2019. The United States and Florence (1815–1915): Artistic Models, Inspirations, and Influences. ... more 2019. The United States and Florence (1815–1915): Artistic Models, Inspirations, and Influences. A Conference Held in Honor of the Bicentenary of the U. S. Consulate General in Florence, 23–24 September 2019, Vasari Auditorium, Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy.
2019. Gli Stati Uniti e Firenze (1815–1915): Modelli Artistici, Inspirazione, Suggestioni. Una co... more 2019. Gli Stati Uniti e Firenze (1815–1915): Modelli Artistici, Inspirazione, Suggestioni. Una convegna in onore per i 200 anni del consolato generale americano a Firenze, 23–24 Settembre 2019, Auditorium Vasari, Le Gallerie degli Uffizi.
2019. Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Gallery Conversation: “Getting the Art Idea.” Mary K. McGuig... more 2019. Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Gallery Conversation: “Getting the Art Idea.” Mary K. McGuigan and John F. McGuigan Jr., art historians, discuss nineteenth-century American works by Elihu Vedder and John Adams Jackson, in conjunction with the exhibition The Nineteenth Century: American and European Art. 2 October 2019.
'Scenery Found': John Gadsby Chapman and Open-Air Oil Sketching in and around Rome, 1830-77
By... more 'Scenery Found': John Gadsby Chapman and Open-Air Oil Sketching in and around Rome, 1830-77
By Mary K. McGuigan
John Gadsby Chapman (1808–1889) was one of the earliest American practitioners of the open-air oil sketch and one of its most vocal advocates, championing it as a worthwhile pursuit and pleasurable pastime for professional and amateur painters alike. The native Virginian first visited Rome as an aspiring history painter from 1828 to 1831 and quickly entered into the academic, social, and studio circles of the international artistic community. Rome’s unique combination of art, sociability, and climate accounts for it having been the birthplace of the open-air painted sketch in the 1780s, and it remained the epicenter of the sketch aesthetic on Chapman’s arrival. There had developed a nexus of supporting institutional, commercial, and private resources that Chapman could consult on the techniques, practicalities, and uses of painting “dal vero,” and he made his first forays into the Campagna and Colli Albani with his paint-box and traps at this time. Returning to Italy in 1850, Chapman resumed his excursions into the field and initiated his two sons, John Linton Chapman and Conrad Wise Chapman, into what had become an esteemed tradition. In the 1858 edition of his respected manual, The American Drawing-Book, Chapman recommends painting from nature as both instructive and salutary, thereby influencing future generations of nascent artists. The work of the Chapman family of painters stands as testament to the vital link between the generative process of oil sketching in nature and the more discriminative methods employed in the studio.
America’s Rome: Artists in the Eternal City 1800-1900, 2009
Published in conjunction with the first exhibition devoted to Rome as an art center for 19th-cent... more Published in conjunction with the first exhibition devoted to Rome as an art center for 19th-century American artists held at the Fenimore Art Museum from May 23–December 31, 2009. This lavishly illustrated catalogue includes a summary overview of the first three chapters of William L. Vance’s critically acclaimed book, America’s Rome, Volume I: Classical Rome, winner of the 1989 Association of American Publishers’ Prize for Most Outstanding Books in the Arts, Literature, and Language; as well as important new scholarship by Mary K. McGuigan, entitled “‘This Market of Physiognomy’: American Artists and Rome’s Art Academies, Life Schools, and Models, 1825–1870”; and John F. McGuigan Jr.’s critical overview, “American Open-Air Landscape Painting in Rome, 1825–1885.”
American Latium: American Artists and Travelers in and around Rome in the Age of the Grand Tour, 2023
CENTO STUDI AMERICANI, ROMA ACADEMIA NAZIONALE DI SAN LUCA, ROMA, DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY OF ART, V... more CENTO STUDI AMERICANI, ROMA ACADEMIA NAZIONALE DI SAN LUCA, ROMA, DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY OF ART, VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY, NASHVILLE DIPARTIMENTO PAU, UNIVERSITÀ MEDITERRANEA DI REGGIO CALABRIA AMERICAN LATIUM: American Artists and Travelers in and around Rome in the Age of the Grand Tour. Proceedings of the International Conference Edited by Christopher M.S. Johns, Tommaso Manfredi, Karin Wolfe Centro Studi Americani Roma, Palazzo Mattei di Giove 7-8 June 2018
Grand Tour: Sogno d’Italia da Venezia a Pompei., 2021
Presso le Gallerie d’Italia - Piazza Scala a Milano, a partire da venerdì 19 novembre e fino al 2... more Presso le Gallerie d’Italia - Piazza Scala a Milano, a partire da venerdì 19 novembre e fino al 27 marzo 2022, è possibile ammirare - “Grand Tour. Sogno d’Italia da Venezia a Pompei”, una mostra di eccezionale valore artistico, storico e identitario. Sotto l’Alto Patronato del Presidente della Repubblica, in partnership con il Museo Statale Ermitage di San Pietroburgo e il Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, l’esposizione è curata da Fernando Mazzocca con Stefano Grandesso, Francesco Leone e con il coordinamento generale di Gianfranco Brunelli.
