Picturing America Review

National Endowment for the Humanities

2010 - 2011

• From cylindrical clay jars gracing a 1000 A.D. home to baskets serving a mobile society,

• everyday objects yield glimpses into America’s past.

• They chart a proud history of craftsmanship and traditions handed down from generation to generation.

• The Anasazi, Sikyátki, Pueblo, and Washoe tribes of the American Southwest; South Carolina basket weavers of West African heritage; and coastal Alaskan artisans—all have helped shape America’s rich heritage of handicrafts.

• This Catholic mission in San Antonio now stripped to bare stone was originally plastered white and adorned with red, blue, yellow, and black painted designs. It was built to serve as a barrier against French expansion into Texas. Made using local materials and artisans, the stone-faced adobe structure features a floor plan that reflected Catholic traditions.

• Various artists (18th century): Spanish Colonial Architecture of the 17th, 18th, and 19th century stretched across America's Spanish southwest. It was an amalgam of Moorish, Romanesque, Gothic, and Renaissance influences, modified to meet frontier needs.

• This portrait, an idealized view of labor consistent with the democratic ideals of the New World, depicts Paul Revere as a working craftsman.

• At the time of this portrait Revere was a successful silversmith—not an American hero.

• Still, Copley captured the heroic qualities of physical strength, moral certainty, and intelligence that allowed Revere to play a pivotal role in American history.

• John Singleton Copley (1738–1815): Born in Boston and largely self-taught, Copley had an extraordinary talent for recording the physical characteristics of his subjects.

• This skill made him the foremost colonial artist in America.

• Now, more than 200 years later, Copley’s portraits endure as significant works of art because of their reach beyond documentation to depict his subjects’ personality, profession, and social position.

• Shiny silver teapots—of different sizes and shapes—reflect the economic climate and political upheaval taking place in the United States during the time of their production.

• Once reserved for the 17th-century well to-do, silver wares became available to a larger audience with the opening of silver mines in the West and technological advancements such as electroplating and industrialization.

• Various silversmiths (18th, 19th, and 20th centuries): From pre-revolutionary craftsmen to the big-name machine manufacturers of the 20th century, the silver trade remained a thriving business in the United States across three centuries.

• Grant Wood's bird's-eye-view of Revere's legendary ride offers a whimsical, child-like interpretation of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's well-known poem. The artist's desire to preserve American folklore was part of his greater scheme to forge a national identity through art and history.

• Grant Wood (1892-1942): A trained artist best known for his paintings depicting the American Midwest, Wood emulated the primitive, unschooled style of American folk artists. His work reflects his commitment to a truly American style—one that would link the present to the past and preserve the stories of the country's heritage.

• This full-length portrait deftly captures Washington’s role as an orator, leader, and father of his country. Washington’s choice of attire—a plain black suit and no wig—conveys his belief that the United States president was not a king, but a citizen of a land where all men were created equal.

• Gilbert Stuart (1755–1828): Stuart learned art abroad in the European tradition, but his style was all his own. Known for his ability to set subjects at ease, he believed inner character was reflected in a person’s physical features. Stuart’s portraits of George Washington, whom he described as a man of great passions, are among his most famous works.

• With defeats mounting and morale sinking, George Washington led his army across the icy river on Christmas night, 1776. Emanuel Leutze’s life-sized canvas vividly shows the courage and sacrifice demonstrated by America’s founders during a time when victory and independence were an uncertain conclusion.

• Emanuel Leutze (1816-1868): Although this German-born painter immigrated to the United States decades after the Revolutionary War, the democratic ideals of that time inspired his art.

• His carefully researched interpretations of historical events won him lucrative private and government commissions, including work displayed in the U.S. Capitol today.

• Although it displays clear classical influences in pose and posture, this larger-than-life-sized marble statue of Benjamin Franklin has a naturalistic style.

• Hiram Powers’s contemporaries objected to portraying historical figures in contemporary dress, but the sculptor chose to depict the founding father accurately, in a realistic mid-18th century wardrobe—from his tricorne hat to his cotton hose.

• Hiram Powers (1805-1873): A highly successful, largely self-taught Neoclassical sculptor, Powers emigrated to Italy to further boost his career in the United States.

• His government commissions, influenced by the classical Roman sculptures of Europe, can be found standing in the U.S. Senate and House collections today.

