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A History of American Tonalism, 1880-1920: Crucible of American Modernism
A groundbreaking survey of the school of expressive, symbolic landscape painting that gave rise to American modernism―newly revised and updated This magnificent volume, featuring more than 750 illustrations, is the first definitive account of the Tonalist movement. Based on original research, it tells how the progressive Tonalist landscape dethroned the Hudson River School in the late 1870s and remained the dominant school in American art until World War I. More provocatively, it also argues that Tonalism gave rise to American modernism, laying the groundwork for the artists of the Stieglitz Circle, and subsequently Milton Avery, Mark Rothko, Adolph Gottlieb, Barnett Newman, Helen Frankenthaler, Wolf Kahn, and Richard Mayhew. A History of American Tonalism places the key figures of the movement―such as George Inness, James McNeill Whistler, and John Henry Twachtman―in their cultural context, which was influenced by such thinkers as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, John Burroughs, and William James. It also examines the careers of more than sixty other Tonalist painters, lesser known but highly talented. This new edition of A History of American Tonalism includes more than one hundred new illustrations, as well as a new overview of the stylistic principles of Tonalism. It will continue to be essential for art lovers, artists, scholars, and anyone seeking a better understanding not only of the Tonalist movement but American art as a whole.
- GenresArt
704 pages, Hardcover
Published October 5, 2021
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
January 5, 2023
Probably de Kay; almost certainly de Kay.
This is definitely the kind of book that you read in chunks; I wouldn't recommend cramming it. Cleveland strikes me as the kind of person who enjoys listening to the sound of his own voice. Just because two generations of artists were heavily influenced by Emerson and Thoreau doesn't mean he had to write their history as if he were a transcendental poet himself. Yet reading it often feels that way; i.e. "Currier turned the misty rain-softened clouds of the Bavarian countryside into luminous microclimates of the mind." Tedious. New drinking game: take a shot every time you come across 'sumptuous' in the text. Cleveland's constant use of 'indigenous' to describe white artists who did not travel to Europe for training is also perplexing.
So, what was the 'crucible' of American modernism anyway? Well at first it was Newport, Rhode Island; but then it became Venice, Italy by the 1880s. I'm talking about William Morris Hunt and his disciples (and their disciples, and so on) as well as James McNeill Whistler's international celebrity (especially after his defamation lawsuit against John Ruskin having bankrupted him by 1879). It's fascinating how some Gilded Age artists—namely La Farge and Whistler, began developing a modernist impulse by eschewing representation in favor of the decorative. That point can't be understated. Many expat artists returning home from Paris and Munich found themselves trained for an art market that simply didn't exist, and one gradually reinforced by 'patriotic' (I would say nativist) criticism.
This is the only book I'm aware of that that talks about what led to the creation of the Art Students League of New York and Society of American Artists—what led to the American Watercolor Society and New York Watercolor Club; not to mention many other so-called 'democratized' art institutions. Cleveland is at his best when he's giving you a laundry list of New England dealers, collectors and exhibitions of Tonalist art over a 40 year period; not when he's spending paragraphs intellectualizing its artists like an undergraduate student padding out their research paper. At one point he compares Charles de Kay and the Gilder Circle to Clement Greenberg and the Abstract Expressionists. Does that mean he'd also compare the Hudson River School to American Scene Painting? I'm not sure.
American Tonalism developed parallel with, but was then surpassed by its European (Post-)Impressionist counterparts. It is curious how this movement, which was all pervasive in the Gilded Age (even present at World's Fairs and Exposition Universelles) was just erased from our collective memory by the 1920s and 1930s. Cleveland's jab at Alfred H Barr for omitting Whistler in his famous modern art diagram is completely valid. I can also buy his distinction between 'Aesthetic' and 'Expressive' Tonalism too. Both Alfred Stieglitz and Robert Henri apparently worked in a Tonalist mode early on in their careers. If this is true, then it would certainly put the Pictorialists and Ashcan School in a different light. Again, it's the recurring connections to Abstract Expressionism that I still have trouble believing.
Another problem I have is with Chapter 7 (which the entire book had been building up towards) on the intellectual history of Tonalism. Cleveland's uncritical analysis of the American public's reception to Emerson, Thoreau, and Darwin is just a wet fart of a chapter. He blankly cites evolutionary biology and contemporary psychologists like Steven Pinker to explain Tonalism's well-nigh inherent, social Darwinian appeal—as if he didn't spend hundreds of pages recounting its artists struggling to make sales for most of their lives. Let's face it: the Tonalists were at their best when they mysteriously drowned, threw themselves into oncoming trains or were hospitalized for schizophrenia; not when they thought they were doing survival of the fittest with transparent eyeballs and getting chummy with a strikebreaker president.
