"How paintings were made--in the most literal sense--is an important but largely unknown aspect of the story of American art. This book, like the authors' previous volume on American painting techniques from the colonial period to 1860, is based on descriptions of the materials and methods that painters used, as found in artists' notebooks, painting manuals, magazines, suppliers' catalogues, letters, diaries, books, and interviews. In interpreting this evidence, the authors have made use of their experience as conservators who have treated many important American paintings."--Book jacket.

American genre painting flourished in the thirty years before the Civil War, a period of rapid social change that followed the election of President Andrew Jackson. It has long been assumed that these paintings--of farmers, western boatmen and trappers, blacks both slave and free, middle-class women, urban urchins, and other everyday folk--served as records of an innocent age, reflecting a Jacksonian optimism and faith in the common man. In this enlightening book Elizabeth Johns presents a different interpretation--arguing that genre paintings had a social function that related in a more significant and less idealistic way to the political and cultural life of the time. Analyzing works by William Sidney Mount, George Caleb Bingham, David Gilmore Blythe, Lilly Martin Spencer, and others, Johns reveals the humor and cynicism in the paintings and places them in the context of stories about the American character that appeared in sources ranging from almanacs and newspapers to joke books and political caricature. She compares the productions of American painters with those of earlier Dutch, English, and French genre artists, showing the distinctive interests of American viewers. Arguing that art is socially constructed to meet the interests of its patrons and viewers, she demonstrates that the audience for American genre paintings consisted of New Yorkers with a highly developed ambition for political and social leadership, who enjoyed setting up citizens of the new democracy as targets of satire or condescension to satisfy their need for superiority. It was this network of social hierarchies and prejudices--and not a blissful celebration of American democracy--that informed the look and the richly ambiguous content of genre painting.

A study of an important but anonymous part of the history of American art: the materials and techniques used by American painters. Based on research including artists' recipe books, letters, journals, and painting manuals, it includes topics such as the quest for the 'secrets' of the Old Masters; the application of 'toning' layers; and more.

Paintings By Winslow Homer, Benjamin West, John Trumbull And Many Others.

Collects the best artwork created before, during and following the Civil War, in the years between 1859 and 1876, along with extensive quotations from men and women alive during the war years and text by literary figures, including Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain and Walt Whitman. 15,000 first printing.

"Tells the story of American marine painting from the colonial period to the present, grouping artists by their styles and setting their work in historical context."--Dust jacket.

Explores how the novels of Henry James reflect the significance of the visual culture of his society, and how essential the language and imagery of the arts, as well as friendships with artists, were to James's writing.