More can be written about the American painter Thomas Cole than I could possibly wrap up in a single post, especially with my extremely limited knowledge of him and his work, but I do know some things worth sharing and hope they may lead you elsewhere for your own private elucidation.
Continue reading Thomas Cole, the Past, the Present, and the Course of EmpireCategory Archives: Art History
Defining a Genre: George Caleb Bingham and Genre Painting
When the American Art Union set out to up the standards of American artwork it sought specifically scenes of everyday life in addition to the great high-minded historical painting. One artist capitalized on this trend of “everyday life” paintings in ways few others had or have.
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| George Caleb Bingham |
The Artist and the Sportsman
If you are ever presented with a painting featuring some buckskin clad fur trappers in one or more familiar romantic composition, serve up a guess that it was painted by Alfred Jacob Miller and you will be correct more often than not. In fact, Miller was the only painter of his generation to paint the fur trade, so if you know that the painting in question was created in the early 19th century, you would be right 99.99% of the time.
Pipestone, Peeved Buffalo, and Painted Centaurs
Many pages have been written about George Catlin. The grand total falls somewhere close to an acre of paper timber (I completely made that up so don’t go putting it in your Catlin notes). That hyperbole is, in all actuality, probably a low estimate. Many more megabytes of data have been used on blogs and digital storage of some of his famous Indian paintings. If you ever get a chance you should look more in depth than here about his life, his showmanship, his critics, and his art. One day I hope to have a short post with some of his South America art too, but that is for a later time.
Continue reading Pipestone, Peeved Buffalo, and Painted Centaurs
Personification of America(s)
During the Golden Age of Exploration, maps conveyed as much personality of a place as it did the detail about its physical layout. The continents were usually personified in art, (think Rubens in the early 17th century, among others)
Learning to See
The beauty of finally making it to the “build your own” portion of a PhD program is the ability to make connections outside your department. Having “mastered” the basic foundations of your discipline it is now time to build onto it using materials and tools from far and wide. This is where you carve out your academic niche and bring the history, perspective, and baggage that only you possess. The plan here is to share some of the highlights, links, and images from my foray into Art History of the American West. Hopefully these will be short(er), and entertaining if not illuminating. Plus rehashing what we went over for you will help me remember things.
Continue reading Learning to See