The First American Revolution and the young republic

American Revolution of 1775-83 laid the basis for the rapid development of industry, culture and art in the young republic. The general patriotic and heroic enthusiasm of the period gave rise to an upsurge in the spiritual and creative sphere of activities. A new, important stage in the history of American art began. National consolidation, growth of national consciousness and wide dissemination of democratic ideas were powerful factors in the formation of American art. Without severing its ties with European culture it was acquiring an increasingly national character. If the self-taught artist was typical in colonial American painting, now professional artists trained in the established academies of England or France took over the leadership. A distinct American school in portraiture and depiction of historical events was evident by 1800. It was characterized by the choice of American subject matter and the blending of native genius with influences from abroad. Portraiture remained dominant but the artists of the revolutionary generation filled their portraits with heroic, romantic content; they produced historic paintings commemorating contemporary events filled with revolutionary pathos [ 6, p. 386 ].contemporary pathos was conveyed by John Trumbull who was the first of the American artists to return home to the young republic “after a course of studies under Benjamin West in London. Trumbull is known primarily as the painter of the Revolution. While studying under West in London, Trumbull framed a vast project - to depict a series of scenes from American history. He was encouraged by West, and John Adams and Thomas Jefferson assisted him in selecting twelve episodes from the American Revolution. The next decade, working in London, Paris and the United States, he produced twelve small dramatic compositions as studies for projected murals. In these canvases the artist recreated the high moments of the Revolution together with portraits of its great leaders. Eight of them are his most impressive works. It is due to these paintings that the artist’s fame has survived for over 150 years, “they may have their defects but even now they recall the Revolution’s vigour and romance. In such powerful works as the Battle of Bunker’s Hill, The Capture of the Hessians at Trenton, and The Declaration of Independence Trumbull has drawn the spectator to the spot at decisive moments and has shown what the architects of American independence looked like. The Declaration of Independence (1786-97) is a painting of particular historical significance. Sitting at a table is John Hancock, standing before him are John Adams, Roger Sherman, Robert R. Livingston, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin.This is how E. H, Silverman describes the creation of this composition: “But it is in Trumbull’s most ambitious work. The Declaration of Independence, that one can best gauge the lengths to which the artist would go to ensure reality. The idea for the painting was originally suggested by Thomas Jefferson, a good friend in Trumbull’s early years. To obtain the portraits of all the sinners of the Declaration, the artist went to considerable trouble. He painted Jefferson in Paris and John Adams in London. Most of the others he did in the United States between 1789 and 1794, visiting many eastern and southern cities. Altogether he painted 36 from life, nine from portraits by other artists, and two from memory.”Trumbull had to wait for 30 years until in 1817 Congress voted $32000 commissioned him to paint four of his revolutionary subjects as murals for the rotunda of the new Capitol in Washington. But the commission came too late - Trumbull was not able to convey the«fire, plasticity and technical brilliance of his earlier sketches to large works.eight original sketches especially the battle pictures, and the small, almost miniature, portrait studies for the series are unquestionably Trumbull’s finest work[ 1, p. 17-18 ].and romantic tendencies penetrated into American art in the early nineteenth century. An attempt to transfer classicism into American painting was made by John Vanderlyn who was the first American to study in France rather than in England. His first classical subject Marius on the Ruins of Carthage (1807), exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1808, won him a gold medal. Napoleon tried to purchase the picture for the Louvre, but Vanderlyn demurred. His best known work Ariadne Asleep on the Island of Naxos, painted in Paris in 1812, is the most successful ideal nude produced by an American artist. This lucid, controlled and brilliantly painted nude reveals Vanderlyn’s remarkable talent. In 1815 Vanderlyn returned to America and exhibited Ariadne and some other paintings that had won him fame in Paris. But in America Vanderlyn’s neoclassical works brought him neither success nor fame. Puritanic America was shocked, the prudish New Yorkers saw in the unabashed nudity of the classic heroine a shocking witness to the depraving influence of European taste [ 9, p. 130-134 ].