Art and the Higher Life: Painting and Evolutionary Thought in Late Nineteenth-Century America

About this book

As the nineteenth century drew to a close many Americans were deeply troubled by the theories of Charles Darwin which contradicted both traditional Christian teachings and the general view of human supremacy over nature and by an influx of foreign immigrants who challenged the supremacy of the old Anglo-Saxon elite. In response many people drew comfort from the theories of British philosopher Herbert Spencer who held that human society inevitably develops towards higher and more spiritual forms. In this illuminating study Kathleen Pyne explores how Spencers theories came to influence a generation of American artists. She shows how the painters of the 1880s and 1890s particularly John La Farge James McNeill Whistler Thomas Dewing and the Boston school and the impressionist painters of the Ten developed a kind of art that was dedicated to social refinement and spiritual ideals and to defending the embattled position of the Anglo-Saxon elite of which they were members. Linking visual culture to the problematic conditions of American life the book thus offers a radically new interpretation of the most important trends in late nineteenth-century American painting. It will be of interest to a wide interdisciplinary audience in American intellectual social and art history.