2019. Art Purposes: Object Lesson for the Liberal Arts. Edited by Joachim Homann. New York: Bowdoin College Museum of Art/DelMonico–Prestel, pp. 120–21,, 2019
Explore art history through the lens of the liberal arts with this stunning look at the Bowdoin C... more Explore art history through the lens of the liberal arts with this stunning look at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art's acclaimed collection.
Published simultaneously as:
"Am Fuße der Pyramide. 300 Jahre Friedhof für Ausländer in Rom.” Bon... more Published simultaneously as: "Am Fuße der Pyramide. 300 Jahre Friedhof für Ausländer in Rom.” Bonn: Arbeitskreis selbständiger Kultur-Inst., 2016.
Published simultaneously as: "Ai piedi della piramide. Il cimitero per gli stranieri a Roma - 300 anni.” Bonn: Arbeitskreis selbständiger Kultur-Inst., 2016.
John F. McGuigan Jr. and Mary K. McGuigan. John Gadsby Chapman: America’s First Artist-Etcher. Wi... more John F. McGuigan Jr. and Mary K. McGuigan. John Gadsby Chapman: America’s First Artist-Etcher. With a Catalogue of his Italian Etchings. Harpswell, ME: Arcady Editions, 2015.
John Gadsby Chapman (1808–1889) was one of nineteenth-century America’s most original and influential artists, and he is deservedly well regarded today for his paintings, drawings, book illustrations, and writing. In contrast, his accomplishments as America’s first artist-etcher—that is to say, the first to design and execute his own etchings—have been largely overlooked until now. This monograph is the first to appear on the Virginia-born Chapman for more than half a century and the first ever to consider the totality of his etching career and situate it within the broader context of his personal life and painting practice. Readers familiar with Chapman’s mural The Baptism of Pocahontas in the U.S. Capitol, his more than 1,400 designs for Harper Brothers’ landmark Illuminated Bible (1846), his American Drawing-Book (1847), and oeuvre of Grand Tour paintings will be delighted to learn more about his prolonged commitment to fine art etching.
John F. McGuigan Jr. and Mary K. McGuigan. “‘The Most Homelike and Comfortable Place I Have Seen’... more John F. McGuigan Jr. and Mary K. McGuigan. “‘The Most Homelike and Comfortable Place I Have Seen’: James E. Freeman, Elihu Vedder, and Via Capo le Case 68 in Rome.” Crossings–Ponti Sull’Atlantico: Testi in Recordo di Regina Soria. Edited by Frederick Mario Fales. Naples: Liguori Editore, 2011, 122–28.
Regina Soria (Rome 1911–2006) made an original contribution to nineteenth-century art history, assessing the careers and works of American artists in Italy and, on the other hand, of Italian artists in the United States. Soria’s ability to interpret the cultural relations between America and Italy arose from personal experience characterized by her exile to the U.S. as a result of the Italian racial laws of 1938, by decades of teaching and promoting Italian culture in Baltimore, and finally by long and productive years in constant pilgrimage between the two sides of the Atlantic. The texts in this volume are dedicated to Regina Soria, the work of friends, disciples, and colleagues, Italian and American, in their respective languages. Alongside the memories of Furio Colombo, Marta Knobloch, Guido Ceronetti, Claretta Cerio, Liliana Madeo, and many others, we find essays on the great literary and figural interpreters of the expatriate experience, whether physical or interior (Henry James, Henry David Thoreau, Ben Shahn, and Derek Walcott), and the Orientalist and biblical tendencies in American painting among some of the most famous nineteenth-century American artists who worked in Italy (Elihu Vedder, John Singer Sargent, James E. Freeman, Thomas Cole, and Frederic Crowninshield).
Mary K. McGuigan. “A Garden of Lost Opportunities”: Elihu Vedder in Florence 1857-1860.” Sculptor... more Mary K. McGuigan. “A Garden of Lost Opportunities”: Elihu Vedder in Florence 1857-1860.” Sculptors, Painters, and Italy: Italian Influence on Nineteenth-Century American Art. Edited by Sirpa Salenius. Padova: Il Prato, 2009
The essays in Sculptors, Painters, and Italy: Italian Influence on Nineteenth-Century American Art examine the influence of Italy in the works of nineteenth-century American sculptors and painters.
The focus is on their experience in Italy, their relationship with local workmen, their contact with Italian artists such as the Tuscan Macchiaioli, and the impact of their Italian experience on the formation of American art.
