In order to explore the impact of early “moving pictures” on painting, it’s best to begin with Thomas Eakins, whose work Swimming is featured below:

Above: Thomas Eakins (American, 1844–1916). Swimming, 1885. Oil on canvas; 27 3/8 x 36 3/8 in. (69.5 x 92.4 cm). Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas, Purchased by the Friends of Art, Fort Worth Art Association, 1925; acquired by the Amon Carter Museum, 1990, from the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth through grants and donations from the Amon G. Carter Foundation, the Sid W. Richardson Foundation, the Anne Burnett and Charles Tandy Foundation, Capital Cities/ABC Foundation, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, The R. D. and Joan Dale Hubbard Foundation, and the people of Fort Worth (1990.19.1).

The painting’s composition encourages the viewer’s eye to follow a circular path—the outstretched arm of the swimming figure points our gaze toward the red-headed figure emerging from water, who in turn leads our eye up to the lounging figure on the outcropping. We then see a kneeling figure, a standing figure, and another that is diving into the water, leading our eye back down to the swimmer. The progression of figures and poses suggests the idea of motion, as though the different stages of action represented in the painting are still frames from a film. Eakins used photography to inform his activities as a painter, and over the course of his career, he (along with his students and associates) captured hundreds of photographic images of nude models to deepen his already thorough understanding of human anatomy. During the mid-1880s, he began experimenting with motion photography, devising a special shutter that would allow him to capture the stages of a figure’s movement on a single photographic plate. Here’s an example of one of Eakins’s photographs from the Met’s collection:

Above: Thomas Eakins (American, 1844–1916). Gelatin silver print. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of Charles Bregler, 1944 (44.75.10). See the Collection Database to learn more about this work of art.

The image of episodic movement is reminiscent of the figures in Swimming and the idea of motion that they convey. It’s possible to see how Eakins’s attempts to capture motion on film affected his painted compositions. As a teacher, Eakins passed his interest in photography on to his students, including Thomas Anshutz, whose work often signals this influence.  See the example below:

Thomas Anshutz (American, 1851–1912). The Ironworkers’ Noontime, 1880. Oil on canvas; 17 x 23 7/8 in. (43.2 x 60.6 cm). Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd (1979.7.4).

Anshutz began studying with Eakins in Philadelphia in 1875 and by 1880 he was involved with photography. He would go on to assist with his teacher’s motion studies, but these experiments had yet to begin when he painted his view of West Virginia factory workers. The figures, who stand in a frieze-like arrangement, convey a sense of kinetic energy through the varied poses they strike. Indeed, the serial repetition of figures in a line is reminiscent of the repetition we see in early photographic motion studies.

Anshutz’s interest in conveying motion in his paintings was passed on to his student Robert Henri, who then introduced it to his own associates and pupils, including William Glackens, John Sloan, Everett Shinn, and George Bellows. Henri encouraged other artists to depict New York City life, which Bellows did in his view of a densely populated Lower East Side neighborhood, seen below:

Above: George Bellows (American, 1882–1925). Cliff Dwellers, 1913. Oil on canvas; 40 1/4 x 42 1/8 in. (102.1 x 106.8 cm). Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Fund (16.4). Photograph © 2009 Museum Associates / LACMA.

In Cliff Dwellers, children play, vendors sell from carts, and a streetcar inches its way through the lively throng. (For more information about Cliff Dwellers, listen to the related Met Podcast episode with Joyce Mendelsohn and Annie Polland, two historians of New York’s Lower East Side.) Like Bellows’s painting, early-twentieth-century films of New York City streets often emphasized the sometimes chaotic movement of the crowds that passed before the lens. (As an example, see the 1903 film by the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company called At the foot of the Flatiron, available through the Library of Congress website.) In Moving Pictures: American Art and Early Film, 1880–1910, the art historian Nancy Mowll Mathews writes that films and paintings in the early twentieth century often presented cities as living things. In Cliff Dwellers, with its emphasis on the surging, crisscrossing crowds, we see the streets of New York as a living being, which parallels the visual language of motion pictures.

In some cases, it was a painting that influenced film, rather than the other way around. Frederic Remington’s Fight for the Water Hole, for example, depicts a fictional dramatic moment, as cowboys defend a precious water source from enemies on horseback in the background:

Above: Frederic Remington (American, 1861–1909). Fight for the Water Hole, 1903. Oil on canvas; 27 1/4 x 40 1/8 in. (69.2 x 102 cm). The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, The Hogg Brothers Collection, gift of Miss Ima Hogg (43.25).

The inherent drama of many of Remington’s works, which were often reproduced and widely circulated, went on to inspire directors of early Hollywood westerns, like John Ford. Fight for the Water Hole had a particularly concrete impact on film, appearing as an image in a 1920 silent movie called The Mollycoddle. (Our thanks to Jim Hoberman, film critic for the Village Voice, for bringing this to our attention.) In the film, a pampered American sophisticate played by Douglas Fairbanks studies a reproduction of Fight for the Water Hole, which inspires him to recapture a more rugged masculinity.

It has been a pleasure for me to investigate just a few of the myriad stories told by the paintings in American Stories. This is my final post, but the blog and the special feature will remain online for those who’d like to revisit the more than one hundred iconic paintings that were included in galleries. For those of you who are able, I invite and encourage you to visit the exhibition at its next venue, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where it will be on view from February 28 to May 23, 2010.

—Katie Steiner

All of the paintings in the exhibition are oils, and the majority of them were painted on canvas. (The few exceptions to canvas include wood, academy board, laminated paperboard, and bed ticking.) The artists who created them would have followed an established sequence of steps. Working on a stretched canvas, he or she would have sealed the surface with size—a glue-like substance that makes the fibers less absorbent. Next, the artists would prime the canvas with a layer of paint, either white or tinted, to smooth out the surface. This layer, also called the ground, would provide the base for the painted composition. Usually, once the artist had finished working and let the paint dry, he or she would apply a layer of varnish to protect the paint film and saturate the colors.

Many oil paintings remain stable for centuries, but, depending on an artist’s materials and techniques, some works undergo changes over time. Take, for instance, James McNeill Whistler’s view of London’s Cremorne Gardens, seen below:

Above: James McNeill Whistler (American, 1834–1903). Cremorne Gardens, No. 2, 1872–77. Oil on canvas; 27 x 53 1/8 in. (68.6 x 134.9 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, John Stewart Kennedy Fund, 1912 (12.32). Photograph © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

When I lead tour groups through the exhibition, someone almost always asks why this painting looks so dark. While it does depict the park in the evening—when it often came alive with theater and music performances and firework displays—we also have evidence that the painting has gotten darker with age. Like many of his other nocturnes, Whistler’s Cremorne Gardens was painted on a gray ground, which is discernible near the edges of the canvas. We know that he chose his ground colors carefully, since he used them to achieve the sense of tonal harmony that was important to much of the art that he produced. By working up his compositions in paint thinned to a very liquid consistency, primarily with turpentine and linseed oil, he enabled at least some of the ground layer to show through the surface, which lent his works greater unity.

