Presentation on Gilded Age.

1. HUM16 Arts
& Ideas
American
Culture
ART IN THE GILDED
AGE

2. What is the Gilded Age?
 Gilded Age: era of U.S. history when
government & business corruption was
overshadowed by wealth
 Post-Civil War – end of 19th c.
 “gilded” = something is golden/beautiful on the
surface but is really cheap/worthless underneath
 Abuses in business and government caused
problems for immigrants, laborers, and farmers
 Term comes from a book written about the time
period by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley
Warner in 1873: The Gilded Age

3. 2. What corruption?
 Political corruption: fraud or dishonesty
by those in power, usually involving
bribery
 Business & government reciprocally
corrupt  rise of “big business”
 E.g., steel (Andrew Carnegie, J.P.
Morgan), railroad, oil (John D.
Rockefeller)
 No regulation  “vertical integration”
(one company buying all supplies) and
“horizontal consolidation” (one company
buying all its competitors)
Result: monopoly (bad)

4. 3. Social Darwinism & Gilded Age
 Question: How might Social Darwinism relate to the
political and economic events of the Gilded Age (rise of big
business, etc.)?
 “Captains of Industry” or “Robber Barons?”
 Question: What do these terms conjure for you?
 “Political machines”:

5. 4. Post Civil-War Society:
Implications for Art
 Technology - War photography first used in Civil War
 Matthew Brady (who sometimes rearranged the
corpses)
 “Dead warrior” – more poignant than sculpture or
painting

6. Gettysburg Aftermath, Matthew Brady

7. 5a. (Civil) War Monuments
 Monuments came later (with lasting
impact)
 Robert Gould Shaw Monument (1884-
1897) - all black volunteers for his 54th
regiment
 Buried in a mass grave in South Carolina
 Augustus Saint-Gaudens –
artist/sculptor
 Sculpted for response of observer,
not in “making meaning”
 Characteristics
 Italian Renaissance – Shaw on
horseback; everyone else on foot
 Black faces are unique – they don’t
all look the same

8. 5b. (Civil) War
Monuments
 William Tecumseh Sherman
Memorial, (1902)
 Saint-Gaudens = artist
 Led by goddess of victory
 “War is hell!” engraved on statue
 Statue is covered with gold leaf
(i.e., gilded)
North has all the $ -
beginning of Gilded Age
 Question: What significance did
these monuments have for
people immediately following
the war? For people now?

9. 6. Development of Realism
 Technology + photography + general attitude of people post-Civil
War  realism
 Realism: movement of art that attempts to represent things as they
actually are
 Hughes says realism = “central experience of art” in this era
 Shift from country to the city; agriculture to industry, nature to
technology, etc.
 Metaphors: journalism & science
i.e., using art as journalism, helper of science

10. 7. The Lord Is My
Shepherd (1863)
 Eastman Johnson: realist painter & co-
founder of the Metropolitan Museum of Art
in NYC
 Style: realism in portraying individuals rather
than stereotypes
 “The Lord is My Shepherd” – from Psalm 23
 Reading Bible (Exodus?)
 Chair holds blue coat (Union soldier?)
 Depiction of Af-Am man reading (individual,
not stereotype)
 Question: What might be considered
political about this painting?

11. 8. Thomas Eakins –
“Greatest Realist
Painter”
 Not popular, but recorded
modern world
 Objectivity – declarative
 Celebrated scientists
 Combination of
photography + painting
i.e., study the body at
rest
 The Champion Single Skulls
(1874)
 Foreground: Max Schmidt
(champion oarsman)
 Background: self-portrait

12. 9. Thomas Eakins – The Gross
Clinic
 1875 – Dr. Samuel D. Gross Portrait – The
Gross Clinic
 “hero of empirical thought”
 Style: Rembrandt’s painting of the corpse
 documents surgical procedure – brightly
lit
 detailed (including tools)
patient is under ether, not dead
 unflinching reason, thoughtful skill of
Gross – seen in his face

13. 10.
Rembrandt’s
The Anatomy
Lesson of Dr.
Nicolaes Tulp
(1632)

14. 11. Eakins’ Portrait of Maud
Cook (1895)
 Question: What do you notice in this
painting? What details stick out to you?
What makes it realist?
 Light/dark – structure of her face; folds of
the clothes
 Pensive expression; intimate moment
 Subject is attractive, but not painted
extravagantly so

15. 12. Winslow Homer,
American Realist
 Homer: primarily self-taught; war
illustrator
 Style: realism - “recording” America’s lost
innocence
landscapes & solitary figures
 Moved from urban (NYC) to country
(coast of Maine)
Called art studio his “factory”
 Enjoyed painting sea
 Believed machines enslaved people
 True freedom along the coast; in nature –
where one could be a “true American”
 Sea as enemy/antagonist
 Inevitability of death

16. 13. Homer’s A Visit From the Old Mistress (1876)
 Departure from landscapes
& solitary figures in nature
 Question: How would you
describe what’s happening
in this painting? What might
Homer be attempting to
express with this painting?
 Freed slaves with former
mistress
 Intended “equivalence” in
their postures/positions

17. 10. John Singer Sargent, Portrait
of Albert de Belleroche (1882)
 Sargent – painter of Madame X & Portrait of Isabella
Gardner
 Belleroche: financially independent; artist; friend(+?)
of Sargent
 Question: What is similar / dissimilar between this
painting and Sargent’s paintings of Madame X and
Isabella Gardner?
 Similar: portrait; more impressionist than realist; obsession
with wealth?
 Dissimilar: facial expression; emotional connection between
subject and artist

18. 11. Thomas Anshutz, The Ironworkers’ Noontime (1880)
 Question: What is realist about
this painting?
 Could imagine this as
photograph
 Emphasis on: urban
industrial life
 “dirty” vs “clean” nature
landscapes