The papers in the volume discuss such artists as Horatio Greenough, Thomas Cole, Hiram Powers, Henry Kirke Brown, Elihu Vedder, Edmonia Lewis, and John Singer Sargent. The essays are written by scholars from American universities and museums, and they appear in the following order:
Elise Madeleine Ciregna, "'An Example in the Right Direction': Horatio Greenough's Life and Work in Italy";
John F. McGuigan Jr, "'A Painter's Paradise': Thomas Cole and His Transformative Experience in Florence, 1831-1832";
Rebecca Reynolds, "'No Ordinary Hands': Hiram Powers' Artistic and Professionally Related Family";
Karen Lemmey, "'I would just as soon be in Albany as Florence,' Henry Kirke Brown and the American Expatriate Colonies in Italy, 1842-1846";
Mary K. McGuigan, "A Garden of Lost Opportunities: Elihu Vedder in Florence, 1857-1860",
Marilyn Richardson, "Friends and Colleagues: Edmonia Lewis and Her Italian Circle";
and Kathleen Lawrence, "John Singer Sargent, Italy, and the American Paradox."
Editor Sirpa Salenius is the editor of OltreOceano-TransAtlantic Transitions book series on nineteenth-century American artists and writers in Italy. Her publications examine the Grand Tour and the influence of Italy on the lives and works of such American authors as James Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mark Twain, Henry James, and Constance Fenimore Woolson.
John F. McGuigan Jr. and Mary K. McGuigan
Utica, NY: Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, 2009. Sof... more John F. McGuigan Jr. and Mary K. McGuigan Utica, NY: Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, 2009. Softbound. Color glossy pictorial wraparound dustjacket over printed card covers. 165 pp., 100+ color plates and additional bw illustrations. ISBN: 9780915895359
Published on the occasion of the exhibition at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute in Utica, NY, September 13, 2009–January 17, 2010; and the Newington-Cropsey Foundation, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY, 19 September–18 November 2011.
A student in the National Academy of Design’s inaugural class of 1826, Freeman began as a painter of bespoke portraits and the occasional fancy picture in central New York State. He first traveled to Italy in 1836 and remained a fixture of the vibrant art scene there until his death at Rome in 1884. In that time he forged a unique career painting engaging fancy pictures of humble Italian peasants for an international clientele. These sentimental character studies of impish street urchins, beatific mothers with children, and blind beggars were appealing for their artless beauty, an ideal closely allied to the 18th-century cult of sensibility. By resituating Freeman’s paintings amid their literary and historical sources, this project reveals the important rhetorical function of the fancy picture as a vehicle for social and political change in 19th-century America. Freeman’s dedication to the communicative potential of the fancy picture resulted in a remarkably cohesive oeuvre that constitutes his lasting legacy to American art.
2019. The United States and Florence (1815–1915): Artistic Models, Inspirations, and Influences. ... more 2019. The United States and Florence (1815–1915): Artistic Models, Inspirations, and Influences. A Conference Held in Honor of the Bicentenary of the U. S. Consulate General in Florence, 23–24 September 2019, Vasari Auditorium, Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy.
2019. Gli Stati Uniti e Firenze (1815–1915): Modelli Artistici, Inspirazione, Suggestioni. Una co... more 2019. Gli Stati Uniti e Firenze (1815–1915): Modelli Artistici, Inspirazione, Suggestioni. Una convegna in onore per i 200 anni del consolato generale americano a Firenze, 23–24 Settembre 2019, Auditorium Vasari, Le Gallerie degli Uffizi.
2019. Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Gallery Conversation: “Getting the Art Idea.” Mary K. McGuig... more 2019. Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Gallery Conversation: “Getting the Art Idea.” Mary K. McGuigan and John F. McGuigan Jr., art historians, discuss nineteenth-century American works by Elihu Vedder and John Adams Jackson, in conjunction with the exhibition The Nineteenth Century: American and European Art. 2 October 2019.
'Scenery Found': John Gadsby Chapman and Open-Air Oil Sketching in and around Rome, 1830-77
By... more 'Scenery Found': John Gadsby Chapman and Open-Air Oil Sketching in and around Rome, 1830-77
By Mary K. McGuigan
John Gadsby Chapman (1808–1889) was one of the earliest American practitioners of the open-air oil sketch and one of its most vocal advocates, championing it as a worthwhile pursuit and pleasurable pastime for professional and amateur painters alike. The native Virginian first visited Rome as an aspiring history painter from 1828 to 1831 and quickly entered into the academic, social, and studio circles of the international artistic community. Rome’s unique combination of art, sociability, and climate accounts for it having been the birthplace of the open-air painted sketch in the 1780s, and it remained the epicenter of the sketch aesthetic on Chapman’s arrival. There had developed a nexus of supporting institutional, commercial, and private resources that Chapman could consult on the techniques, practicalities, and uses of painting “dal vero,” and he made his first forays into the Campagna and Colli Albani with his paint-box and traps at this time. Returning to Italy in 1850, Chapman resumed his excursions into the field and initiated his two sons, John Linton Chapman and Conrad Wise Chapman, into what had become an esteemed tradition. In the 1858 edition of his respected manual, The American Drawing-Book, Chapman recommends painting from nature as both instructive and salutary, thereby influencing future generations of nascent artists. The work of the Chapman family of painters stands as testament to the vital link between the generative process of oil sketching in nature and the more discriminative methods employed in the studio.
