The American painters of the Colonial period and of the first fifty years
following the Revolution were followed by a group of landscape painters,
known as the Hudson River school, who were more indigenous and original
than their predecessors. These men enthusiastically transcribed the
scenery of their native America, especially the Catskill Mountains and the
valley of the Hudson.
With George Inness began what might be called the middle school of
American landscape, which came to be one of the most important
contributions that America has made to painting. Inness discarded the
humble literalism of Kensett and the grandiloquence of Bierstadt. Like
his contemporaries at Barbizon, he preferred more intimate subjects, and
of their detail he aimed to give only enough to reproduce the single,
synthetic emotion into which his poetic fire could fuse the scene. Among
his able contemporaries and successors were Wyant, Homer Martin, Tryon,
Eaton, Ranger, Blakelock and Horatio Walker. To this tradition in
landscape was added a virile foundation of marine painting in the works of
Winslow Homer.
Artists of power and individuality, whose influence on the development of
American painting would be difficult to trace, include the great, perhaps
rather un-American, Whistler, revealer of subtle tone relations; Vedder,
master of rhythmic line; La Farge, rich colorist and decorator; Albert P.
Ryder, with his glowing color and romantic imagination; George Fuller,
whose tender poetry and mellow, golden-brown tone were his native gift;
William Morris Hunt, whose enthusiasm as teacher, more than whose example
as artist, revealed to younger men the new breadth and insight of their
contemporaries in France.
The seventies and eighties of the century were marked in general by a
dependence upon the art of Europe. A group of men, including Duveneck,
Chase and Shirlaw, went to Munich whence they brought home a solid,
painter-like technique and a sober tonality. These qualities became a
factor in the early development of such artists in America as John W.
Alexander and Joseph De Camp. Edwin A. Abbey, painting in England,
developed the romantic anecdote. The strongest influence, however, came
out of Paris, mother of modern art movements. The teachings of such
masters as Gerome, Bonnat and Carolus-Duran were assimilated without
sacrifice of individuality. Fresher, breezier color and a more brilliant
technique came into American figure painting. To this group belong
Thayer, Volk, Dewing and Brush, refined painters of figures; Low and Cox,
followers of a more classic tradition; Gari Melchers, whose greater
directness comes partly out of Holland, Mary Cassatt, influenced by Manet
and Degas; and Sargent, whose gusto, spontaneity, and brilliant technique
have made him one of America’s four or five greatest painters.
Weir, Twachtman and Hassam imported the new enthusiasm for Impressionism,
for the use of pure colors in reproducing high-keyed effects of ephemeral
sunlight. Tarbell, Reid, Little, C. H. Davis, Symons, Redfield and
Frieseke show to varying extent the same influences. The present tendency
in American painting seems to be toward greater diversity and a more
unfettered assertion of personality, as exemplified by such men as Davies,
Henri, Hawthorne and Bellows.
[Mount Whitney. Albert Bierstadt, 1830-1902]