Over time, the oil in oil paint undergoes chemical changes that may increase the transparency of the paint. Consequently, even more of the gray ground that Whistler had intentionally revealed with his very thinned-out paint has become visible, leading to an overall darkening effect. Some paintings darken so severely over time that the composition is no longer legible, but that’s hardly true with Cremorne Gardens. In fact, the time-altered surface of the work has offered useful insights into the artist’s methods. Whistler strove to disguise the signs of labor in his paintings, stating that “. . . a picture is finished when all trace of the means used to bring about the end have disappeared.” However, the chemical changes that have affected Cremorne Gardens enable us to grasp Whistler’s careful choices in building up the layers of his painting, making it possible to read a story about his techniques while also enjoying the main narrative about London nightlife.

The paint on two canvases by Winslow Homer has also become more transparent over time, revealing compositional changes that the artist had attempted to conceal:

Above, from left to right: Winslow Homer (American, 1836–1910). The Veteran in a New Field, 1865. Oil on canvas; 24 1/8 x 38 1/8 in. (61.3 x 96.8 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Bequest of Miss Adelaide Milton de Groot (1876–1967), 1967 (67.187.131). Photograph © The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Winslow Homer (American, 1836–1910). The Gale, 1883–93. Oil on canvas; 30 1/4 x 48 1/4 in. (76.8 x 122.7 cm). Worcester Art Museum, Massachusetts, Museum Purchase (1916.48).

Originally, the reaper in The Veteran in a New Field held a cradled scythe, consisting of a blade and a series of parallel spokes that would catch and cut stalks of wheat and make piling easier. (See an illustration of a cradled scythe.) Homer changed his mind about the cradle and painted it out, but we can still see the pentimento, or alteration, because of the partially transparent paint film on the work’s surface. This alteration offers insight into Homer’s storytelling process and his attempt to augment the painting’s symbolic power, as the art historian Nicolai Cikovsky Jr. has argued. (See Cikovsky and Franklin Kelly, Winslow Homer, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995.) By simplifying the scythe, Homer heightened an association to the Grim Reaper, and thus hinted at the death and suffering this veteran of the Civil War would have witnessed. (For more on Homer’s change to the scythe and its impact on the painting’s narrative, listen to the related Met Podcast episode with James McPherson.)

Time has also rendered Homer’s extensive changes to The Gale visible. Today, we can discern multiple pentimenti in this composition, including a life brigade shelter, just above the rocks at left, and a lifeboat, whose form stretches diagonally from the rocks to the right side of the canvas. As in the case of The Veteran in a New Field, the alterations to The Gale shed light on the evolution of Homer’s storytelling—what began as a more concrete tale of a young mother’s concern for a loved one on the rough seas was transformed into a more general narrative about figures braving the elements. Kevin M. Murphy, curator at the Huntington Library, argued in a 2002 Winterthur Portfolio article that the changes to The Gale are indicative of Homer’s commercial concerns. Murphy noted that Homer avoided private commissions and instead showed his work at exhibitions, galleries, and clubs as a way of generating sales. When Homer first exhibited The Gale at the National Academy of Design in 1883, the shelter and boat were still part of the composition, but the work failed to please critics or consumers. The work eventually found a buyer in 1893, after the artist had amended the composition. In this way, The Gale and its changes illustrate Homer’s concern with the salability of his works and the ways in which his vision could be affected by his sensitivity to the marketplace.

Finally, Matthew Pratt’s American School, which I also discussed in an earlier post, “Paintings within Paintings,” has undergone a different type of physical change: a feature that the artist intended to appear has, over the years, disappeared. Pratt depicts himself seated before an easel on the right, at what appears to be a blank canvas. However, when the painting is viewed under different conditions, we see a surprise:

Above, from left to right: Matthew Pratt (American, 1734–1805). The American School, 1765. Oil on canvas; 36 x 50 1/4 in. (91.4 x 127.6 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of Samuel P. Avery, 1897 (97.29.3). Photograph © The Metropolitan Museum of Art; an ultraviolet photograph of a detail of the painting. Photograph © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The original canvas included a chalk drawing of a draped figure, which is now only visible when it fluoresces under an ultraviolet bulb. How might the knowledge of this once-present figure enhance the story that the painting tells? In a 1993 Metropolitan Museum Journal article, Susan Rather of the University of Texas at Austin noted that the faded figure on Pratt’s canvas originated from his imagination, rather than from a model in the studio. By showing himself capable of conjuring up a female form from memory, Pratt would have emphasized the power of his artistic imagination, casting himself as a creative and professional painter ready for commissions. Knowing about the missing figure contributes to our understanding of The American School as a self-promotional tool for the artist.

I encourage you to come to the galleries and take a closer look at these and other paintings in the exhibition in this final week. The exhibition will be on view through Sunday, January 24.

—Katie Steiner

One of the earliest paintings in American Stories to be translated into a mezzotint shortly after its completion is John Singleton Copley’s Watson and the Shark, shown below. (See “The Printed Image in the West: Mezzotint” in the Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History to learn more about mezzotints.)

Above: John Singleton Copley (American, 1738–1815). Watson and the Shark, 1778. Oil on canvas; 71 3/4 x 90 1/2 in. (182.1 x 229.7 cm). National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Ferdinand Lammot Belin Fund (1963.6.1). Image courtesy of the Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Copley exhibited his work at London’s Royal Academy in 1778, where it was met with critical acclaim. The mezzotint after the painting, engraved by the noted printmaker Valentine Green and called A Youth Rescued from a Shark (The British Museum), appeared the following year. Green’s skills were widely acknowledged during his lifetime; he became mezzotint engraver to King George III in 1773 and was elected to the Royal Academy as one of only six associate engravers in 1775. Green’s interpretation of Copley’s painting remains faithful to the original canvas, but his deft handling of the water’s translucency and convincing glimpse of Brook Watson’s body through the waves also make the print a work of art in itself. The fact that one of Britain’s best mezzotint makers created an exquisite print after Copley’s painting suggests the high regard that Londoners had for the canvas. The inscription in the lower margin of the mezzotint, which appears in both English and French, also indicates a desire to show continental audiences the best of what London’s artists had to offer.

Green engraved on copper plates, which become worn with continued use, and he often limited the number of impressions drawn from them in order to control the quality of the final prints. In the nineteenth century, printmakers aiming at mass markets turned to engraving on steel in order increase the number of impressions their plates could yield. This technique was used to create a print after George Caleb Bingham’s Jolly Flatboatmen, of which about ten thousand impressions—including this one—were made:

Above, from left to right: George Caleb Bingham (American, 1811–1879). The Jolly Flatboatmen, 1846. Oil on canvas; 38 1/8 x 48 1/2 in. (96.8 x 123.2 cm). Manoogian Collection; Thomas Doney (b. France; active in New York City 1844–1849), engraver; The Jolly Flatboatmen, 1847. Published by American Art-Union; Printed by Powell and Company American; Steel engraving; 21 1/2 x 26 1/2 in. (54.6 x 67.3 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gertrude and Thomas Jefferson Mumford Collection, Gift of Dorothy Quick Mayer, 1942 (42.119.68).

