{"id":8889,"date":"2015-05-11T15:54:36","date_gmt":"2015-05-11T19:54:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/phillyhistory.wpengine.com\/?p=8889"},"modified":"2016-08-11T09:26:31","modified_gmt":"2016-08-11T13:26:31","slug":"the-search-for-an-american-art-in-gallery-c","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/2015\/05\/the-search-for-an-american-art-in-gallery-c\/","title":{"rendered":"The Search for an American Art in “Gallery C”"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Memorial<\/a>
“Gallery C” in Memorial Hall – American Department, Centennial Photographic Co., 1876. (PhillyHistory.org\/Free Library of Philadelphia)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Construction<\/a> delays scuttled the original plan to open the Centennial in April 1876, in time for the 100th anniversary of the battles at Lexington and Concord. Just as well. The nation\u2019s first world\u2019s fair wasn\u2019t looking to the past so much as the American present and, even more, its future.<\/p>\n

On May 10, 1876\u2014139 years ago yesterday\u2014the bell at Independence Hall signaled the opening of the Centennial. Four miles from the city\u2019s historic center more than 186,000 gathered for a heady celebration of stuff in a temporary Centennial City in West Fairmount Park. In all, more than 9.8 million visitors would visit over the summer months to celebrate the growth of America from idea to flourishing nation.<\/p>\n

At its symbolic and ceremonial center, Centennial planners built a place where America would be represented by the nation\u2019s artists. Inside, surrounded by an array of other galleries filled with art from around the world, was America\u2019s \u201cGrand Salon,\u201d aka \u201cGallery C,\u201d the place for the nation\u2019s artists to be and be seen. Here would be the best of the best in American art, works expressive of what this nation had become, or as Kimberly Orcutt<\/a> put it: \u201c\u2026the first officially sanctioned, full-scale reckoning of the nation\u2019s art.\u201d<\/p>\n

It wouldn\u2019t be easy to present what the organizers hoped for: \u201ca unified \u2018American school.\u2019\u201d As it turned out, by the 1870s, America\u2019s artists were more divided than united. New York landscapists conflicted with European-trained cosmopolitans from Philadelphia and Boston. And Philadelphia artist John Sartain, appointed chief of the Art Advisory Committee only eight months before opening day, created a top-heavy bureaucracy, a Committee on Selection and a Committee on Arrangement, to \u201chelp.\u201d The ever-political Sartain, Orcutt writes, \u201cwas careful not to place himself on the Committee on Selection\u201d but after the committee reviewed more than 1,000 works of art in early April, rejecting some interesting newcomers like the still-young and little-known Thomas Eakins and others who also trained abroad, Sartain carried out a notorious series of end runs around his committees, soliciting works he thought merited display, particularly from artists who were longtime friends and allies, including Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Moran.<\/p>\n

In all, Sartain and his committee assembled far more than could possibly fit in Gallery C. Americans would be hung in the long, narrow \u00a0connecting gallery<\/a> at Memorial Hall as well as in a handful of small, square \u00a0rooms in the one-story, wooden annex<\/a> built directly behind Memorial Hall to accommodate overflow.<\/p>\n

Installed, “Gallery C<\/a>” spoke more to the contested state of American art than anything like a hoped-for American School. In the center stood two sculptures by P.F. Connelly\u2019s<\/a>, Ophelia<\/a><\/i> and Death and Honor<\/a> <\/i>and another by <\/i>Howard Roberts Le Premier Pose<\/a><\/i>, now at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Visitors witnessed John Vanderlyn\u2019s Ariadne Asleep on the Island of Naxos<\/i><\/a>, now at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and Albert Bierstadt\u2019s Entrance into Monterey (The Settlement of California, Bay of Monterey, 1777)<\/a>,<\/i>\u00a0now in the U. S. House of Representatives. They saw Eastman Johnson, Catching the Bee, 1872<\/a><\/i> \u00a0and Winslow Homer\u2019s Snap the Whip<\/a><\/i>. They took in Peter Rothermel\u2019s gigantic (16\u2019 x 32\u2019), bloodless, Battle of Gettysburg<\/a><\/i>, and Thomas Eakins\u2019 Portrait of Dr. Rand<\/a><\/i>, now the Crystal Bridges Museum in Bentonville, Arkansas. Of course, they didn\u2019t<\/em> see Eakins\u2019 very bloody Portrait of Dr. Samuel Gross<\/a><\/i> which the Selection Committee passed on. That refus\u00e9e made an\u00a0appearance in the far-flung Army Medical Department Exhibition<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Opening<\/a>
Opening Day at the Centennial Exhibition, May 10, 1876. Centennial Photographic Co. (PhillyHistory.org\/Free Library of Philadelphia)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Eakins\u2019 Gross Clinic<\/i>, according to Sylvan Schendler<\/a>, had\u00a0been been dumped for a cow painting entitled The Return of the Herd<\/a><\/i> by Peter Moran, Thomas Moran\u2019s younger brother. (In a twist of history, the Peter Moran recently sold for sum of $38,025, minuscule compared to the $68,000,000 sale price for The Gross Clinic <\/em>in 2006.)<\/p>\n

In 1914, nearly four decades after doing his best to define an American art, the mature\u00a0Eakins<\/a>, who embodied the best of the conflicting approaches, reflected on the American art dilemma that had shaped his entire career: \u201cIf America is to produce great painters and if young artists wish to assume a place in the history of the art of their country, their first desire should be to remain in America to peer deeper into the heart of American life, rather than spend their time abroad obtaining a superficial view of the art of the Old World.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Eakins was in his early 30s in 1875 and painted The Gross Clinic<\/em>, American artists were \u00a0nowhere near<\/em> ready to speak in one clear, creative voice that might be considered an \u201cAmerican School.\u201d Many decades later, the dust still<\/em> hadn\u2019t settled. If anything, the international influences on American art were stirred up even more by the Armory Show<\/a> in 1913 and collector Albert Barnes, who focused intensely \u00a0on what made good<\/em> art, rather than what made good American<\/em> art.<\/p>\n

It could be the impossible search for a pure, distinctive and exclusively\u00a0American<\/em> art is what stymied success at the Centennial’s “Gallery C.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Construction delays scuttled the original plan to open the Centennial in April 1876, in time for the 100th anniversary of the battles at Lexington and Concord. Just as well. The nation\u2019s first world\u2019s fair wasn\u2019t looking to the past so much as the American present and, even more, its future. On May 10, 1876\u2014139 years […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8889","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8889"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8889\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}