Antiques.(American art and artists)

 
If America is to produce great painters and if young art students wish 
to assume a place in the history of art in their country, their first 
desire should be to remain in America, to peer deeper into the heart of 
American life, rather than to spend their time abroad obtaining a 
superficial view of the art of the Old World. 
Thomas Eakins, Philadelphia Press, February 22, 1914 

After the Revolution Americans clamored for a culture of their own, an indigenous, original American art to complement their proven military and political genius. The new nation must be "as independent in literature as ... in politics," the lexicographer Noah Webster wrote in his famous speller, "as famous for arts as for arms." In a spirit of rampant nationalism, Americans were uniformly convinced that the United States was on the rising curve of history, that its upward path was divinely ordained, and that the entire past of the human race was only preparation for the appearance of American society. "Here the sciences and the arts of civilized life are to receive their highest improvement," Jedidiah Morse proclaimed in his American Geography. "Here Genius, aided by all the improvements of former ages, is to be exerted in humanizing mankind." If the mission of their civilization was to exemplify and spread concepts of liberty, equality, and justice throughout the world, it seemed imperative to Americans that they avoid emulation of Europe and strive to foster their own life and culture.

Defining what their new art would look like took up much of the discussion among American artists during these early years. No thinking artist could reject the great legacy of European and classical civilization, but he did not want to be dominated by foreign examples. His problem was to create an American art within reasonable boundaries, neither ...