The print was distributed by the American Art-Union, a New York organization that collected and exhibited art and encouraged the development of an American school of painting. Annual membership to the Art-Union cost about five dollars, and benefits included at least one print after a work of art in its collection. Members also received a chance to win an original painting. The Jolly Flatboatmen, purchased by the Art-Union in 1846, was engraved by the French émigré Thomas Doney and distributed as the annual print in 1847. Although the engraving plate was made of steel, Doney had to retouch it to extend its life during the printing process to accommodate the more-than-anticipated number of members. In spite of the delays in creating and mailing the engraving, it was well received, and it helped to establish The Jolly Flatboatmen as one of the most recognizable works of everyday American life in the nineteenth century.

In 1851, Richard Caton Woodville’s War News from Mexico was engraved and distributed to Art-Union Members as Mexican News (The Library of Congress). In light of the demand for engravings of contemporary American works, rival art unions and publishing firms distributed prints as well. For instance, the Paris-based firm of Goupil, Vibert & Co. issued six lithographs that reproduced paintings by William Sidney Mount, including a version of The Power of Music (The Library of Congress).  (See an image of the painting.) As in the case of A Youth Rescued from a Shark, the series of Mount prints was aimed at European audiences who desired glimpses of American life. (See also “Lithography in the Nineteenth Century” in the Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History.)

Later in the nineteenth century, many painters, including Winslow Homer, had a more direct involvement in printmaking. Between 1857 and 1873, Homer designed illustrations for prominent periodicals such as Harper’s Weekly. During this time, magazine illustrations typically originated from wood engravings, which were faster and more economical to produce than metal-plate engravings. As an illustrator, Homer provided the designs for prints, sometimes drawing directly onto the prepared surface of the wooden printing matrix, which then would have been incised by a single carver, or sometimes even a team of carvers to speed the process. While many of Homer’s illustrations were independent works, some periodicals published prints after his paintings. Take, for example, the wood engraving High Tide, which reproduces Eagle Head, Manchester, Massachusetts (High Tide):

Above, from left to right: Winslow Homer (American, 1836–1910). Eagle Head, Manchester, Massachusetts (High Tide), 1870. Oil on canvas; 26 x 38 in. (66 x 96.5 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of Mrs. William F. Milton, 1923 (23.77.2). Photograph © The Metropolitan Museum of Art; High Tide, 1870. Wood engraving; sheet: 10 1/2 x 14 7/16 in. (26.6 x 36.7 cm); plate: 9 3/16 x 12 1/16 in. (23.4 x 30.7 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1930 (30.75.1(1)).

The wood engraving appeared in the August 6, 1870, edition of the illustrated literary journal Every Saturday. Scholars disagree on the level of involvement that Homer had in designing the print, and it’s interesting to note how it differs from the painting. The figures in the print appear larger and are more legible against the simplified horizon, and the seated figure has a more straightforward, bemused expression than her painted counterpart. In addition, the girls’ bare legs are covered by leggings, and a bathing cap substitutes for the agitated dog. Whether made by Homer or by another designer, these changes tone down the painting’s aggressive and potentially indecorous elements, rendering it more suitable for a family-oriented publication.

Mary Cassatt was also an accomplished painter and graphic artist, but, unlike Homer—who designed but didn’t engrave—she was adept at engraving, etching, and aquatint. Perhaps as a result, the relationships between her printed and painted works are often more complex than the examples discussed above. Take for instance, the case of Young Mother Sewing:

Above: Mary Cassatt (American, 1844–1926). Young Mother Sewing, 1900. Oil on canvas; 36 3/8 x 29 in. (92.4 x 73.7 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, H. O. Havemeyer Collection, Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929 (29.100.48). Photograph © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Cassatt continued to explore the theme seen here—a young child leaning against her mother—in a series of drypoint engravings made in the years just after the completion of this painting. (See “The Printed Image in the West: Drypoint” in the Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History for more about this technique.) Impressions of two related drypoints—called Jeanette Leaning against Her Mother and Reine Leaning on a Sofa—are in the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art, and another, entitled The Crocheting Lesson (Art Resource), is housed at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Drypoint plates yield only a handful of good impressions, so Cassatt’s aim was not mass distribution, but perhaps to develop in print ideas she had begun in paint.

Prints tell us not only about how past audiences experienced works of contemporary art, but also, at least in some instances, about how artists responded to and modified their own work. Several additional artists featured in American Stories (such as Francis William Edmonds, Frederic Remington, and John Sloan) had their ideas translated into prints. I encourage you to keep looking for examples; the rewards, like prints themselves, will only multiply.

—Katie Steiner

You may remember one of the earliest paintings in the exhibition—Ralph Earl’s portrait of Elijah Boardman—which I discussed in “Old Friends in a New Light” and have included again here:

Above: Ralph Earl (American, 1751–1801). Elijah Boardman, 1789. Oil on canvas; 83 x 51 in. (210.8 x 129.5 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Bequest of Susan W. Tyler, 1979 (1979.395). Photograph © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Boardman was a successful dry-goods merchant in New Milford, Connecticut, and Earl shows him standing beside a door in his shop that opens into a stockroom filled with bolts of fine fabric. We know the material is precious because a tax stamp, affixed to the corner of the gray-brown fabric draped over the edge of the lowest shelf, indicates that it has been imported from Europe. Boardman wouldn’t have sold ready-made clothing, which became widely available only after the invention of the sewing machine, but in this portrait he serves as a living mannequin, modeling the elegant fashions that could be created from his goods. In addition to actual material goods, Boardman also sells an image of himself as a sophisticated man of distinction who nonetheless earns his living through trade, and is thus aligned with his community’s egalitarian principles. Indeed, although Boardman’s family was one of New Milford’s wealthiest and most prominent, their status, like that of other affluent citizens in the early republic, was kept in check by a societal resistance to the formation of a new aristocracy.

While Earl’s painting serves as a billboard for his sitter’s good citizenship and enticing wares, other works in American Stories cast a more skeptical eye on the business of fashion. Two such canvases depicting young women who have splurged on bonnets are pictured below:

Above, from left to right: Francis William Edmonds (American, 1806–1863). The New Bonnet, 1858. Oil on canvas; 25 x 30 1/8 in. (63.5 x 76.5 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Purchase, Erving Wolf Foundation Gift and Gift of Hanson K. Corning, by exchange, 1975 (1975.27.1). Photograph © The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Eastman Johnson (American, 1824–1906). The New Bonnet, 1876. Oil on academy board; 20 3/4 x 27 in. (52.7 x 68.6 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Bequest of Collis P. Huntington, 1900 (25.110.11). Photograph © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In Francis William Edmonds’s painting, a young delivery girl has just brought a new hat to the woman at center, who admires the purchase while her parents grimace at the bill. Hat-wearing rituals have essentially vanished, so it’s worthwhile to delve into a bit of costume history to understand the appeal of a bonnet such as the one Edmonds has depicted here.