This period really calls for a social history. A lot of Tonalist scholars seem to view the Gilded Age as being largely superfluous to the movement and I think that's unfortunate. I can understand the reluctance, given that American art at the time was functionally expatriate by nature, but it would be far more rewarding to do than grasping for a third generation of Tonalists like David Cleveland ends up doing here. As a survey, his book is just fine; but I'd probably pick up Kathleen Pyne's Art And The Higher Life and Hélène Valance's Nocturne: Night in American Art, 1890-1917 as palate cleansers. Suggestion for the inevitable fourth edition: a chronology of exhibitions, auctions and events would be a nice companion to the 12 point introduction. If not, then after the List of Artists.
This is definitely the kind of book that you read in chunks; I wouldn't recommend cramming it. Cleveland strikes me as the kind of person who enjoys listening to the sound of his own voice. Just because two generations of artists were heavily influenced by Emerson and Thoreau doesn't mean he had to write their history as if he were a transcendental poet himself. Yet reading it often feels that way; i.e. "Currier turned the misty rain-softened clouds of the Bavarian countryside into luminous microclimates of the mind." Tedious. New drinking game: take a shot every time you come across 'sumptuous' in the text. Cleveland's constant use of 'indigenous' to describe white artists who did not travel to Europe for training is also perplexing.
So, what was the 'crucible' of American modernism anyway? Well at first it was Newport, Rhode Island; but then it became Venice, Italy by the 1880s. I'm talking about William Morris Hunt and his disciples (and their disciples, and so on) as well as James McNeill Whistler's international celebrity (especially after his defamation lawsuit against John Ruskin having bankrupted him by 1879). It's fascinating how some Gilded Age artists—namely La Farge and Whistler, began developing a modernist impulse by eschewing representation in favor of the decorative. That point can't be understated. Many expat artists returning home from Paris and Munich found themselves trained for an art market that simply didn't exist, and one gradually reinforced by 'patriotic' (I would say nativist) criticism.
This is the only book I'm aware of that that talks about what led to the creation of the Art Students League of New York and Society of American Artists—what led to the American Watercolor Society and New York Watercolor Club; not to mention many other so-called 'democratized' art institutions. Cleveland is at his best when he's giving you a laundry list of New England dealers, collectors and exhibitions of Tonalist art over a 40 year period; not when he's spending paragraphs intellectualizing its artists like an undergraduate student padding out their research paper. At one point he compares Charles de Kay and the Gilder Circle to Clement Greenberg and the Abstract Expressionists. Does that mean he'd also compare the Hudson River School to American Scene Painting? I'm not sure.
American Tonalism developed parallel with, but was then surpassed by its European (Post-)Impressionist counterparts. It is curious how this movement, which was all pervasive in the Gilded Age (even present at World's Fairs and Exposition Universelles) was just erased from our collective memory by the 1920s and 1930s. Cleveland's jab at Alfred H Barr for omitting Whistler in his famous modern art diagram is completely valid. I can also buy his distinction between 'Aesthetic' and 'Expressive' Tonalism too. Both Alfred Stieglitz and Robert Henri apparently worked in a Tonalist mode early on in their careers. If this is true, then it would certainly put the Pictorialists and Ashcan School in a different light. Again, it's the recurring connections to Abstract Expressionism that I still have trouble believing.
Another problem I have is with Chapter 7 (which the entire book had been building up towards) on the intellectual history of Tonalism. Cleveland's uncritical analysis of the American public's reception to Emerson, Thoreau, and Darwin is just a wet fart of a chapter. He blankly cites evolutionary biology and contemporary psychologists like Steven Pinker to explain Tonalism's well-nigh inherent, social Darwinian appeal—as if he didn't spend hundreds of pages recounting its artists struggling to make sales for most of their lives. Let's face it: the Tonalists were at their best when they mysteriously drowned, threw themselves into oncoming trains or were hospitalized for schizophrenia; not when they thought they were doing survival of the fittest with transparent eyeballs and getting chummy with a strikebreaker president.
This period really calls for a social history. A lot of Tonalist scholars seem to view the Gilded Age as being largely superfluous to the movement and I think that's unfortunate. I can understand the reluctance, given that American art at the time was functionally expatriate by nature, but it would be far more rewarding to do than grasping for a third generation of Tonalists like David Cleveland ends up doing here. As a survey, his book is just fine; but I'd probably pick up Kathleen Pyne's Art And The Higher Life and Hélène Valance's Nocturne: Night in American Art, 1890-1917 as palate cleansers. Suggestion for the inevitable fourth edition: a chronology of exhibitions, auctions and events would be a nice companion to the 12 point introduction. If not, then after the List of Artists.
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