American Painting of the Nineteenth Century: Realism, Idealism, and the American Experience

by Barbara Novak

In this distinguished work, which Hilton Kramer in The New York Times Book Review called "surely the best book ever written on the subject," Barbara Novak illuminates what is essentially American about American art. She highlights not only those aspects that appear indigenously in our art works, but also those features that consistently reappear over time. Novak examines the paintings of Washington Allston, Thomas Cole, Asher B. Durand, Fitz H. Lane, William Sidney Mount, Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins, and Albert Pinkham Ryder. She draws provocative and original conclusions about the role in American art of spiritualism and mathematics, conceptualism and the object, and Transcendentalism and the fact. She analyzes not only the paintings but nineteenth-century aesthetics as well, achieving a unique synthesis of art and literature.
Now available with a new preface and an updated bibliography, this lavishly illustrated volume--featuring more than one hundred black-and-white illustrations and sixteen full-color plates--remains one of the seminal works in American art history.

Genres: Art History, Art, Nonfiction

318 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1979

Reviews

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't know if it's the intervening quarter-century of museum going or just the intervening quarter-century of years that has changed my perspective on this book, first encountered back in graduate school--but what seemed (despite my best will) dust-dry then seems to me now to be barely containing its secrets on the nature of the American aesthetic. I wish the reproductions were in color (read this near a net connection) but otherwise can't speak highly enough about it.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although this book is undoubtedly among the most successful surveys of this topic, I cannot give it five stars. It is mentally exhausting, with analysis that (at times) borders on tedious fluff. Novak has perfectly distilled the very essence of what makes American Art of the 19th century so "American," except the delivery may have benefited from a skilled editor. Nonetheless, a good treatment of the subject .

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

An important book with with a breathtaking omission. Novak doesn't even mention Frederick Edwin Church, probably the most accomplished painter of the century. She rectifies this in Nature and Culture, but this is why I give the book only 4 stars. But she indelibly marks American Art of the Nineteenth Century as linear.

[Jacob · Rating 4 out of 5]

a bit stuffy, but still a very good (maybe the best) analysis of what makes 19th century American painting distinctly American.