During the nineteenth century, as in earlier eras, it was common for women of all classes to wear some form of head covering indoors and out, and their hats communicated a great deal of information about them. By looking back on these items through the lens of history, we can use them to understand the times in which they were made. In the 1850s, the growth of machine-manufactured fabrics and trimmings led to an increase in decoration on headwear. We get a sense of these new and exuberant decorative possibilities in the bonnet in Edmonds’s painting, which is trimmed with frothy white lace and blue ribbon around the brim, with matching blue ribbon ties. The bonnet itself is probably made of straw, but this seemingly humble material was often imported from Leghorn, Italy, which produced an especially desirable variety. The richness of the materials that appeared on American bonnets of the 1850s can be seen in an example from Met’s collection:

Above: Bonnet (Poke Bonnet), 1856. American. straw; Height: 12 in. (30.5 cm); Length: 9 1/2 in. (24.1 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of Mrs. Richard T. Auchtmuty, 1917 (17.15.7). See the Collection Database to learn more about this work.

The bonnet, like the one in Edmonds’s painting, displays a distinctive curved shape at its base, and is made of Leghorn straw, silk lace, taffeta, and sprays of flowers. The fine and varied trimmings on this hat speak to the material abundance of the era, but also to the means of the person who wore it. Headwear indicated status, and we see this fact clearly in Edmonds’s work. The young woman he depicts has purchased a fancy bonnet, in contrast to her mother’s simple white cap and clearly distinct from the shawl that the delivery girl uses to cover her head. Perhaps she is hoping to project an air of affluence and attract the attention of a specific class of men.

While Edmonds uses exaggerated gestures to emphasize the comedic tensions caused by overindulgent shopping, Eastman Johnson’s treatment of a similar drama is more somber in tone, setting subtle interactions among family members within a shadowy interior. Here, a young woman shows off the bonnet she’s just acquired to her sister, who fixes a drink for their father, cold and fatigued from the outing. In this scene, painted nearly twenty years after Edmonds’s, the new hat is covered with a dark fabric and is festooned with feathers and a long veil. Again, we see a woman who has indulged in a fashion accessory that would aid flirtation; the veil would have functioned as an attention-grabber. By the 1860s and 1870s, bonnets frequently featured veils or streamers, often called “follow me lads.” (See an example in the Met’s collection.)

Although millinery shops are rare today, the shopping impulse chronicled by Johnson and Edmonds remains familiar, as people splurge on fashion items to enhance their attractiveness. On the surface, both paintings tell stories about women buying hats, but, more broadly, they chronicle the increasing availability of luxury goods in America and the great temptations they offered. In addition, both paintings associate shopping with a degree of guilt. As viewers, we sympathize with Edmonds’s poor delivery girl, who suffers in the face of another’s frivolity, and with Johnson’s exhausted father. Edmonds, who pursued dual careers as an artist and banker, perhaps knew too well the growing divide between the rich and poor and the dangers of unbridled consumption. Johnson, who based his painting on studies made in Nantucket, perhaps longed for simpler times.

By the early years of the twentieth century, the emergence of large department stores, like Wanamaker’s and Filene’s, helped to change perceptions about the hazards of consumerism, promoting instead a “democratization of desire,” as the historian William Leach has stated in his book Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture (New York: Pantheon, 1993). As manufacturing increased the availability of goods, it became more acceptable for Americans of all income levels to desire the same things. Indeed, William Glackens’s The Shoppers speaks to the way in which attitudes about consumption had changed:

Above: William Glackens (American, 1870–1938). The Shoppers, 1907–8. Oil on canvas; 60 x 60 in. (152.4 x 152.4 cm). Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia, Gift of Walter P. Chrysler Jr. (71.651). Photograph © The Estate of William Glackens, courtesy Kraushaar Galleries Inc., New York.

At the center of the painting is the artist’s wife, Edith, who examines lingerie in the company of female friends. The setting is most likely the New York branch of Wanamaker’s, which opened in the city’s Washington Square neighborhood in 1906 and was located only a few blocks from the Glackens’s residence. Unlike Edmonds and Johnson, Glackens doesn’t reproach or satirize the women’s shopping activities, and no men are present to serve as foils. Rather, the artist depicts shopping as a facet of the everyday urban American experience that he and the other Ashcan artists sought to chronicle.

While we may no longer dress to the hilt for an afternoon of shopping, the experience of being enticed and entertained by a department store, as I was when I went to see the display windows, still applies. I’m fascinated by the ways in which the four paintings I’ve discussed here convey the joys and pitfalls of American consumption with such continued relevance. In this season of sharing, I welcome you to contribute your observations here, and wish you safe and happy holidays.

—Katie Steiner

Above, from left to right: Frank Waller (American, 1842–1923). Interior View of The Metropolitan Museum of Art when in Fourteenth Street (detail), 1881. Oil on canvas; 24 x 20 in. (61 x 50.8 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Purchase, 1895 (95.29). Photograph © The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Samuel F. B. Morse (American, 1791–1872). Gallery of the Louvre (detail), 1831–33. Oil on canvas; 73 3/4 in. x 9 ft. (187.3 x 274.3 cm). Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago, Daniel J. Terra Collection (1992.51). Photograph: Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago / Art Resource, NY; Charles Willson Peale (American, 1741–1827). The Artist in His Museum (detail), 1822. Oil on canvas; 8 ft. 7 3/4 in. x 79 7/8 in. (263.5 x 202.9 cm). Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Gift of Mrs. Sarah Harrison (The Joseph Harrison Jr. Collection) (1878.1.2).

Museums can play a number of roles, but missions of education have been common throughout history. In some cases, these didactic missions are evident in works of art as well. Frank Waller’s painting shows two of the second-floor galleries of the Met (when it was located on West Fourteenth Street), and it includes works that were actually on view at the time. The painting above the lintel at the center is The Wages of War by the American artist Henry Peters Gray, but most of the other works that have been identified are by European masters. To the left of the door, for instance, are Anthony Van Dyck’s painting of Saint Rosalie and, above it, Cornelis de Vos’s Portrait of a Young Woman. We know from his writings that Waller admired European art; perhaps by directing viewers toward these works he hoped to instruct their tastes as well. He may even have wanted his fellow Americans to follow the example of the studious female visitor he depicts, who leans in intently to absorb art’s lessons.

Samuel F. B. Morse’s painting of the Louvre’s Salon Carré also features European masterworks. Less concerned than Waller with accurately depicting the gallery space, Morse was perhaps more ambitious in presenting lessons to a broader audience. The American figures depicted—including James Fenimore Cooper, and Morse himself—are shown studying and copying the masterworks. Waller exhibited this monumental canvas in New York and New Haven as both a spectacle and a tool for teaching European art, and even produced a pamphlet identifying all of the featured works to assist in educating his audience.

In Charles Willson Peale’s painting, the artist depicts himself lifting a theatrical red curtain to reveal the interior of the Philadelphia Museum, which he and his family founded and managed. The galleries were devoted to the natural sciences and art, with fossils and portraits occupying the same spaces. Through the strategic arrangement of objects intended to instruct visitors to his museum—and viewers of his painting—Peale established a hierarchy of life forms: human beings, represented in portraits, surmount dioramas of bird specimens, which in turn stand above the fossils of extinct animals resting on the floor in the foreground. Like the Louvre and the Met, Peale’s museum was a place of learning, but it was also devoted to creating spectacles. The artist shows himself lifting the curtain just enough to provide a partial, tantalizing glimpse at the mastodon skeleton in the background at right.