America’s Rome: Artists in the Eternal City 1800-1900, 2009
Published in conjunction with the first exhibition devoted to Rome as an art center for 19th-cent... more Published in conjunction with the first exhibition devoted to Rome as an art center for 19th-century American artists held at the Fenimore Art Museum from May 23–December 31, 2009. This lavishly illustrated catalogue includes a summary overview of the first three chapters of William L. Vance’s critically acclaimed book, America’s Rome, Volume I: Classical Rome, winner of the 1989 Association of American Publishers’ Prize for Most Outstanding Books in the Arts, Literature, and Language; as well as important new scholarship by Mary K. McGuigan, entitled “‘This Market of Physiognomy’: American Artists and Rome’s Art Academies, Life Schools, and Models, 1825–1870”; and John F. McGuigan Jr.’s critical overview, “American Open-Air Landscape Painting in Rome, 1825–1885.”
American Latium: American Artists and Travelers in and around Rome in the Age of the Grand Tour, 2023
CENTO STUDI AMERICANI, ROMA ACADEMIA NAZIONALE DI SAN LUCA, ROMA, DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY OF ART, V... more CENTO STUDI AMERICANI, ROMA ACADEMIA NAZIONALE DI SAN LUCA, ROMA, DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY OF ART, VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY, NASHVILLE DIPARTIMENTO PAU, UNIVERSITÀ MEDITERRANEA DI REGGIO CALABRIA AMERICAN LATIUM: American Artists and Travelers in and around Rome in the Age of the Grand Tour. Proceedings of the International Conference Edited by Christopher M.S. Johns, Tommaso Manfredi, Karin Wolfe Centro Studi Americani Roma, Palazzo Mattei di Giove 7-8 June 2018
Grand Tour: Sogno d’Italia da Venezia a Pompei., 2021
Presso le Gallerie d’Italia - Piazza Scala a Milano, a partire da venerdì 19 novembre e fino al 2... more Presso le Gallerie d’Italia - Piazza Scala a Milano, a partire da venerdì 19 novembre e fino al 27 marzo 2022, è possibile ammirare - “Grand Tour. Sogno d’Italia da Venezia a Pompei”, una mostra di eccezionale valore artistico, storico e identitario. Sotto l’Alto Patronato del Presidente della Repubblica, in partnership con il Museo Statale Ermitage di San Pietroburgo e il Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, l’esposizione è curata da Fernando Mazzocca con Stefano Grandesso, Francesco Leone e con il coordinamento generale di Gianfranco Brunelli.
2019. Art Purposes: Object Lesson for the Liberal Arts. Edited by Joachim Homann. New York: Bowdoin College Museum of Art/DelMonico–Prestel, pp. 120–21,, 2019
Explore art history through the lens of the liberal arts with this stunning look at the Bowdoin C... more Explore art history through the lens of the liberal arts with this stunning look at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art's acclaimed collection.
Published simultaneously as:
"Am Fuße der Pyramide. 300 Jahre Friedhof für Ausländer in Rom.” Bon... more Published simultaneously as: "Am Fuße der Pyramide. 300 Jahre Friedhof für Ausländer in Rom.” Bonn: Arbeitskreis selbständiger Kultur-Inst., 2016.
Published simultaneously as: "Ai piedi della piramide. Il cimitero per gli stranieri a Roma - 300 anni.” Bonn: Arbeitskreis selbständiger Kultur-Inst., 2016.
John F. McGuigan Jr. and Mary K. McGuigan. John Gadsby Chapman: America’s First Artist-Etcher. Wi... more John F. McGuigan Jr. and Mary K. McGuigan. John Gadsby Chapman: America’s First Artist-Etcher. With a Catalogue of his Italian Etchings. Harpswell, ME: Arcady Editions, 2015.
John Gadsby Chapman (1808–1889) was one of nineteenth-century America’s most original and influential artists, and he is deservedly well regarded today for his paintings, drawings, book illustrations, and writing. In contrast, his accomplishments as America’s first artist-etcher—that is to say, the first to design and execute his own etchings—have been largely overlooked until now. This monograph is the first to appear on the Virginia-born Chapman for more than half a century and the first ever to consider the totality of his etching career and situate it within the broader context of his personal life and painting practice. Readers familiar with Chapman’s mural The Baptism of Pocahontas in the U.S. Capitol, his more than 1,400 designs for Harper Brothers’ landmark Illuminated Bible (1846), his American Drawing-Book (1847), and oeuvre of Grand Tour paintings will be delighted to learn more about his prolonged commitment to fine art etching.
John F. McGuigan Jr. and Mary K. McGuigan. “‘The Most Homelike and Comfortable Place I Have Seen’... more John F. McGuigan Jr. and Mary K. McGuigan. “‘The Most Homelike and Comfortable Place I Have Seen’: James E. Freeman, Elihu Vedder, and Via Capo le Case 68 in Rome.” Crossings–Ponti Sull’Atlantico: Testi in Recordo di Regina Soria. Edited by Frederick Mario Fales. Naples: Liguori Editore, 2011, 122–28.
