Course Description
The formation of a national identity and assimilation of European styles in painting, sculpture, and cultural artifacts such as photographs and popular illustrations. Artists include, Copley, Peale, Allston, Cole, Church, Quidor, Mount, Bingham, Heade, Bierstadt, and Homer.
Additional Requirements for Graduate Students:
Graduate students will be expected to produce an extensive
research paper on specific works or issues related to the field
and the methodologies appropriate to the topic under
consideration in the course. This paper will be a detailed,
in-depth consideration of the student's chosen theme requiring
not only a demonstration of advanced research skills (including
the ability to read and use material presented in foreign
languages), but also an articulation of the student's ability to
understand and manipulate the critical apparatus of art history
in connection with Early American Art.
Athena Title
EARLY AMERICAN ART
Prerequisite
Two ARHI 3000-level courses and permission of major
Semester Course Offered
Offered every year.
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Course Objectives
This course offers an in-depth examination of the development of an "American" art identity in the New World from the period of Colonial settlement through the Jacksonian period. Beginning with the development of portraiture as the most marketable of the visual arts, we trace the formation of American artistic subjects and styles in such genres of art as history, family scenes, still life, and landscape painting. The most important figures in the development of an American art from European roots are covered in detail: Smibert, Copley, Trumbull, Stuart, Peale, Allston, Morse, Cole, and Quidor. Students will gain not only a visual and intellectual familiarity with these important early artists of America, but also with the seminal political, social, and cultural issues that define America's early artistic contexts. Assignments require students to synthesize lectures and readings into their own researched exhibition.
Topical Outline
I. Colonial Beginnings and Mythmaking: Boston Portraiture in the art of the Limners, John Smibert, and John Singleton Copley II. Mythology and History in the Grand Style: Heroes in the art of Benjamin West, J.S. Copley, John Trumbull, Charles Willson Peale, & Gilbert Stuart III. Enlightenment Science and Sentiment in the art of Charles Willson Peale and Family IV. Romantic Rebuttals, Revisions & Expressions in art of Raphaelle Peale, Washington Allston & Samuel F.B. Morse V. "A Higher Sort of Landscape Painting": The art of Thomas Cole VI. Critiquing "Democratic" America: The satiric art of John Quidor