It’s also interesting to note how Peale depicts the reactions of the male and female visitors in this painting. While the adult man and his young companion respond calmly—the boy even holds a book, emphasizing his rational and intellectual nature—the woman throws her hands up in surprise, overcome with emotion at the wonders she sees. So we see that Peale has encoded lessons of another sort—i.e., “the nature of the sexes”—in this painting as well. (Similar gender differences are apparent in another work in the exhibition: Francis William Edmonds’s The Image Pedlar, in which a door-to-door vendor proffers small sculptures of fruit to women, while men admire busts of great historical figures.)

Far from the educational, instructive narratives mentioned above, several paintings in the exhibition communicate more commercial or even self-serving messages, as in the two works shown here:

Above, from left to right: Matthew Pratt (American, 1734–1805). The American School, 1765. Oil on canvas; 36 x 50 1/4 in. (91.4 x 127.6 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of Samuel P. Avery, 1897 (97.29.3). Photograph © The Metropolitan Museum of Art; William Merritt Chase (American, 1849–1916). The Tenth Street Studio, 1880. Oil on canvas; 40 3/8 x 52 1/2 in. (102.6 x 133.4 cm). Saint Louis Art Museum, Bequest of Albert Blair (48:1933).

Matthew Pratt’s painting tells a story—or perhaps a tall tale—about his training in Benjamin West’s London studio. West is featured on the left, assisting a group of American artists who draw at a table, while Pratt, at right, suggests his more advanced status by depicting himself as a painter working independently on a canvas. In actuality, Pratt had no formal training before he arrived in London in 1764, but by depicting himself with a canvas, he boldly advertises his professional-level skills to potential patrons. William Merritt Chase’s work, like Pratt’s, contains a self-portrait. The artist presents himself seated in the shadows at right, conversing with a friend, model, or patron. Chase was an avid collector with eccentric tastes, and his studio is shown overflowing with paintings, prints, lamps, rugs, and tapestries, presumably brought back from his travels. While he often used these items as props in his work, they also announced his sophisticated and worldly tastes and increased his appeal to elite clients.

Finally, consider Thomas Le Clear’s view of a photographer’s studio, seen below:

Thomas Le Clear (American, 1818–1882). Interior with Portraits, ca. 1865. Oil on canvas; 25 7/8 x 40 1/2 in. (65.7 x 102.9 cm). Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase made possible by the Pauline Edwards Bequest (1993.6).
While the scene may look mundane, it is actually a complete flight of fancy. The figures posing for a photograph are Parnell and James Sidwell, a sister and brother who died as adults before the painting was commissioned by their surviving brother, but who are here represented as children. As Margaret Conrads pointed out in the essay she contributed to the American Stories catalogue, the painting challenges the idea that photography is more truthful than painting. Just as the painter fabricates the scene, so does the photographer at right use a backdrop to fabricate the appearance of nature. The inclusion of “Old Master” canvases and plaster casts of classical sculptures like the Venus de Milo in the painting further emphasizes the way in which images may depend on other images to come into being. What is real and what is fabricated, here, after all? While the photographer may rely on a painted backdrop, painters also rely on certain prototypes in their work.

These are just a few examples from American Stories of paintings that incorporate or reference other works of art. I hope you enjoy looking for more on your own.

—Katie Steiner

It’s worth a brief interruption to mention that paintings of pure landscape, such as those by the artists of the Hudson River School, are absent from the exhibition. To be sure, landscapes can and do tell stories—sometimes truly extraordinary ones—but the works included in American Stories focus on figures and the everyday human dramas in which they participate.

One of the most extraordinary paintings of ordinary life in the exhibition is George Caleb Bingham’s Fur Traders Descending the Missouri, seen here:

Above: George Caleb Bingham (American, 1811–1879). Fur Traders Descending the Missouri, 1845. Oil on canvas; 29 x 36 1/2 in. (73.7 x 92.7 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Morris K. Jesup Fund, 1933 (33.61). Photograph © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The rugged father-and-son team, accompanied by a bear cub, are in tune with and reliant on nature, floating down a river past a calm and pristine landscape that is unmarred by signs of development, or even of other people. By 1845, the year that George Caleb Bingham finished and exhibited this painting, the simple way of life he depicted had already begun to disappear in the wake of increasing development and industrialization. Calls for federal protection of American lands began as early as the 1830s, and Bingham was no doubt keenly aware of the nostalgia that urban Easterners—his target audience—felt for the rapidly vanishing frontier. (This nostalgia also provided additional support for the burgeoning conservation movement, as The National Parks points out.) In the same way that Bingham cast a longing glance backward, freezing a moment in time, proponents of protected natural reserves strove to halt the encroachment of industrial development on scenic tracts of land.

William Sidney Mount’s Eel Spearing at Setauket is, like Bingham’s painting, a view of “the good old days.” In this case, the painting was created to appeal to a specific patron’s nostalgia for his childhood:

Above: William Sidney Mount (American, 1807–1868). Eel Spearing at Setauket, 1845. Oil on canvas; 28 1/2 x 36 in. (72.4 x 91.4 cm). Fenimore Art Museum, Cooperstown, New York (N-395.55). Photograph: Richard Walker.

This scene of figures fishing off the shore of Long Island was commissioned by George Washington Strong, a wealthy lawyer who had spent his boyhood near the island’s north coast. Mount also grew up in Long Island and likely shared his patron’s wistful feelings about this particular scene. But as we know from his writing, the artist sought to communicate something more than just nostalgia in his paintings. In a diary entry from the mid-1840s, Mount wrote:

There has been enough written on ideality—and the grand style of Art etc—to divert the artist from the study of natural objects. For ever after, let me read the volume of nature—a lecture always ready and bound by the Almighty.

In the same way that the boy in Mount’s painting learns the ways of nature from an adult companion, we may imagine that the artist is seeking to understand the presence of the divine in the stillness and serenity of nature. The Emersonian concept of finding God in the outdoors was pervasive in the nineteenth century, and, as The National Parks tells us, fueled the notion that nature is restorative. The film presents Stephen Mather, the first National Park Service director, as a striking example of someone who warded off debilitating bouts of depression by spending time out of doors.

In American Stories, figures enjoying the restorative powers of nature can be seen in works by William Merritt Chase and Thomas Eakins:

Above, from left to right: William Merritt Chase (American, 1849–1916). Idle Hours, ca. 1894. Oil on canvas; 39 x 48 5/8 in. (99.1 x 123.5 cm). Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas (1982.1); Thomas Eakins (American, 1844–1916). Swimming, 1885. Oil on canvas; 27 3/8 x 36 3/8 in. (69.5 x 92.4 cm). Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas, Purchased by the Friends of Art, Fort Worth Art Association, 1925; acquired by the Amon Carter Museum, 1990, from the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth through grants and donations from the Amon G. Carter Foundation, the Sid W. Richardson Foundation, the Anne Burnett and Charles Tandy Foundation, Capital Cities/ABC Foundation, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, The R. D. and Joan Dale Hubbard Foundation, and the people of Fort Worth (1990.19.1).

