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Gerry Souter
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Text: Gerry Souter
Layout:
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© Parkstone Press International, New York, USA
© Confidential Concepts, Worldwide, USA
Art © Estate of Thomas Hart Benton / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
© Charles Burchfield
© Everett Shinn
© John Sloan Estate, Artists Rights Society, New York, USA
Art © Estate of Grant Wood/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
American Gothic, 1930 by Grant Wood
All rights reserved by the Estate of Nan Wood Graham/Licensed by
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© Andrew Wyeth
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ISBN: 978-1-78042-992-2
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Gerry Souter
AMERICAN
Realism
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Contents
Introduction 6-9
Eastman Johnson (1824-1906) 10-19
Winslow Homer (1836-1910) 20-33
Thomas Eakins (1844-1916) 34-49
William Michael Harnett (1848-1892) 50-65
Frederic Remington (1861-1909) 66-85
Robert Henri (1865-1929) and the “Ashcan Artists” 86-115
Edward Hopper (1882-1967) 116-141
Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975) 142-177
Grant Wood (1892-1942) 178-205
Charles Burchfield (1893-1967) 206-225
Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009) 226-249
Notes 250-251
Bibliography 252-253
Index 254-255
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Frederic Remington,Boat House at Ingleneuk,c. 1903-1907.
Oil on academy board, 30.5 x 45.7 cm.
Frederic Remington Art Museum, Ogdensburg, New York.
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INTRODUCTION
The concept of ‘Realism’ as applied to a style of art embraces too much out in their impassioned minds. Masters of technique became
with too little. You might as well try to define ‘Dance’ without looking elevated in society and gathered together to protect their franchise
at ballet, tap, jazz, clog or folk. It is true in art there is Cubism, with orders, academies and societies where membership was seen as
Futurism, Impressionism, Fauvism, Expressionism and many more lesser a goal, an achievement, a sacred trust. To display their work or
‘isms’ and each bears certain characteristics, or cleaves to certain commission their skills bestowed a cachet, a symbol of piety, good
constraints or expansions that define the style. Each of these styles has taste and social responsibility.
practitioners who themselves are defined by the results of their
identification with the specific creative method. Each painter has also Of course there were the malcontents: Dürer, Da Vinci, David,
brought an individual contribution to the interpretation of the style. The Rembrandt, Goya, Delacroix, Caravaggio; artists whose passion
key differences between these ‘isms’ and ‘Realism’ is time, place and flowed from their brushes and etching needles and crayons to show
state of mind. there was more to realism than polished technique. When the
American Colonies of the New World finally sought the trappings of
A ‘Realist’ painter is the beneficiary of a legacy stretching back to the civilisation after their Revolution and Westward Expansion, the
earliest cave paintings that describe the activities of our most Tripolitain War and the War of 1812 and the border wars with
primitive ancestors who ‘saw’ giant elk, mammoths, cave bears and Mexico, both a native art and the arts of Europe began staking out
their own humanoid brothers. They ‘saw’ the spears flying through new ground. All this civilisation arrived just in time for the birth of
the air, observed the graceful arch of the antelope’s neck and the photography in the 1840s. The capturing of reflected light in an
hump of the buffalo’s back. They painted exactly what they saw, infinite scale of values preserved in silver halide crystals and fixed with
subjects standing still or in motion, in coloured clays mixed with hyposulphite forever democratised reality upside down and
animal fat and tallow. No one is sure if the result was pure journalism backwards on glass and paper, and held a mirror up to nature with
of observation or using magical suggestion to assure a successful the click of a mechanical shutter.
hunt. The sophistication of interpretation wound its way through the
centuries from the stylised propaganda scribed into the walls of And what did ‘true artists’ attempt to do with this brave new
tombs and temples to the sprawling epic of the Bayeux Tapestry medium? Why, forced it to look like a painting, of course, and then
documenting the Norman-french depredations on the shores of hurried off to form orders, academies and societies and create rules
England. Religious faith was reinforced by depictions of stories from of recognition for a ‘truly artistic’ photograph. The science and
holy books such as the Bible, Qur’an, Bhagavad-Gitaand the Analects mechanics of photography originated in Europe, but its
of Confucius. commercialisation, artistic pretension and ultimate creative
potential were achieved in the United States, in the nation of
Realism has always dealt with the baggage carried by the interpreter immigrants who inherited the need to challenge the status quo.
of the scene. The practice of realistic painting produced an elitist class They passed along that need in their genes. The European wave of
schooled in effects and techniques, and secret paint- and academic realism subsided at the hands of the nineteenth-century
preservation-formulations, like alchemists granting eternal life to French Impressionists and tumbled into the larger-than-life
reality seen through their eyes and granting reality to scenes played theatricality and geographically diverse American scenes and
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— American Realism —
lifestyles. Photography’s faithful translation of light and shadow your work as Portrait Realist – or maybe a Portrait Regionalist Realist
into a reproducible image freed painters to pursue their if you painted Native Americans in the West, or sea captains on the
imaginations. They could manipulate any of the elements: colour, East Coast. There were Realists who brushed the style of French
line, perspective, placement, addition and subtraction, making the Impressionism into every canvas and Academic Realists who dragged
scene their reality. Realism as a monolithic, lock-step, strictly the dog-eared mechanics featured in Old World European salons into
governed method of painterly visualisation shattered into nuances scenes of American life. Some Realists successfully stepped back and
of interpretation. forth across the line between commercial illustration and fine art.
Others took realistic subjects into the realms of surrealism or shaved
Where you painted could make you a Regional Realist. What you the medium to such a fine point; the results of which challenged the
painted might label you a Genre Realist, or who you painted classified photographic arts.
William Metcalf,Gloucester Harbour,1895.
Oil on canvas, 66.4 x 74.3 cm.
Mead Art Museum, Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts, gift of George D. Pratt.
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— Introduction —
Of the variations cited, there are even further nuances that mock the This book presents a cross-section of American Realist artists spanning
concept of ‘American Realism’ as an all-embracing style. What remains are more than one hundred years of art. It begins as some artists struggle
American Realist artists, each facing subject matter that is part of the fabric with the influences of Europe, and other home-grown painters bring
of the American scene. The result of their efforts is determined by the their nineteenth-century American scenes to life, and ends as today’s
filtering of their perceptions through their individual intellects, skill sets, generation of Realist painters co-exist with American Modernism and
training, regional influences, ethnic influences and basic nurturing. If there absorb this new freedom into the latest incarnation of their art. The
is any binding together it is within the traditionof Realist Art in the United range of talent is exceptional, touching on the broadest interpretation
States, which accepts such a range from Winslow Homer’s poetic of the American Realist artist. In examining this cross-section, we can
watercolours of the 1860s to the haunting minutiae of Andrew Wyeth and better understand and appreciate the amazing diversity and the
melancholy light of Edward Hopper in the 1950s and 1960s. infinitely variable Realist styles.
John Sloan,Gloucester Harbour,1916.
Oil on canvas, 66 x 81.3 cm.
Syracuse University Art Collection, Syracuse, New York.
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