Regina Soria (Rome 1911–2006) made an original contribution to nineteenth-century art history, assessing the careers and works of American artists in Italy and, on the other hand, of Italian artists in the United States. Soria’s ability to interpret the cultural relations between America and Italy arose from personal experience characterized by her exile to the U.S. as a result of the Italian racial laws of 1938, by decades of teaching and promoting Italian culture in Baltimore, and finally by long and productive years in constant pilgrimage between the two sides of the Atlantic. The texts in this volume are dedicated to Regina Soria, the work of friends, disciples, and colleagues, Italian and American, in their respective languages. Alongside the memories of Furio Colombo, Marta Knobloch, Guido Ceronetti, Claretta Cerio, Liliana Madeo, and many others, we find essays on the great literary and figural interpreters of the expatriate experience, whether physical or interior (Henry James, Henry David Thoreau, Ben Shahn, and Derek Walcott), and the Orientalist and biblical tendencies in American painting among some of the most famous nineteenth-century American artists who worked in Italy (Elihu Vedder, John Singer Sargent, James E. Freeman, Thomas Cole, and Frederic Crowninshield).
Mary K. McGuigan. “A Garden of Lost Opportunities”: Elihu Vedder in Florence 1857-1860.” Sculptor... more Mary K. McGuigan. “A Garden of Lost Opportunities”: Elihu Vedder in Florence 1857-1860.” Sculptors, Painters, and Italy: Italian Influence on Nineteenth-Century American Art. Edited by Sirpa Salenius. Padova: Il Prato, 2009
The essays in Sculptors, Painters, and Italy: Italian Influence on Nineteenth-Century American Art examine the influence of Italy in the works of nineteenth-century American sculptors and painters.
The focus is on their experience in Italy, their relationship with local workmen, their contact with Italian artists such as the Tuscan Macchiaioli, and the impact of their Italian experience on the formation of American art.
The papers in the volume discuss such artists as Horatio Greenough, Thomas Cole, Hiram Powers, Henry Kirke Brown, Elihu Vedder, Edmonia Lewis, and John Singer Sargent. The essays are written by scholars from American universities and museums, and they appear in the following order:
Elise Madeleine Ciregna, "'An Example in the Right Direction': Horatio Greenough's Life and Work in Italy";
John F. McGuigan Jr, "'A Painter's Paradise': Thomas Cole and His Transformative Experience in Florence, 1831-1832";
Rebecca Reynolds, "'No Ordinary Hands': Hiram Powers' Artistic and Professionally Related Family";
Karen Lemmey, "'I would just as soon be in Albany as Florence,' Henry Kirke Brown and the American Expatriate Colonies in Italy, 1842-1846";
Mary K. McGuigan, "A Garden of Lost Opportunities: Elihu Vedder in Florence, 1857-1860",
Marilyn Richardson, "Friends and Colleagues: Edmonia Lewis and Her Italian Circle";
and Kathleen Lawrence, "John Singer Sargent, Italy, and the American Paradox."
Editor Sirpa Salenius is the editor of OltreOceano-TransAtlantic Transitions book series on nineteenth-century American artists and writers in Italy. Her publications examine the Grand Tour and the influence of Italy on the lives and works of such American authors as James Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mark Twain, Henry James, and Constance Fenimore Woolson.
John F. McGuigan Jr. and Mary K. McGuigan
Utica, NY: Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, 2009. Sof... more John F. McGuigan Jr. and Mary K. McGuigan Utica, NY: Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, 2009. Softbound. Color glossy pictorial wraparound dustjacket over printed card covers. 165 pp., 100+ color plates and additional bw illustrations. ISBN: 9780915895359
Published on the occasion of the exhibition at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute in Utica, NY, September 13, 2009–January 17, 2010; and the Newington-Cropsey Foundation, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY, 19 September–18 November 2011.
A student in the National Academy of Design’s inaugural class of 1826, Freeman began as a painter of bespoke portraits and the occasional fancy picture in central New York State. He first traveled to Italy in 1836 and remained a fixture of the vibrant art scene there until his death at Rome in 1884. In that time he forged a unique career painting engaging fancy pictures of humble Italian peasants for an international clientele. These sentimental character studies of impish street urchins, beatific mothers with children, and blind beggars were appealing for their artless beauty, an ideal closely allied to the 18th-century cult of sensibility. By resituating Freeman’s paintings amid their literary and historical sources, this project reveals the important rhetorical function of the fancy picture as a vehicle for social and political change in 19th-century America. Freeman’s dedication to the communicative potential of the fancy picture resulted in a remarkably cohesive oeuvre that constitutes his lasting legacy to American art.