Chase’s painting depicts members of his family relaxing by the seaside in Southampton, Long Island. Although the family lived most of the year in New York City, they retreated to the countryside during the summers while the artist taught at the Shinnecock Hills Summer School of Art. The landscape in Chase’s painting is not a national park, but the figures—especially the girl in the blue dress sprawled across the grass—seem to enjoy the same sense of relief from the stresses of urban life that visitors to Yellowstone and Yosemite might. Similarly, Eakins’s swimmers, who have retreated from the city of Philadelphia to the countryside, enjoy a moment of outdoor leisure. Their nakedness also suggests that they’ve recovered in nature an elemental part of their humanity that’s not accessible to them in urban society.

In addition to the nostalgia and restorative properties associated with nature, The National Parks describes the hold that the wilderness has on the American imagination. In 1871, readers of Scribner’s Monthly were captivated by Truman C. Everts’s serialized account of being stranded in Yellowstone for thirty-seven days and surviving encounters with a mountain lion, a snowstorm, and burns from the steam of a hot spring. In the 1880s, inspired by the park’s geysers and boiling mud pots, and taking advantage of the popularity of Lewis Carroll’s Alice books, railroad companies marketed Yellowstone as a “New Wonderland.” (See the Southern Methodist University website to learn more about one of the brochures featured in National Parks.)

Several paintings in American Stories, including Frederic Remington’s Fight for the Water Hole, demonstrate the power of landscape to capture the imagination. In this work and others, the artist appealed to Easterners’ fantasies about rugged life in the West, shaping ideas about the frontier experience that would go on to inspire John Ford and other directors of early Western movies. Consider also these two paintings in the exhibition, which depict figures who are entranced by their natural surroundings:

Above, from left to right: Lilly Martin Spencer (American, 1822–1902). Reading the Legend, 1852. Oil on canvas; 50 3/8 x 38 in. (128 x 96.5 cm). Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, Massachusetts, Gift of Adeline Flint Wing, class of 1898, and Caroline Roberta Wing, class of 1896 (SC 1954:69); Jerome B. Thompson (American, 1814–1886). The Belated Party on Mansfield Mountain, 1858. Oil on canvas; 38 x 63 1/8 in. (96.5 x 160.3 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Rogers Fund, 1969 (69.182). Photograph © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In Lilly Martin Spencer’s work, a young couple enjoys reading a book in nature. While the text they read no doubt plays a primary role, the fact that they are outdoors allows their imaginations to roam so freely that the romantic ruins of a castle have materialized in the background. Similarly, Jerome B. Thompson’s depiction of a group of young men and women presents them as so enraptured by the beauty of the mountainous Vermont landscape that they have failed to begin the journey home while there is still daylight.

I hope that visitors to the exhibition will be just as captivated as I am by the stories that artists tell about figures situated in the American landscape. I welcome your observations and comments here, and encourage you to watch The National Parks, if you haven’t already.

—Katie Steiner

In other instances, food is referenced within scenes of familiar social rituals. Take, for example, William Merritt Chase’s Open Air Breakfast and William McGregor Paxton’s The Breakfast, which depict figures at their morning meal. It’s interesting to note how the female figures in both pictures are excluded from the outside world: in Paxton’s painting, the husband buries his head in the newspaper and the realm of external affairs, in which his dejected wife takes no part, while in Chase’s painting, a large fence encloses the figures in an almost sanctified space, separating them from what lies beyond.

Above: William Merritt Chase (American, 1849–1916). The Open Air Breakfast, ca. 1887. Oil on canvas; 37 1/2 x 56 3/4 in. (95.3 x 144.1 cm). Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio, Purchased with funds from the Florence Scott Libbey Bequest in Memory of her Father, Maurice A. Scott (1953.136). Photograph © Toledo Museum of Art, 2008; William McGregor Paxton (American, 1869–1941), The Breakfast, 1911. Oil on canvas; 28 1/4 x 35 1/4 in. (71.8 x 89.5 cm). Ted Slavin.

Mary Cassatt’s Lady at the Tea Table also depicts a woman confined to an interior, sitting before a handsome Japanese tea set and participating in a respectable ritual appropriate for someone of her—and, indeed, the artist’s—affluent class.

Above: Mary Cassatt (American, 1844–1926). Lady at the Tea Table, 1883–85. Oil on canvas; 29 x 24 in. (73.7 x 61 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of the artist, 1923 (23.101). Photograph © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Two food-related paintings by Lilly Martin Spencer stand in contrast to Cassatt’s lady, as they work to reverse certain social expectations:

Above: Lilly Martin Spencer (American, 1822–1902). Young Husband: First Marketing, 1854. Oil on canvas; 29 1/2 x 24 3/4 in. (74.9 x 62.9 cm). Private collection; Lilly Martin Spencer (American, 1822–1902). Kiss Me and You’ll Kiss the ‘Lasses, 1856. Oil on canvas; 29 7/8 x 24 7/8 in. (76 x 63.3 cm). Brooklyn Museum, A. Augustus Healy Fund (70.26).

In Young Husband, Spencer presents a figure whose inexperience or enthusiasm has caused him to overload his market basket with eggs, asparagus, lettuce, tomatoes, poultry, and even a pineapple. There’s so much food, in fact, that the basket’s handle has split, causing some of the groceries to tumble to the ground. The overall mood of the painting is humorous, but there’s conflict as well. Whether by choice or necessity, this young husband engages in a chore that traditionally would have been reserved for his wife. Although it has been noted that men in Cincinnati—where Spencer spent part of her career—commonly did the grocery shopping, the reactions of the gawking passers-by suggest that the activities of the man in the painting are unusual. Interestingly, Spencer’s own marriage had nontraditional aspects. Her husband, Benjamin Rush Spencer—a tailor by trade—found himself unemployed early in their marriage and struggled to find other prospects. In view of their growing family—the couple had thirteen children, seven of whom lived to maturity—Benjamin adopted a large share of the domestic responsibilities as his wife became the chief breadwinner.

A host of luscious foods, and some interesting contrasts, are also central to Spencer’s painting Kiss Me and You’ll Kiss the ’Lasses. The figure, who is in the process of making preserves, playfully threatens the viewer—presumably a man—with a sticky spoonful of molasses. In a recent Met Podcast episode, the New York Times food writer Mark Bittman commented on the odd contrast that the young woman embodies, as she labors and flirts at the same time—a feat that would be difficult for most cooks to accomplish as they toil away in the kitchen. In the name of research, I recently enlisted the help of two friends to make strawberry jam, in the hopes that our experience would lend insight into the activities of Spencer’s figure. Armed with a fifteen-page recipe that claimed to be easy, we embarked on our “jam session.” Here are a few highlights from our experiment:

Above: Crushing the berries in the food processor; boiling the berries, with sugar; the finished product. Photographs by Alison Buchbinder, November 7, 2009.

