History of American Painting - Volume Three: That Wilder Image

History of American Painting #3

by James Thomas Flexner

Looks at the work of George Catlin, genre painters, Frederick Church, the Rocky Mountain School, and native American impressionists

429 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1971

About the author

James Thomas Flexner was an American historian and biographer best known for the four-volume biography of George Washington that earned him a National Book Award in Biography and a special Pulitzer Prize. A cum laude graduate of Harvard University, Flexner worked as a reporter for the New York Herald Tribune from 1929 until 1931, after which he worked as an executive secretary for the New York City Department of Health before leaving the job the following year in order to devote his full energies to writing.

Reviews

[Christian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent book on the history of 19th-century American art. Flexner is infectiously enthusiastic about the subject, and has put together a very readable, very informative work.

Sadly, the book has been out of print since the late 80s (originally published in 1962) and the pictures (at least in my 1970 paperback copy) are in black and white. However, it is easy enough to get a cheap copy used and I'm sure a majority of the pictures are available online in color. It could also use a little updating, as, for example, Church's Heart of the Andes is no longer "obscured with grime as it hangs unloved on the walls of the Metropolitan Museum". But the appreciation and criticism contained herein is still valid, and the book deserves its place on the bookstore shelf.

I do have to feel for poor Flexner; he argued first and convincingly that the "Rocky Mountain School" of Bierstadt and Moran should be considered distinct from the "Hudson River School" of Cole and Church, yet the most recent Hudson River School book (although a rerelease from the 70s), American Wilderness, has a Bierstadt on the cover. I guess he lost that argument.