In the 19th century, America emerged as a young, optimistic nation. Abundant natural resources an... more In the 19th century, America emerged as a young, optimistic nation. Abundant natural resources and untouched beauty became the focus of the Hudson River School, the nation's first art movement. Luminous panoramas reveal majestic landscapes with strong spiritual and moral references, reinforcing America's manifest destiny. These salient, naturalistic paintings epitomize the patriotic surge of a young country full of idealism and promise. The Hudson River School painters were the artistic successors of 18th Century Neo-classicism whose ideals of freedom and enlightenment sprang from ancient Rome. The artists' attraction to Italy inspired many to travel, study and recreate the Italian landscape through their distinctive style. A Defining Moment: The Hudson River School in Italy is a remarkable collection of paintings highlighting this unique aspect of American painters in Italy.
Karen Hembree Curator of Art Education Ellen Noel Art Museum
The 5th issue of the Uffizi Galleries' Magazine. Dedicated to the conference "The United States a... more The 5th issue of the Uffizi Galleries' Magazine. Dedicated to the conference "The United States and Florence (1815-1915): artistic models, inspirations and influences" (Uffizi, Auditorium Vasari, 23rd-24th September 2019).
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By Mary K. McGuigan
John Gadsby Chapman (1808–1889) was one of the earliest American practitioners of the open-air oil sketch and one of its most vocal advocates, championing it as a worthwhile pursuit and pleasurable pastime for professional and amateur painters alike. The native Virginian first visited Rome as an aspiring history painter from 1828 to 1831 and quickly entered into the academic, social, and studio circles of the international artistic community. Rome’s unique combination of art, sociability, and climate accounts for it having been the birthplace of the open-air painted sketch in the 1780s, and it remained the epicenter of the sketch aesthetic on Chapman’s arrival. There had developed a nexus of supporting institutional, commercial, and private resources that Chapman could consult on the techniques, practicalities, and uses of painting “dal vero,” and he made his first forays into the Campagna and Colli Albani with his paint-box and traps at this time. Returning to Italy in 1850, Chapman resumed his excursions into the field and initiated his two sons, John Linton Chapman and Conrad Wise Chapman, into what had become an esteemed tradition. In the 1858 edition of his respected manual, The American Drawing-Book, Chapman recommends painting from nature as both instructive and salutary, thereby influencing future generations of nascent artists. The work of the Chapman family of painters stands as testament to the vital link between the generative process of oil sketching in nature and the more discriminative methods employed in the studio.
AMERICAN LATIUM: American Artists and Travelers in and around Rome in the Age of the Grand Tour. Proceedings of the International Conference
Edited by Christopher M.S. Johns, Tommaso Manfredi, Karin Wolfe
Centro Studi Americani Roma, Palazzo Mattei di Giove 7-8 June 2018
"Am Fuße der Pyramide. 300 Jahre Friedhof für Ausländer in Rom.” Bonn: Arbeitskreis selbständiger Kultur-Inst., 2016.
Published simultaneously as:
"Ai piedi della piramide. Il cimitero per gli stranieri a Roma - 300 anni.” Bonn: Arbeitskreis selbständiger Kultur-Inst., 2016.
John Gadsby Chapman (1808–1889) was one of nineteenth-century America’s most original and influential artists, and he is deservedly well regarded today for his paintings, drawings, book illustrations, and writing. In contrast, his accomplishments as America’s first artist-etcher—that is to say, the first to design and execute his own etchings—have been largely overlooked until now. This monograph is the first to appear on the Virginia-born Chapman for more than half a century and the first ever to consider the totality of his etching career and situate it within the broader context of his personal life and painting practice. Readers familiar with Chapman’s mural The Baptism of Pocahontas in the U.S. Capitol, his more than 1,400 designs for Harper Brothers’ landmark Illuminated Bible (1846), his American Drawing-Book (1847), and oeuvre of Grand Tour paintings will be delighted to learn more about his prolonged commitment to fine art etching.
Regina Soria (Rome 1911–2006) made an original contribution to nineteenth-century art history, assessing the careers and works of American artists in Italy and, on the other hand, of Italian artists in the United States. Soria’s ability to interpret the cultural relations between America and Italy arose from personal experience characterized by her exile to the U.S. as a result of the Italian racial laws of 1938, by decades of teaching and promoting Italian culture in Baltimore, and finally by long and productive years in constant pilgrimage between the two sides of the Atlantic. The texts in this volume are dedicated to Regina Soria, the work of friends, disciples, and colleagues, Italian and American, in their respective languages. Alongside the memories of Furio Colombo, Marta Knobloch, Guido Ceronetti, Claretta Cerio, Liliana Madeo, and many others, we find essays on the great literary and figural interpreters of the expatriate experience, whether physical or interior (Henry James, Henry David Thoreau, Ben Shahn, and Derek Walcott), and the Orientalist and biblical tendencies in American painting among some of the most famous nineteenth-century American artists who worked in Italy (Elihu Vedder, John Singer Sargent, James E. Freeman, Thomas Cole, and Frederic Crowninshield).
The essays in Sculptors, Painters, and Italy: Italian Influence on Nineteenth-Century American Art examine the influence of Italy in the works of nineteenth-century American sculptors and painters.
