Making American taste. Narrative art for a new democracy

- hardcover, gebonden, stofwikkel
- uitgave: The New York Historical Society, 2011, 324 p.
- this beautifully illustrated volume reassesses narrative painting and what defined artistic “taste” from 1825 to 1870. The book features 55 works by 38 artists drawn from the New-York Historical Society’s newly restored and superb collection of narrative art.
- Narrative themes in 19th-century American art went beyond the rural and the domestic to include a broad range of historical, literary, and religious subject matter. American art at this time was dominated by powerful arguments about what constituted true art: should it be for the many or the educated few? This in turn reflected the wider debate about the development of the visual arts in a new democratic nation, including whether specifically American art forms and styles should be favoured over more traditional, academic, European traditions. Making American taste looks at these issues through the work of both well-known artists, like Benjamin West, Asher B. Durand, and Eastman Johnson, and less familiar names such as Daniel Huntington, Henry Peters Gray, and Louis Lang.