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Painting American: The Rise of American Artists, Paris 1867-New York 1948
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 759.1309034
EAN: 9780679450931
ISBN: 0679450939
Label: Knopf
Manufacturer: Knopf
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 448
Publication Date: October 16, 2001
Publisher: Knopf
Release Date: October 16, 2001
Studio: Knopf
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Editorial Review:
In the 19th century, American artists had to travel to France for validation; by the mid 20th century, the center of the art world had shifted to the United States. How did this happen? The French author of Sartre: A Life, Annie Cohen-Solal traces this shift in the balance of aesthetic power in the sparsely illustrated volume Painting American. Little more than a rehash of the relevant portions of French and American art history, it will not appeal to specialists looking for major new findings or novel interpretations. But it may be just the ticket for anyone curious about what the sober ranks of 19th-century American artists were learning in the heady world of Parisian art or the motives of American philanthropists who brought European art to the U.S. Particularly welcome is the unusual attention paid to developments in American art outside New York. --Cathy Curtis
Shortly after the Civil War, a resurgent America strode brashly onto the hallowed ground of the Paris salon to present its most distinguished painters in the Exposition Universelle of 1867. Their offereings included majestic Western waterfalls, magnificent portraits, sprawling landscapes--the cream of a nation ready to assert itself culturally as it had begun to do so economically. The Americans sat back to bask in anticipated applause.But their confidence would be shattered when the luminaries of the French Academy condemned the spectacle as being unworthy of the great nation that had produced it. The rebuke provoked widespread soulsearching in America: Why was the land of Melville and Poe unable to produce paintings of comparable power? How was it to claim a place among nations producing art of real consequence?In this magnificent historical panorama, Annie Cohen-Solal shows how American pragmatism furnished the solution: Learn from the best. The French were then the undisputed masters of painting, and so to France the Americans went in hordes, apprenticing themselves in the studios of reknowned masters--Gérôme, Cabanel, and others--or founding colonies such as the legendary one at Pont-Aven. From the seeds of their individual efforts would grow an extraordinary crop, one that included not only the great--Whistler, Cassatt, Sargent--but a legion of artists of all ranks who collectively pushed forward a bold new American enterprise. In two generations, Paris would be eclipsed, and the greatest French artists would begin coming to New York to be at the new center of everything.Meticulously researched and presented as a captivating story, this book tells the saga of the rise of American artists as we have never had it before: a surging transatlatic ebb and flow of cultural energies, driven by innumberable fascinating individuals--painters, collectors, critics, titans of industry--some of them now famous, others forgotten. Informed throughout by the author's unique perspective as a scholar, a writer, and a cultural diplomat, Painting American offers an utterly new understanding of one of the greatest changes in cultural history.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - A Solid History of the Era
I have nearly completed 'Painting American' and have found it to be a fine review of an interesting period. As a student of the American Gilded Age I found that Cohen-Solal's book represented this period well. Yes, there are some inaccuracies (i.e. George Hearst not George Hearn. Cornelius Vanderbilt did not buy Rosa Bonheur paintings, his son William H did) but what made the book interesting to me was her use of seldom accessed European sources written at the turn of the century; newspaper reviews ... Read More
Rating:  - Franco-centric account of American Art
I became immediately suspicious of this book when I noticed that only one of the blurbs on the back cover came from an art historian of this period; the others were from a historian, pop-historian Ken Burns, a museum director, and Kirkus Reviews. And in reading the book, I understand why no other scholars of 19th & 20th century American art reviewed the text. In overwrought prose, alternatively patronizing and celebratory, Cohen-Solal suggests that France is responsible for all that is good in ... Read More
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