Although we used modern appliances and a modern recipe, which called for pectin to aid the jelling process, our half batch of strawberry jam still took the three of us just under two hours to make, and left us with a sink full of dirty dishes. The finished product was delicious, but it certainly required our undivided attention and plenty of standing over boiling pots. The experience clarified for me just how unrealistic Spencer’s young woman is—the absence of sweat is all the more interesting when we consider, as Mr. Bittman points out, that canning would have taken place in the heat of summer. The contrast between reality and fiction is joined by the conflict between the populist appeal of the brazen, humorous woman and Spencer’s virtuosic aspirations implied by the expertly rendered still-life elements: notice the carefully observed basket of red currants on the floor, as well as the apples, pineapples, cherries, gooseberries, and raspberries on or near the worktable.

What accounts for this conflict between the romanticized depiction of the woman’s labor and the “truthful,” highly illusionist representation of fresh fruit? Curator Teresa Carbone at the Brooklyn Museum, which lent us the painting, recently observed that Spencer may have been responding to critics who wished to see her use her gifts to create more dignified works. A critic in The Crayon, for instance, argued in 1856 that “[b]eing a woman, [Spencer] should have some deeper, tenderer conceptions of humanity than her brother artists, something, at all events better worth her painting, and our seeing, than grinning housewives. . . . We should hope for much more from her, if she could see that it was her duty to be serious sometimes.”

Seen in this light, the two paintings by Spencer suggest her simultaneous desires for commercial appeal, through humor, and critical praise, through exquisite still-life detail. The fact that her own domestic situation contrasted with mid-nineteenth-century societal norms makes the content of the two works that much more intriguing.

In the last section of the exhibition, visitors will encounter John Sloan’s Chinese Restaurant, which represents a twentieth-century telling of a story about a woman, food, and gender-related conflict. On the one hand, the garishly dressed woman in this painting, who is in the midst of feeding a cat, occupies a position of control, as she solicits the male diners’—and the viewer’s—attention. On the other hand, she surrenders control, presenting a performance and an appearance that are geared toward male desires.

John Sloan (American, 1871–1951). Chinese Restaurant, 1909. Oil on canvas; 26 x 32 1/4 in. (66 x 81.9 cm). Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester, Marion Stratton Gould Fund (51.12). Photograph: Andy Olenick. © 2009 Delaware Art Museum / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

We can certainly revel in the multiple, complex layers of the food-related paintings in the exhibition, but in the meantime, I hope your holiday mirrors the abundance that many of them celebrate.

—Katie Steiner

One of the most haunting works in Looking In is Frank’s photograph of passengers on a New Orleans street car:

Robert Frank (American, b. Switzerland, 1924). Trolley—New Orleans, 1955. Gelatin silver print; 8 5/8 x 13 1/16 in. (21.9 x 33.2 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gilman Collection, Purchase, Ann Tenenbaum and Thomas H. Lee Gift, 2005 (2005.100.454). Photograph © Robert Frank, from The Americans.

The gallery label that accompanies this photograph discusses how it encapsulates the social tensions in the South in the mid-1950s, as evidenced by the hierarchical positions of whites, blacks, men, and women. We may hypothesize that Frank’s experiences as a Jew in Europe during World War II sensitized him to marginalized members of society in America, where he emigrated in 1947. I was also fascinated to learn that Frank had been the victim of prejudice only days before he took this photograph, arrested by Arkansas authorities after he was seen making photographs, being unshaven, and driving a late-model car with New York license plates.

Frank’s photograph, and his position as an outsider traveling through his newly adopted country, reminded me of Charles F. Blauvelt’s painting A German Immigrant Inquiring His Way, which is included in American Stories:

Charles Felix Blauvelt (American, 1824–1900). A German Immigrant Inquiring His Way, 1855. Oil on canvas; 36 1/8 x 29 in. (91.8 x 73.7 cm). North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, Purchased with funds from the State of North Carolina (52.9.2).

This painting, which predates Frank’s Trolley—New Orleans by exactly a century, also tells a story about racial tension in American society. Its narrative is seemingly simple: a white man, who the painting’s title tells us is a German immigrant, interrupts the labor of a black man to ask for directions. The subtext, however, is more complex, implying how European immigrants threatened to push free African Americans out of the workforce. Unlike Frank, who is from Switzerland, Blauvelt was an “insider,” born in New York City. Perhaps his upbringing as the son of a German-born father accounts for his keen awareness of the tensions caused by the incoming waves of immigrants. Clashes between racial and ethnic groups were a common fact of life in pre–Civil War New York, which suffered a host of violent riots. A reviewer in the December 1860 issue of the Cosmopolitan Art Journal commented on Blauvelt’s sensitivity toward marginalized members of society, writing that the artist’s “emigrants, stage-drivers, old negroes, boys, and old men, are inimitably rendered, not with anything of grossness, but with a delicacy of feeling and undertone of humor or pathos which are as refreshing as rare.”

For me, the experience of encountering both A German Immigrant and Trolley—New Orleans underscored the differences between the two works. Blauvelt treats his subject with a touch of humor, as the two white figures in the background cast knowing glances toward the awkward exchange at the center of the composition. His approach seems all the more cheerful in comparison to the matter-of-fact presentation of societal inequities in Frank’s photograph, which, in turn, emerged more forcefully in comparison to the painting. Blauvelt, like many of the other painters represented in American Stories, had to create works that would appeal to the open market. This practical concern may account for his more humorous approach to a difficult subject, which stands in contrast to the more documentary nature of Frank’s project, which was funded by a Guggenheim Foundation grant.

When I visited both shows, I was also struck by the different treatments of rugged, Western American figures that appeared in some of the works. In the fourth section of American Stories, Cosmopolitan and Candid Stories, 1877–1915, is Charles Schreyvogel’s My Bunkie:

Charles Schreyvogel (American, 1861–1912). My Bunkie, 1899. Oil on canvas; 25 1/8 x 34 in. (64 x 86.4 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of friends of the artist, by subscription, 1912 (12.227). Photograph © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

This painting offers a dramatic and idealized view of male heroics in the frontier, as a cavalryman on horseback rescues his bunk mate, who has lost his mount, from an unseen enemy. Compare this depiction with Frank’s photograph of a cowboy on the streets of New York City:

Robert Frank (American, b. Switzerland, 1924). Rodeo—New York City, 1954. Gelatin silver print; 13 1/4 x 8 3/8 in. (33.7 x 21.3 cm). Collection of Barbara and Eugene Schwartz. Photograph © Robert Frank, from The Americans.

We know from the introduction to The Americans, written by Jack Kerouac, that this cowboy is standing outside Madison Square Garden, presumably taking a break from a touring rodeo. Removed from the West and consigned to the realm of popular entertainment, the figure evocatively signals the decline of an American icon. The subverted traditions in Frank’s image were easier to read after I viewed Schreyvogel’s painting; similarly, the idealized Western masculinity chronicled in Schreyvogel’s work was cast into higher relief when I considered it in light of Frank’s photograph. Rodeo—New York City offers a glimpse of contemporary life, featuring a figure that perhaps contrasts with the expectation of viewers conditioned to more heroic imagery. While Frank’s photograph may thwart fantasies, My Bunkie appeals to them, echoing the staged drama of a Buffalo Bill Wild West show to present a story about life on the vanishing frontier.

