Romantic origins of American realism: Photography, arts and letters in Philadelphia, 1850-1875. (Volumes I and II)

The relationship between art, photography and the aesthetic of realism was contested during the middle decades of the nineteenth century. Commentary from the first generation of critics who considered photography alongside other kinds of images (who include Matthew Carey Lea, Lady Eastlake and John Ruskin) reveals that it was not always easy to equate perception of the world with the appearance of a photograph. As long as the equation was not complete, photographs were perceived as art; once photographs were seen as transparent windows onto the world, the artistic value of photography declined.;The artists, photographers and writers whose images and texts are used to track this change share a period of time--roughly 1850 to 1880--and a place--the city of Philadelphia. With its strong ties to British art and culture, its interlocking circles of science and art, and its prominence as the American center of photography, Philadelphia offers an ideal site from which to observe the ways photographers followed emerging and established artistic conventions. Important sources of such conventions include Les voyages pittoresques et romantiques by Baron Isidore Taylor and Charles Nodier, the portraiture of Rembrandt, and prints by Barbizon artists such as Theodore Rousseau and Charles Jacques.;This thesis shows how conventions that prepared audiences and artists to accept photographs as art began to change in response to the new medium. Photography followed established artistic genres in reproducing art, in recording architectural sites, in portraiture, and finally, in making landscapes. A chapter on aesthetics discusses the ways in which photographic images, especially stereographs, reinforced prescriptions developed by followers of Emerson, such as Elias L. Magoon, William Henry Furness and Asher B. Durand. In heeding these prescriptions, a generation of American artists, who include John Moran and William Trost Richards, followed a path that led away from the main currents of modern European art. The discussion concludes with a speculative essay in which the origins of Realism in America are traced through the genre of portraiture, exemplified in the work of Thomas Eakins.