James Thomas Flexner
History of American Painting
Volume Two: The Light of Distant Skier
(1[zasłonięte]760-18)
103 illustrations
Stron 307, format: 14x21 cm
UŻYWANA: stan dobry plus. 103 czarno-białe reprodukcje.
Most of the major painters in the two generations covered in this history spent time in Europe and attempted to link their native convictions with the European tradition. While the painters of the Revolutionary generation succeeded and became leaders in the evolution of European styles, the first painters of the new republic were artistically stifled by their attempts to base a native American tradition on European models.
James Thomas Flexner unfolds this history with the ease of a historical novel. The individual characters and styles of each painter are carefully delineated: Benjamin West, who became president of England's Royal Academy; the versatile and irrepressible Charles Willson Peale; the brooding Trumbull; the eccentric arch-Romantic Washington Allston; Morse, who in despair abandoned painting to invent the telegraph; the confident tailor-dyer-painter Francis Guy; and many others. Flexner also tells of the painters, from semi-sophisticate to "primitive," who did not go to Europe—Audubon, Hicks, and others.
Written with grace, sympathy, and erudition, this book is a valuable contribution to the study of the roots of American consciousness; it is in fact a history of the search for a national spirit in America. It is as useful and enjoyable a historical and philosophical guide as it is a valuable contribution to the history of American art.
"Flexner's series, reminiscent of Van Wyck Brooks's parallel study of our literary heritage, promises to provide the best single introduction to American painting for the nonspecialist. Even the specialist will admire [it]," American Historical Review. "Mr. Flexner writes with spirit and discernment, and the book is pleasant as well as instructive," The New Yorker.