• Landscape paintings were especially well-liked in the 19th century, when urban dwellers viewed rural life as a remedy for the problems of industrialization.

• Thomas Cole’s split representation of the Connecticut Valley depicts the inherent conflict between wilderness and civilization that characterized westward expansion.

• Thomas Cole (1801–1848): As a teenager, Cole immigrated to America from England, and went on to found the National Academy of Design in New York City.

• A master of pastoral landscapes, Cole set out to capture the beauty and majesty of rural America in his paintings.

• N. C. Wyeth’s romanticized cover illustration for

James Fenimore Cooper’s novel The Last of the Mohicans did much to create an enduring image of the American Indian as a “noble savage.”

• Though his depiction of Uncas as a formidable warrior—complete with bare chest, animal skin skirt, and bow and arrow—departed from the author’s character description, it remained true to the country’s fascination with its Native American heritage.

• N. C. Wyeth (1882-1945): Wyeth was both a realist painter and a highly successful illustrator.

• Two trips to the Adirondacks—where he tramped through the woods and cooked over an open fire to get a feel for the wilderness—inspired his cover illustration for the popular book The Last of the Mohicans.

• The graceful, bending position of John James Audubon’s flamingo allowed the artist to fit his subject—depicted close to actual size—on a single page.

• The silhouette emphasized the elegant curve of the bird’s body and captured its distinctive markings and trademark shade of pink. Audubon’s watercolors serve as an invaluable record of early American wildlife.

• John James Audubon (1785–1851): Born

in the West Indies, Audubon moved to America at 18 and became the country’s dominant wildlife artist.

• A naturalist painter, he showed his subjects—including the monumental Birds of America—in vivid watercolors, much as they would appear alive in their natural habitat.

• Catlin painted this portrait from memory,

years after becoming friends with the second chief of the Mandan people.

• It appears as the title-page illustration of his book about living among the tribes of the Missouri River. Catlin’s manuscript—and some 500 paintings—provide testimony not only to the country’s fascination with American Indians but also to the artist’s ambition to document disappearing frontier cultures.

• George Catlin (1796–1872): The self-trained Catlin was a successful portrait painter in Philadelphia.

• Intrigued by the North American Indian, he set out on a 2,000-mile journey along the Missouri River (in what is now North Dakota) to create the most thorough visual record of the indigenous cultures of the frontier.

• As Americans became more politically active in the mid-1800s, legislators wanted to express their identity in their statehouses.

• Like many new state capitol buildings, Ohio’s Greek Revival statehouse recalled the birthplace of democracy. Construction—which took some 20 years to complete—was also rife with politics among competing architects and designers.

• Thomas Cole (1801–1848) and others: A landscape painter with no building experience, Cole took third-place in the competition for Ohio’s new state capitol, yet a modified version of his design was chosen one year later.

• Cole’s plan called for a compact, rectangular structure with pilasters and a columned porch. Over the years, several architects would also put their imprint on the building.

• In this crowded composition, Bingham

suggests the inclusiveness of democracy. Young or old, rich or poor, all of the men gathered at the foot of the courthouse on Election Day appeared as equals.

• The lack of a single dramatic focus emphasized the ideal that no one vote was worth more than another.

• George Caleb Bingham (1811–1879): Known as the “Missouri artist” for the state where he lived and worked, Bingham painted everyday scenes in striking detail.

• His realistic style would offer an accurate account of frontier life for generations to come.

• This large, panoramic landscape of the

Yosemite Valley pulls the viewer into the dramatic scene. Missing in the painting are any people—only a shroud of golden light breaks through the clouds.

• In Bierstadt’s scenario, the viewer discovers that before so magnificent a landscape, human beings dwindle to insignificance.

• Albert Bierstadt (1830–1902): Born and educated in Germany, Bierstadt was a landscape artist captivated by the majesty of the American West.

• His romantic paintings—especially popular with East Coast audiences—helped satisfy Americans’ curiosity about the great frontier.

• Black Hawk’s ledger book provides

invaluable visual testimony to the nation’s Native American heritage.

• His drawings revealed intriguing details of the Lakota people—from manner of dress to social customs. In doing so, he captured a way of life fast disappearing as settlers moved West in increasing numbers and tribes were moved to reservations.

