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In The Portrait Bust and French Cultural Politics in the Eighteenth Century, Ronit Milano probes the rich and complex aesthetic and intellectual charge of a remarkably concise art form, and explores its role as a powerful agent of epistemological change during one of the most seismic moments in French history. The pre-Revolutionary portrait bust was inextricably tied to the formation of modern selfhood and to the construction of individual identity during the Enlightenment, while positioning both sitters and viewers as part of a collective of individuals who together formed French society. In analyzing the contribution of the portrait bust to the construction of interiority and the formulation of new gender roles and political ideals, this book touches upon a set of concerns that constitute the very core of our modernity.
A look into the life of America’s first president and the efforts to recreate what he may have actually looked like at different points of that life. George Washington’s face has been painted, printed, and engraved more than a billion times since his birth in 1732. And yet even in his lifetime, no picture seemed to capture the likeness of the man who is now the most iconic of all our presidents. Worse still, people today often see this founding father as the “old and grumpy” Washington on the dollar bill. In 2005 a team of historians, scientists, and artisans at Mount Vernon set out to change the image of our first president. They studied paintings and sculptures, pored over Washingt...
A Guide to Eighteenth-Century Art offers an introductory overview of the art, artists, and artistic movements of this exuberant period in European art, and the social, economic, philosophical, and political debates that helped shape them. Covers both artistic developments and critical approaches to the period by leading contemporary scholars Uses an innovative framework to emphasize the roles of tradition, modernity, and hierarchy in the production of artistic works of the period Reveals the practical issues connected with the production, sale, public and private display of art of the period Assesses eighteenth-century art’s contribution to what we now refer to as ‘modernity’ Includes numerous illustrations, and is accompanied by online resources examining art produced outside Europe and its relationship with the West, along with other useful resources
Early American painter Gilbert Stuart has long been mistakenly represented as a hard-drinking rogue, habitual liar, and inexplicable financial failure. To explain his stylistic unevenness as an artist, he is assumed to have had an inferior assistant, but the documentary evidence for an assistant who painted on his portraits is non-existent-in fact, there is evidence to the contrary. This ground-breaking study demonstrates that Stuart suffered from a hereditary form of manic depression, leading him to create pictures that contain peculiar lapses characteristic of a manic-depressive, or bipolar, artist. Using documentary and empirical evidence-from diaries and letters to x-radiographs of paint...
Explore the beauty and history of Mount Vernon—and the inquisitive, independent mind of its famous architect and landscape designer. Winner of the John Brinkerhoff Jackson Book Prize of the Foundation for Landscape Architecture On the banks of the Potomac River, Mount Vernon stands, with its iconic portico boasting breathtaking views and with a landscape to rival the great gardens of Europe, as a monument to George Washington’s artistic and creative efforts. More than one million people visit Mount Vernon each year—drawn to the stature and beauty of Washington’s family estate. Art historian Joseph Manca systematically examines Mount Vernon—its stylistic, moral, and historical dimen...
The Europeans who first explored and settled North America were endlessly intrigued by the indigenous people they found there; even before the newly arrived colonials began to record the landscape, they drew and painted Indians. This study focuses on that practice, offering a new visual perspective on westward expansion, mainly through a survey of the major Indian images painted by Euro-American artists before and after the American Revolution. William H. Truettner finds that these images were never simply the historical record they were purported to be; instead they were conceived--either directly or indirectly--to accompany attempts to expand white hegemony across North America, first by the British, then by the Americans. Truettner's incisive, accessible readings of paintings by artists such as Benjamin West, Gilbert Stuart, Charles Bird King, and George Catlin relate these images to social and political events of the time, and tell us much about how North American tribes would fare as they fought to survive during the second half of the nineteenth century.
No figure in American history has generated more public interest or sustained more scholarly research around his various homes and habitations than has George Washington. The Permanent Resident is the first book to bring the principal archaeological sites of Washington's life together under one cover, revealing what they say individually and collectively about Washington’s life and career and how Americans have continued to invest these places with meaning. Philip Levy begins with Washington’s birthplace in Westmoreland County, Virginia, then moves to Ferry Farm—site of the mythical cherry tree—before following Washington to Barbados to examine how his only trip outside the continent...
Over the course of the eighteenth century, Anglo-Americans purchased an unprecedented number and array of goods. The Power of Objects in Eighteenth-Century British America investigates these diverse artifacts—from portraits and city views to gravestones, dressing furniture, and prosthetic devices—to explore how elite American consumers assembled objects to form a new civil society on the margins of the British Empire. In this interdisciplinary transatlantic study, artifacts emerge as key players in the formation of Anglo-American communities and eventually of American citizenship. Deftly interweaving analysis of images with furniture, architecture, clothing, and literary works, Van Horn ...