If you have the opportunity, I encourage you to visit these two special exhibitions in person and to share your insights about the experience with us.

—Katie Steiner

Some of the game-related canvases in the exhibition, such as William Merritt Chase’s Ring Toss, depict innocent, childlike pursuits, while others show a more dangerous side of sport. Take, for instance, George Bellows’s Club Night:

Above: George Bellows (American, 1882–1925). Club Night, 1907. Oil on canvas; 43 x 53 1/8 in. (109.2 x 135 cm). National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., John Hay Whitney Collection (1982.76.1). Image courtesy of the Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Two boxers engage in a violent and dramatic struggle in the ring. The setting is Sharkey’s Athletic Club, which was located across Broadway from Bellows’s studio in the Lincoln Arcade at Sixty-sixth Street. Bellows’s painting tells a vivid tale about the club’s lurid, almost hellish atmosphere and the sleazy clientele it attracted. Notice how even the well-dressed spectator framed between the legs of the fighter on the right appears grotesque.

At the time Bellows painted Club Night, prizefighting was illegal. In fact, Sharkey’s is frequently mentioned in early twentieth-century New York Times articles about boxing investigations. In Club Night, Bellows includes a figure in the center foreground who looks over his shoulder at us. With this ingenious detail, he places us in the crowd, making us part of the risky business of Sharkey’s and engaging us on a visceral level with the danger and excitement of the fight.

As a contrast to Bellows’s painting, let’s look at Homer’s Croquet Scene:

Winslow Homer (American, 1836–1910). Croquet Scene, 1866. Oil on canvas; 15 7/8 x 26 1/8 in. (40.3 x 66.2 cm). The Art Institute of Chicago, Friends of American Art Collection, Goodman Fund (1942.35). Photograph © The Art Institute of Chicago.

On the surface, we see a sunny, verdant lawn on which respectable figures play. However, if we consider the history of croquet in America, we can spot social perils—more subtle than the obvious dangers depicted in Club Night—that ripple beneath the surface of Homer’s painting.

Croquet was imported from England to America in the 1860s and found almost instantly popularity. A number of texts about the sport emerged around this time, including Croquet: A Treatise and Commentary (1863) by Captain Mayne Reid, a hero of the Mexican-American War. In this book, published while the Civil War raged, Reid praised croquet as a wholesome alternative to armed conflict, but he also warned about the immoral conduct that could ensue if men and women were to play the game together.

A scene in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women (1868–69) broaches the topic of young men and women sharing the playing field. In chapter 12, the March girls’ neighbor Laurie invites them to a celebration that includes the Vaughns, a group of siblings from England. The young people strike up a game of croquet in which Jo March catches Fred Vaughn breaking the rules by nudging a ball through a hoop with his foot. In retribution for being caught, Fred hits Jo’s ball into the bushes. Despite her fury, Jo plays on and ultimately finds herself with a chance to win the game by knocking a Vaughn ball aside. Instead of seeking revenge, however, she declares, “Yankees have a trick of being generous to their enemies,” and achieves victory by hitting her ball with a deft stroke through the hoop without disturbing her opponent’s.

The scene from Little Women illustrates the benefits of good sportsmanship, even tying it to patriotism. Homer’s painting signals this, too, as the women in red and blue hoop skirts stand calmly and patiently as their male friend sets up for the next player’s turn. However, the position of the women—towering over the crouching man—may also hint at shifting gender roles and the potential for the playing field to become a veritable minefield of flirtatious and competitive emotions, as Captain Reid feared.

Sports buff or not, you are welcome to offer your own insights into the athletic-themed paintings in the exhibition. Feel free to get into the game!

—Katie Steiner

Above: George Caleb Bingham (American, 1811–1879). The County Election, 1851–52. Oil on canvas; 35 1/2 x 48 3/4 in. (90 x 123.8 cm). Saint Louis Art Museum, Museum Purchase (124:1944).

The exhibition includes several works with political themes, such as Richard Caton Woodville’s War News from Mexico and Politics in an Oyster House, but Bingham in particular approaches his subject with an eye for comedy. Bingham, who ran for public office several times in his life, reveals the humor and chaos of the democratic process gone awry. On the porch of the polling place in rural Missouri, an opportunistic candidate tips his hat and smiles as he offers a ballot to a prospective voter; in the left foreground, a portly fellow whose vote has most likely been purchased with liquor takes obvious pleasure in his payment; another man behind the imbibing figure drags a completely incapacitated fellow citizen to the polls. And there are many other such vignettes of electoral corruption and dysfunction. (Listen to the recent Met Podcast episode to hear Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter discuss even more details, as well as his overall impression of the painting.)

The humor in Bingham’s painting is extraordinary for a number of reasons. At the time the artist painted this canvas, the political climate in Missouri was tense, owing in large measure to the deep divisions over the issue of slavery. The climate was so rough, in fact, that in 1851, Thomas Hart Benton, U.S. senator from Missouri (and great-uncle of the famous artist of the same name) lost his seat after thirty years in office for his anti-slavery stance. Bingham also had personal reasons to be bitter about the political arena. In 1846 he ran as a Whig candidate for the Missouri State Senate and won by a close margin. His opponent, however, contested the outcome, causing the Democrat-controlled state legislature to declare that Bingham had lost. Given the artist’s extreme personal disappointments and the prevailing tensions in Missouri politics, it’s perhaps surprising that he could inject humor into the scene of an unfair election.

It’s even more surprising that the tone of the artist’s humor is gentle, not bitingly satiric. Bingham certainly exaggerates the poses and facial expressions of some of the figures in The County Election for comedic effect, but he doesn’t contort them to vicious extremes. The painting doesn’t even necessarily call for changes to the system. Rather, the artist appears to identify with his fellow Missourians, finding amusement in their misguided activities. In fact, when Bingham exhibited the work in Missouri, Kentucky, and Louisiana, audiences remained largely undisturbed by his portrayal of corruption in the voting process, and instead recognized and were sympathetic to the characters and the universal human failings they embodied. (For more information on the work’s exhibition history, see Elizabeth Johns, American Genre Painting: The Politics of Everyday Life, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991.)

Although the comical elements of Bingham’s canvas appeal to me, even nearly 160 years after the work was completed, I’m thankful the scene doesn’t resemble my own experiences. Like most modern-day voters, I arrive at my polling site on Election Day, wait in an orderly if occasionally long line, and register my vote in an environment that prohibits electioneering. We’ve also come a long way from the time when laws excluded women and African Americans from voting. In The County Election, women are entirely absent and the sole African American is relegated to the extreme left edge of the canvas and is shown serving a drink, not participating directly in the election. Still, it’s a credit to Bingham’s skill as both an artist and a storyteller that this painting remains relevant and appealing today. Many contemporary comedians and commentators use humor in a similar way to point out real or perceived flaws in the democratic process. Think of episodes of The Daily Show or The Simpsons, or political cartoons. So while the details of the voting problems chronicled by Bingham have changed, the pattern of drawing attention to the fairness of the process—especially through humor—continues.

As a final note, I’d like to point out that this work, like many of the paintings in American Stories, is actually quite funny. And yes, it’s okay to laugh!

—Katie Steiner