• Black Hawk (c. 1832–1890): A spiritual leader of a tribe of Lakota Indians, Black Hawk was asked in 1880 to record the natural world and culture of his people.

• His drawings—for which he received 50 cents apiece—followed a long tradition of Plains Indian art that documented history as a memory aid for oral renditions of tribal history. Scholars believe Black Hawk died at Wounded Knee.

• This image of a soldier returning to his

farm after the Civil War refers to both the desolation of war and the country’s hope for the future.

• While the farmer’s scythe called to mind the bloodiest battles fought—and lives lost—in fields of grain, the bountiful crop of golden wheat could also be seen as a Christian symbol of salvation.

• Even in the aftermath of the worst disasters, Winslow Homer seems to say, life has the capacity to restore itself.

• Winslow Homer (1836–1910): Boston-born

Homer was a successful illustrator, oil painter, and watercolor artist whose works have become classic images of 19th-century American life.

• In his Civil War illustrations for Harper’s Weekly, Homer focused on the commonplace activities of a soldier—rather than the climax of combat.

• When he returned to civilian life, Homer continued to depict ordinary events, some of which documented the veteran’s return from the front.

• Looking older than his 55 years, Lincoln seemed more like a regular person than a president in his dark suit, white shirt, and crooked bowtie.

• Alexander Gardner, known for his candid photographs, did nothing to flatter the president’s haggard features.

• Instead, he let Lincoln’s expression reveal his weary and worried countenance during the last long weeks of the Civil War.

• Alexander Gardner (1821–1882): One of a team of photographers hired to make a visual record of the Civil War, Gardner opened his own Washington, D.C., studio in 1863.

• He became known for his portraits of uniformed soldiers heading off to war—and his candid photos of President Abraham Lincoln—at a time when photography was still a new medium.

• The Shaw Memorial, in Boston Common,

depicts a resonant, courageous act of the Civil War, in which the first regiment of African American soldiers recruited for the Union Army fought a doomed battle on a South Carolina fortress.

• Although Colonel Robert Shaw, on horseback, is prominent, the bronze relief is the first American memorial dedicated to individuals united for a cause, rather than to a single military hero.

• Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848-1907): Born in Dublin and trained in Europe, Saint-Gaudens created many noted Civil War monuments, as well as American coins and intimate portraits of notable and society figures.

• The sculptor made the complex Shaw Memorial into a 14-year labor of love, striving to realistically depict each soldier as an individual and making up to 40 different portrait studies in preparation.

• A thrifty way to make use of leftover fabric,

at a time when fabric could be scarce and expensive, quilts soon took on aesthetic and social dimensions in the hands of their makers in every region of America.

• Ingenuity, abstract invention, and the traces of changing American technology are revealed in the quilts handed down through families and displayed in museums today.

• Various artists: The work of African-

Americans in slavery, of farmwomen settling the West, of Amish women descended from those who came to America seeking religious freedom—quilts can tell many American stories.

• Scholars, for instance, see traces of kente, a woven textile style from Ghana and the Ivory Coast, in the complex matrix of diagonal ladders in the quilt made by Hannah and Emm Greenlee.

• On Philadelphia’s Schuylkill River, rowing was a democratic and passionately followed sport.

• John Biglin was a superstar athlete of the time, and the depiction of the rower in excellent racing form, at the precise moment before dipping the oars, reveals his dedication and strength in competition.

• Thomas Eakins (1844-1916): Born in Philadelphia, Eakins returned from art training in Paris with a conviction unique in his time: to realistically depict scenes from American life.

• His decision never varied, though it was occasionally as controversial as it was admired. Acute observation and a tireless study of anatomy, nature, and even burgeoning technology informed his work, and he found ample subject matter in the rapidly progressing America of the late 19th century.

• John Singer Sargent painted this well-known

image of the young Homer Saint-Gaudens as an intimate portrait for his friend, the sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, who was the boy’s father.

• In this and all his portraits of wealthy American youth, Sargent abandoned the sentimental approach of his contemporaries and painted them more naturalistically, with a keen, psychologically penetrating eye.

• In this image, he captures the impatience of the beautifully dressed young Homer with the boy’s expression and slumping pose.

• John Singer Sargent (1856-1925): Sargent was among a noted group of American expatriate artists, writers, and composers who around the turn of the century felt they could find strong training and a sympathetic audience only in Europe.

