, felt that, for the

most part, art had failed to convey the

Benjamin West (1738-1820),Aneneas and Creusa, 1771, oil on canvas,

New-York Histor ical Society, Gift of Mr. William H. Webb, 1865.2


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truth of the Civil War.

One of the last works,

chronologically, in the exhibition,

Gilbert Gauls Charging the Battery,

seemed to come closer to satisfying

viewers tastes and was widely praised

when it was painted in 1882, this

despite the fact that it defies any

demand for national mythmaking,

eschewing faith at nearly every level.

Depicting an undifferentiated mass of

men on an unnamed mission in the

dark, it neither elevates nor educates,

unless, by education, it means to

convey the simple notion that war is

hell, that battle is chaos. Implicating

the viewer, Gaul makes us stare down

the muzzles of the cannon in the

battery; their flash blinds us even

as it blinds the soldiers who follow

ordersblindlymarching to win or

lose, live or die. We barely know that

the attackers are Union soldiers.

Like Langs Return of the 69th,

Gauls painting is reportage, but it is

emotional rather than journalistic,

stripped of propaganda, describing the

psychology of a moment of fear.

Works like these close out the era

of the search for a unified national

taste. American artists like Frederic

Remington will continue to adapt

the conventions of the heroic

picture to write the hagiographies

of westward expansion, and genre

paintings and prints depicting scenes

of the lives and livelihoods of average

citizens will decorate humble and

stately homes. But the horror of the

Civil War and new approaches to

painting emerging from Europe

Impressionismwill influence artists

like Blakelock, Ryder and Whistler.

They will chronicle shadows and the

outlines of men and women as they

fade into omnivorous night.

The debate over the place and

purpose of art in America rages

on. Art is always on the chopping

block in Congress. The New-York

Historical Society, with its new,

spacious, interactive galleries, the new

DiMenna Childrens History Museum

on the lower level and large windows

overlooking Central Park opens itself

to us, inviting us to educate ourselves,

enter the fray, and have our say.

William Henry Burr (1819-1908),The Intelligence Office, 1849, oil on canvas,

New York Historical Society, Purchase, Abbott-Lenox Fund, 1959.46

Documents

New York Historical Society