American neoclassicism. (Current and Coming).(Brief Article)

When, in the early nineteenth century, cabinetmakers such as Honore Lannuier working in American cities described their furniture as "of the newest fashion," they were using a marketing strategy. They were specifically referring to the most recent fashions in England as well as on the Continent, particularly in France. Stylistic innovations traveled quickly even at this early date and affluent Americans wanted to be in the vanguard.

Two factors contributed to the rapid dissemination of fashionable styles. One was illustrated magazines, which were eagerly read by Americans, and the other was the emigre furniture craftsmen who arrived in the United States fully conversant with the most recent styles and forms and the often intricate techniques required to create them. An exhibition that examines the emergence of the neoclassical style in the United States is on view at Hischl and Adler Galleries in New York City through February 2, 2002. The show, which celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of the gallery, includes some 130 objects made in the United States or in England or France for export to American consumers. The title of the exhibition, Of the Newest Fashion: Masterpieces of American Neo-Classical Decorative Arts, is in part drawn from one of Lannuier's labels. The mediums represented are furniture, silver and other metalwork, porcelain, and glass, with all objects produced between about 1810 and 1840.

The American examples in the exhibition were made in New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. Paintings include portraits by such artists as Thomas Sully, John Neagle, and Charles Balthazar Julien Fevret de Saint-Memin; still lifes (which came into their own in the opening years of the nineteenth century) by James ...