The focus is on their experience in Italy, their relationship with local workmen, their contact with Italian artists such as the Tuscan Macchiaioli, and the impact of their Italian experience on the formation of American art.
The papers in the volume discuss such artists as Horatio Greenough, Thomas Cole, Hiram Powers, Henry Kirke Brown, Elihu Vedder, Edmonia Lewis, and John Singer Sargent. The essays are written by scholars from American universities and museums, and they appear in the following order:
Elise Madeleine Ciregna, "'An Example in the Right Direction': Horatio Greenough's Life and Work in Italy";
John F. McGuigan Jr, "'A Painter's Paradise': Thomas Cole and His Transformative Experience in Florence, 1831-1832";
Rebecca Reynolds, "'No Ordinary Hands': Hiram Powers' Artistic and Professionally Related Family";
Karen Lemmey, "'I would just as soon be in Albany as Florence,' Henry Kirke Brown and the American Expatriate Colonies in Italy, 1842-1846";
Mary K. McGuigan, "A Garden of Lost Opportunities: Elihu Vedder in Florence, 1857-1860",
Marilyn Richardson, "Friends and Colleagues: Edmonia Lewis and Her Italian Circle";
and Kathleen Lawrence, "John Singer Sargent, Italy, and the American Paradox."
Editor Sirpa Salenius is the editor of OltreOceano-TransAtlantic Transitions book series on nineteenth-century American artists and writers in Italy. Her publications examine the Grand Tour and the influence of Italy on the lives and works of such American authors as James Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mark Twain, Henry James, and Constance Fenimore Woolson.
Utica, NY: Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, 2009. Softbound. Color glossy pictorial wraparound dustjacket over printed card covers. 165 pp., 100+ color plates and additional bw illustrations.
ISBN: 9780915895359
Published on the occasion of the exhibition at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute in Utica, NY, September 13, 2009–January 17, 2010; and the Newington-Cropsey Foundation, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY, 19 September–18 November 2011.
A student in the National Academy of Design’s inaugural class of 1826, Freeman began as a painter of bespoke portraits and the occasional fancy picture in central New York State. He first traveled to Italy in 1836 and remained a fixture of the vibrant art scene there until his death at Rome in 1884. In that time he forged a unique career painting engaging fancy pictures of humble Italian peasants for an international clientele. These sentimental character studies of impish street urchins, beatific mothers with children, and blind beggars were appealing for their artless beauty, an ideal closely allied to the 18th-century cult of sensibility. By resituating Freeman’s paintings amid their literary and historical sources, this project reveals the important rhetorical function of the fancy picture as a vehicle for social and political change in 19th-century America. Freeman’s dedication to the communicative potential of the fancy picture resulted in a remarkably cohesive oeuvre that constitutes his lasting legacy to American art.
By Mary K. McGuigan
John Gadsby Chapman (1808–1889) was one of the earliest American practitioners of the open-air oil sketch and one of its most vocal advocates, championing it as a worthwhile pursuit and pleasurable pastime for professional and amateur painters alike. The native Virginian first visited Rome as an aspiring history painter from 1828 to 1831 and quickly entered into the academic, social, and studio circles of the international artistic community. Rome’s unique combination of art, sociability, and climate accounts for it having been the birthplace of the open-air painted sketch in the 1780s, and it remained the epicenter of the sketch aesthetic on Chapman’s arrival. There had developed a nexus of supporting institutional, commercial, and private resources that Chapman could consult on the techniques, practicalities, and uses of painting “dal vero,” and he made his first forays into the Campagna and Colli Albani with his paint-box and traps at this time. Returning to Italy in 1850, Chapman resumed his excursions into the field and initiated his two sons, John Linton Chapman and Conrad Wise Chapman, into what had become an esteemed tradition. In the 1858 edition of his respected manual, The American Drawing-Book, Chapman recommends painting from nature as both instructive and salutary, thereby influencing future generations of nascent artists. The work of the Chapman family of painters stands as testament to the vital link between the generative process of oil sketching in nature and the more discriminative methods employed in the studio.
AMERICAN LATIUM: American Artists and Travelers in and around Rome in the Age of the Grand Tour. Proceedings of the International Conference
Edited by Christopher M.S. Johns, Tommaso Manfredi, Karin Wolfe
Centro Studi Americani Roma, Palazzo Mattei di Giove 7-8 June 2018
"Am Fuße der Pyramide. 300 Jahre Friedhof für Ausländer in Rom.” Bonn: Arbeitskreis selbständiger Kultur-Inst., 2016.
Published simultaneously as:
"Ai piedi della piramide. Il cimitero per gli stranieri a Roma - 300 anni.” Bonn: Arbeitskreis selbständiger Kultur-Inst., 2016.
