Art History IIRomanticism and Realism

American Painting after the Civil War

Winslow Homer painted the sea and country life, John Singer Sargent dazzling portraits, and Henry Ossawa Tanner The Banjo Lesson (1893).

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After the Civil War (1861 to 1865), American painters trained in greater numbers in Paris and Munich, then came home, or stayed abroad, and painted in their own ways. Building on Realism and on the earlier American portrait, they made an American art that held its own.

Winslow Homer

Winslow Homer, Breezing Up (A Fair Wind), 1873 to 1876. National Gallery of Art, Washington.

Winslow Homer (1836 to 1910) began as an illustrator, drawing the Civil War for Harper's Weekly, and taught himself to paint. In Breezing Up a small catboat heels over in a stiff wind off Gloucester, Massachusetts, with three boys and a fisherman aboard. The boat makes a strong diagonal against the choppy green sea; the sail is cut off by the frame, so we feel the speed. Later Homer lived on the Maine coast and painted the sea's power.

Looking closely: The Banjo Lesson

Henry Ossawa Tanner, The Banjo Lesson, 1893. Hampton University Museum, Hampton, Virginia.

Describe. In a plain room, an older man sits with a boy on his knee, helping him play a banjo that is almost too big for him. A table with dishes and a pot stand nearby. Analyze. Two kinds of light meet in the picture: a cool, bluish daylight from the left and the warm glow of a fire at the right. The heads bend together over the instrument, and the light gathers on the hands, the strings and the boy's face. Interpret. It is a scene of patience and love passed from one generation to the next. Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859 to 1937), the leading African American painter of his time, studied with Thomas Eakins in Philadelphia and moved to Paris in 1891. He painted this on a visit home, choosing to show the people of his community with dignity at a time when popular images often mocked them.

Key idea

Winslow Homer painted the sea and country life, John Singer Sargent dazzling portraits, and Henry Ossawa Tanner The Banjo Lesson (1893): American subjects in their own distinct ways.

Common mistake

People think American art only copied Europe. Homer, Thomas Eakins and Tanner trained partly abroad but painted distinctly American subjects: New England fishermen, rowers on Philadelphia's river, family life in the American South. Training abroad is not the same as copying.
John Singer Sargent, The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit, 1882. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

John Singer Sargent (1856 to 1925), born in Florence to American parents, painted the four daughters of a Boston family in their Paris apartment. Instead of a neat row, he scattered them through a deep, dark space, beside two enormous Japanese vases, like a modern Las Meninas. James McNeill Whistler (1834 to 1903) went further from storytelling: he titled the portrait of his mother Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1 (1871), insisting it was mainly an arrangement of color and shape.

Why it works

Why train in Europe? America had few art schools and museums until late in the century. Paris offered drawing from life, great collections and the Salon. But the artists chose their own subjects, and some, like Homer, spent most of their careers painting American life.

Worked example: Reading the light

In The Banjo Lesson, where do the two lights come from, and what do they do?
  1. A cool daylight enters from the left.
  2. A warm firelight glows at the right.
  3. They meet on the figures and the banjo, drawing the eye to the lesson.

Answer: Daylight and firelight meet on the man, the boy and the banjo.

Practice

Pass with 3 right answers, the last 2 in a row. Each right answer earns 2 XP.

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Sources and further reading

@teddyrookbook GitHub