Homer, Eakins, and Anshutz: The Search for American Identity in the Gilded Age - Hardcover

Griffin, Randall C.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0271023295 ISBN 13: 9780271023298

Publisher: Penn State University Press, 2004

Synopsis

Randall Griffin’s book examines the ways in which artists and critics sought to construct a new identity for America during the era dubbed the Gilded Age because of its leaders’ taste for opulence. Artists such as Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins, and Thomas Anshutz explored alternative “American” themes and styles, but widespread belief in the superiority of European art led them and their audiences to look to the Old World for legitimacy. This rich, never-resolved contradiction between the native and autonomous, on the one hand, and, on the other, the European and borrowed serves as the armature of Griffin’s innovative look at how and why the world of art became a key site in the American struggle for identity.

Not only does Griffin trace the interplay of issues of nationalism, class, and gender in American culture, but he also offers insightful readings of key paintings by Eakins and other canonical artists. Further, Griffin shows that by 1900 the nationalist project in art and criticism had helped open the way for the formulation of American modernism.

Homer, Eakins, and Anshutz will be of importance to all those interested in American culture as well as to specialists in art history and art criticism.

About this title

About the Author:

Randall C. Griffin is Associate Professor of Art History at the Southern Methodist University and the author of the exhibition catalogue, Thomas Anshutz: Artist and Teacher (1994).

Review:

“Homer, Eakins, and Anshutz is an important contribution to the field of nineteenth-century American art history. Randall Griffin argues that nationalistic concerns in art led to a perceptible shift in subject matter in painting. The new paintings displayed a remarkably large range of subjects, as evidenced by works as different as Thomas Eakins’s Swimming Hole and Winslow Homer’s beloved Adirondack pictures. As Griffin describes in cogent detail, they all bear on or issue out of the question of how ‘American-ness’ can be construed in relation to the enormous weight of European influence and artistic traditions.”

—Anthony Lee, Mount Holyoke College

“Griffin has prepared a rare gem. He combines insightful expert opinion with enough general information so that his book will interest the non-specialist.”

—P.J. Trimpe, Choice

“Randall Griffin’s well-written and accessible study.”

—Martin A. Berger, CAA Reviews

“Homer, Eakins, and Anshutz: The Search for American Identity in the Gilded Age does several things well.”

—Martin A. Berger, CAA Reviews

About this edition

• Publisher: Penn State University Press
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0271023295
• ISBN 13: 9780271023298
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192