Expanding Horizons: American Art in the 1870s Flashcards
Art Students League
1875
Young group of artists that challenged the model of the National Academy
Society of American Artists
1877
Splintered from the National Academy
First called American Art Association
first exhibition in 1878
Barbizon
Small town in France
Artists moved to countryside and began painting en plein air
Worked from nature, subjects from real life
Less academic approach
spontaneity, direct painting style
starts in 1850s
doesn’t catch on in US until late 1880s
William Morris Hunt
brings back the Barbizon to the US
Important teacher in the Northeast (Newport)
Jean Francois Millet
The Gleaners, 1857
promotes Barbizon style
rejection of academy subject matter
common life
William Morris Hunt
Peasant Girl, 1852
sense of softness and sketchiness
Initially trains with Thomas Couture
William Morris Hunt
Self Portrait, 1866
tension between French and American
Studied at Dusselforf but left
Wealthy family, Harvard
William Morris Hunt
Niagara Falls, 1878
Barbizon style - bad style to paint in
hard to grasp mist and transparency Church achieved
George Inness
basically a French painter in America, people complain too French
Born in New York, ends up in NJ
travels to Europe 1852, 1853, 1870, 1875
Barbizon not immediately accepted in the US
believes Rousseau greatest French landscapist
human experience and mark on landscape
strange way of teaching
George Inness
Lackawanna Valley, 1856
lack of articulation, no detail, beautified the land
softer tonal approach, influence of French painters
ambiguity, pro or anti railroad
glorifying or condeming the railroad is questionable in depiction
George Inness
Hackensack Valley, 1856
George Inness
Overlook Mountain in the Catskills, 1868
loose Barbizon and Hudson River Valley style
George Inness
The Monk, 1873
strange deviation from usual style
meditations on tone
increasing awareness of a Japanese aesthetic
stark outline, balance of light and dark
George Inness
October, 1886
tonal brushiness
George Inness
Sunrise, 1887
high on Swedenborg beliefs
“Correspondence of Colors”
certain colors mean certain things
George Inness
The Old Barn, 1888
very loose by end of career
hates impressionism but looser brushy style
subtle arrangement of color
massively inconsistent in painting
George Inness
The Bathers, 1882
experimenting with washes of color
biographical and spiritual meditations
painting humanity and the human experience
George Inness
Home of the Heron, 1893
Asian aethetic, speaks to Japanese painting
almost monochromatic
flatness
building up tone
John La Farge
wealthy parents, French, bilingual
William Morris Hunt teacher, tonal matter
flatten space from Japanese prints
extensive travels
on going competition with Louis Comfort Tiffany
less reputation as a painter than decorative artist
John La Farge
Portrait of the Painter, 1859
painted at his family’s estate in Glencove, Long Island
doesn’t have accouterments of a painters
appears more as a hiker
John La Farge
Autumn Study, View Over Hanging Rock, Newport, RI
1868
Japanese in cropping and flattened space
broad swaths of color
Munich
Barbizon gives way to Munich
Becomes hotspot for Americans to study in Europe
Artistic center Americans look towards
dark colors and browns
Especially popular in Cincinnati due to Frank Duveneck
William Merritt Chase
Interior of the Artist’s Studio, 1880
Victorian interior
packed with objects, bric-a-brac
William Merritt Chase
In the Studio, 1880
huge, expansive space
action to brushstrokes
woman as art object
showing off objects for reputation of sophistication
worldly, well traveled, diverse objects
William Merritt Chase
James McNeil Whistler, 1885
off and on friends
Whistler supposed to return favor and paint Chase
Whistler depicted as the dandy he is