John Gadsby Chapman (1808–1889) was one of nineteenth-century America’s most original and influential artists, and he is deservedly well regarded today for his paintings, drawings, book illustrations, and writing. In contrast, his accomplishments as America’s first artist-etcher—that is to say, the first to design and execute his own etchings—have been largely overlooked until now. This monograph is the first to appear on the Virginia-born Chapman for more than half a century and the first ever to consider the totality of his etching career and situate it within the broader context of his personal life and painting practice. Readers familiar with Chapman’s mural The Baptism of Pocahontas in the U.S. Capitol, his more than 1,400 designs for Harper Brothers’ landmark Illuminated Bible (1846), his American Drawing-Book (1847), and oeuvre of Grand Tour paintings will be delighted to learn more about his prolonged commitment to fine art etching.
Regina Soria (Rome 1911–2006) made an original contribution to nineteenth-century art history, assessing the careers and works of American artists in Italy and, on the other hand, of Italian artists in the United States. Soria’s ability to interpret the cultural relations between America and Italy arose from personal experience characterized by her exile to the U.S. as a result of the Italian racial laws of 1938, by decades of teaching and promoting Italian culture in Baltimore, and finally by long and productive years in constant pilgrimage between the two sides of the Atlantic. The texts in this volume are dedicated to Regina Soria, the work of friends, disciples, and colleagues, Italian and American, in their respective languages. Alongside the memories of Furio Colombo, Marta Knobloch, Guido Ceronetti, Claretta Cerio, Liliana Madeo, and many others, we find essays on the great literary and figural interpreters of the expatriate experience, whether physical or interior (Henry James, Henry David Thoreau, Ben Shahn, and Derek Walcott), and the Orientalist and biblical tendencies in American painting among some of the most famous nineteenth-century American artists who worked in Italy (Elihu Vedder, John Singer Sargent, James E. Freeman, Thomas Cole, and Frederic Crowninshield).
The essays in Sculptors, Painters, and Italy: Italian Influence on Nineteenth-Century American Art examine the influence of Italy in the works of nineteenth-century American sculptors and painters.
The focus is on their experience in Italy, their relationship with local workmen, their contact with Italian artists such as the Tuscan Macchiaioli, and the impact of their Italian experience on the formation of American art.
The papers in the volume discuss such artists as Horatio Greenough, Thomas Cole, Hiram Powers, Henry Kirke Brown, Elihu Vedder, Edmonia Lewis, and John Singer Sargent. The essays are written by scholars from American universities and museums, and they appear in the following order:
Elise Madeleine Ciregna, "'An Example in the Right Direction': Horatio Greenough's Life and Work in Italy";
John F. McGuigan Jr, "'A Painter's Paradise': Thomas Cole and His Transformative Experience in Florence, 1831-1832";
Rebecca Reynolds, "'No Ordinary Hands': Hiram Powers' Artistic and Professionally Related Family";
Karen Lemmey, "'I would just as soon be in Albany as Florence,' Henry Kirke Brown and the American Expatriate Colonies in Italy, 1842-1846";
Mary K. McGuigan, "A Garden of Lost Opportunities: Elihu Vedder in Florence, 1857-1860",
Marilyn Richardson, "Friends and Colleagues: Edmonia Lewis and Her Italian Circle";
and Kathleen Lawrence, "John Singer Sargent, Italy, and the American Paradox."
Editor Sirpa Salenius is the editor of OltreOceano-TransAtlantic Transitions book series on nineteenth-century American artists and writers in Italy. Her publications examine the Grand Tour and the influence of Italy on the lives and works of such American authors as James Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mark Twain, Henry James, and Constance Fenimore Woolson.
Utica, NY: Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, 2009. Softbound. Color glossy pictorial wraparound dustjacket over printed card covers. 165 pp., 100+ color plates and additional bw illustrations.
ISBN: 9780915895359
Published on the occasion of the exhibition at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute in Utica, NY, September 13, 2009–January 17, 2010; and the Newington-Cropsey Foundation, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY, 19 September–18 November 2011.
A student in the National Academy of Design’s inaugural class of 1826, Freeman began as a painter of bespoke portraits and the occasional fancy picture in central New York State. He first traveled to Italy in 1836 and remained a fixture of the vibrant art scene there until his death at Rome in 1884. In that time he forged a unique career painting engaging fancy pictures of humble Italian peasants for an international clientele. These sentimental character studies of impish street urchins, beatific mothers with children, and blind beggars were appealing for their artless beauty, an ideal closely allied to the 18th-century cult of sensibility. By resituating Freeman’s paintings amid their literary and historical sources, this project reveals the important rhetorical function of the fancy picture as a vehicle for social and political change in 19th-century America. Freeman’s dedication to the communicative potential of the fancy picture resulted in a remarkably cohesive oeuvre that constitutes his lasting legacy to American art.
The Hudson River School painters were the artistic successors of 18th Century Neo-classicism whose ideals of freedom and enlightenment sprang from ancient Rome. The artists' attraction to Italy inspired many to travel, study and recreate the Italian landscape through their distinctive style. A Defining Moment: The Hudson River School in Italy is a remarkable collection of paintings highlighting this unique aspect of American painters in Italy.
Karen Hembree
Curator of Art Education
Ellen Noel Art Museum