• However, they brought the freshness and spirit of American exploration with them.

• As a “society painter,” Sargent chronicled the vast infusion of wealth that also swept in with the Americans in Europe during the Gilded Age.

• When America officially entered World War I, the nation largely regarded it as cause for support and celebration.

• Along New York’s Fifth Avenue, flags of the allied nations were hung in a welcoming gesture, creating a patriotic pattern of red, white, and blue.

• Childe Hassam prominently placed the American flag, affirming his belief that America was now engaged in a morally imperative “fight for democracy,” as he put it, throughout the world.

• Childe Hassam (1859-1935): Hassam was a

major figure in the American Impressionism movement.

• As he studied in Paris, he gravitated away from the rule-bound darkness of traditional art studios and toward painters working outdoors, portraying a world of color and light in new ways.

• Returning to America, he seized on the energetic bustle of New York City as one of his recurrent subjects, capturing scenes of movement and change in loose brushwork and firm composition.

• The Brooklyn Bridge was hailed as a

marvel of American engineering ingenuity.

• When it was built in 1883, its two towers were the tallest structures in the Western Hemisphere.

• Photographer Walker Evans turned its bold form and sweeping lines into a classic American image, both an icon of modernity and a monument that belongs to history.

• Walker Evans (1903-1975): As one of the first to

bring photography forward from simple documentary to a fine art, Evans was the eye behind some of the most enduring images of America’s 20th century.

• As part of a government project during the Great Depression, he photographed farm families, revealing both hardships and indomitable spirits.

• Later, he rode the New York subways with a camera hidden in his coat to produce candid images of the changing urban scene.

• Originally created for the Gothic revival

mansion of Boston real estate magnate Loren Delbert Towle, Tiffany’s composition was divided into lancet windows, reminiscent of a medieval cathedral.

• The traditional subject matter, a mountain stream flowing into a placid pool, is infused with strong spiritual overtones.

• The window was designed to alter in reaction to the changing intensity of natural light.

• Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848-1933): The son of

the founder of the New York jewelry store that bears his name, Tiffany turned his training as a painter to the medium of colored glass.

• He filled American mansions and buildings with luminous windows, screens, and decorative items.

• As an American in the aesthetic movement, he was one of several who worked to introduce art into everyday life.

• Tiffany said his primary consideration was always simply “the pursuit of beauty.”

• At first glance, viewers see a familiar, reverently painted family scene.

• Yet the details hint at an underlying tension, as well as the strictures of late 19th-century society.

• Mary Cassatt (1844-1926): From Japanese prints to French impressionism, Mary Cassatt’s work borrows from an international range of influences.

• Yet her defiance of convention—studying art rather than taking the domestic role expected of a 19th-century woman—reflects a distinctively American spirit of independence.

• To Joseph Stella, this structure was the “shrine containing all the efforts of the new civilization of America.”

• His Futurist rendition of the Brooklyn Bridge was inspired by a night alone on its promenade, surrounded by New York’s noises and pulsating colors, feeling both hemmed in and spiritually uplifted by the city.

• Joseph Stella (1877-1946): An Italian immigrant who relocated to New York City, Stella believed that the revolutionary new art movement of Futurism could best capture the dynamism of modern life and the machine age.

• This bucolic title belies the painting’s subject matter: a lone, anonymous figure dwarfed in an enormous sea of factories.

• According to Charles Sheeler, factories had become a “substitute for religious expression.”

• At the time of its creation, the painting was viewed as depicting the triumph of American ingenuity.

• Charles Sheeler (1883-1965): Ford Motor

Company commissioned Sheeler, a professional photographer, to take six weeks of pictures of its immense plant west of Detroit.

• The experience inspired Sheeler’s Precisionist paintings, which used sharply defined, geometric forms and an emotionally detached style to depict the modern, industrialized world.

• The competitive climate of 1920’s Manhattan drove the creation of this building, which ultimately surpassed even the Eiffel Tower in height.

• Van Alen made it distinctive through inventively applied Art Deco design, using machine-age motifs such as hubcaps and radiator caps, and American eagle heads in place of traditional gargoyles.

• William Van Alen (1883-1954): Brooklyn-born architect William Van Alen was renowned for his progressive, flamboyant designs.

• His main contribution to American architecture was to apply to modern skyscrapers the visual vocabulary of Art Deco, a style that emphasized streamlined motifs and often employed nontraditional materials.

• After the Chrysler Building’s completion, Walter Chrysler accused Van Alen of taking bribes from contractors, and his career ended in obscurity, not even meriting an obituary in The New York Times.

• As the railroad tracks rattle by a once-

grand Victorian home, so intersect the themes of modern progress and historical continuity.

• The painting’s bleakness suggests that Edward Hopper found little to celebrate in America’s post-World War I urbanization.

• Edward Hopper (1882-1967): Believing that American art should capture the character of the nation, Hopper rejected European influences and instead chose to depict the modern life around him.

• He is known for his unsentimental depictions of urban isolation, solitary buildings, and commonplace landscapes.

• How can one enjoy a civilized life within

nature? • Frank Lloyd Wright responded with

American ingenuity to create one of the most original and groundbreaking buildings in modern architecture.

• The dwelling is suspended above a waterfall and nestled into a mountainside, blending modern conveniences with views that make it appear to be a part of nature itself.

• Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959): One of

America’s most influential architects, Wright was known for practicing organic architecture, which promotes harmony between a building and the natural world.

• Fallingwater, commissioned by Pittsburgh department store magnate Edgar J. Kaufmann, is one of his most well-known works.

• Inspired by the musical storytelling of West Africa’s griots, Lawrence employed a painted and written narrative to invoke how African-American families “came up” from the South to settle in cities such as New York, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh.

• Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000): “I always

wanted to be an artist but assumed I’d have to work in a laundry,” Lawrence once said.

• Fortunately the thriving 1920 Harlem arts community and artists such as Charles Alston and Augusta Savage helped nurture him into one of America’s premier African-American artists.

• Created during the heart of the Civil Rights Movement, this collage depicts a bustling city neighborhood with a serene bird at its center.

• It also marked a new artistic direction for Romare Bearden, who for the remainder of his career continued to create collages often referred to as “visual poetry.” 

• Romare Bearden (c. 1911-1988): What is black art?

• As part of the Spiral group of artists, Bearden approached the question from an optimistic, upward-moving attitude and became one of the first artists to depict black popular culture from an African-American point of view.

• His work drew from his own life in North Carolina, Harlem, Pittsburgh, and New York City.

• Adorning the walls of Nashville’s Country

Music Hall of Fame and Museum, this mural has five distinct scenes depicting the music of ordinary Americans.

• It preserves an image of American folkways that were rapidly disappearing, from barn dances to church spirituals to Appalachian ballads.

• Benton was 85 when he painted this mural; it was his final work.

• Thomas Hart Benton (1889–1975): Born in Missouri, Benton was primarily a muralist who gained popularity in the 1930s with fluid, sculpture-like paintings that depicted—and spoke to—ordinary people.

• He rejected the European influence on American art and aimed to paint meaningful, intelligible subjects that would hold broad, popular appeal.

• This iconic photograph of a 32-year-old impoverished mother and her three children does not show a single detail of the destitute pea pickers’ camp where they lived.

• Still, it evokes the uncertainty and despair resulting from continual poverty.

• Featured in newspapers nationwide, this photo and others from the camp shocked America’s conscience and spurred the federal government to ship 20,000 pounds of food to California migrant workers.

• Dorothea Lange (1895–1965): A photographer for President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Resettlement Administration, Lange was hired to document the lives of poverty-stricken migrant workers in California during the Great Depression.

• She set out to “register the things about those people that were more important than how poor they were—their pride, their strength, their spirit.”

• With America fully engaged in World War II,

President Roosevelt’s administration blanketed the nation with messages about four essential human freedoms at the core of democracy.

• The messages failed to gain traction until Norman Rockwell put them into portraits.

• This painting, the first of the four, helped spur the nation to action.

• More than one million people saw Rockwell’s works during a nationwide tour, which helped to sell more than $133 million in war bonds.

• Norman Rockwell (1894–1978): A well-known illustrator for one of America’s most popular magazines, The Saturday Evening Post, Rockwell considered himself the heir of the great illustrators who left their mark during World War I.

• Like them, he wanted to contribute something substantial to his country. Rockwell gained renown for his eye for detail and ability to capture something universal in the commonplace.  

• HAVE A GREAT SUMMER VACATION!!

• BE SAFE AND GOD BLESS YOU.

• MRS. SMITH