American Culture – Second Lesson  In the United States – a blend of Greek democracy and

Roman republican virtue

Revision:
The next generation of painters
 From 1760s onwards – new tendency to go to Europe for
training John Trumbull
 Influence of European tradition – Grand Manner in the
 Trumbull aspired to be the painter of national identity
history painting - Benjamin West, John Trumbull
 A prodigy, Harvard graduate at 16
 Complex relationship between American and European
 Served in the American Revolution, from the Battle of
tradition
Bunker Hill
 Benjamin West – a pioneer of modern history paining
 The Death of General Montgomery
 Death of General Wolfe
 More drama than in painting of Wolfe, smoke, American
 Influence of European motives but blending with the
presence seen in scouts and trappers
specific American aspects
 Representing foundation of the republic, important
 Copley – Bostonian, self-taught
detailing, no other insight in that event
 Finest portrait painter
 Linear precision and control of contrasts Gilbert Stuart – first to grasp the three-dimensional nature of
 Paul Revere, does not have a wig! He is holding a teapot, colour and glazing - important skill
reference to events, Boston Tea Party
 Most renowned for his portraits
 Detailing the pot and face
 Athenaeum portrait of George Washington
 Robert Hughes – the guy in the documentary
 Sense of datedness, aged appearance, linked classical
 Benjamin West – Wolfe’s body position linear to the image
tradition with the present moment to present that America
of Christ
is the continuation of Greek and Roman society
 Americans needed such historical paintings for their
national identity American Architecture – the saltbox

Lecture:  Early colonial architecture

 First indigenous creations and original form was the saltbox
 The second half of the 18th century – Neoclassicism
 The early houses – small, one to two rooms, framed, with
thatched roofs, replicated from Europe, self-supporting
frame
 Replicated from English villages, small and not high - good
for heating the rooms
 New England is cold
 American colonists built with lumber because the continent
was forested
 Description of a saltbox house - A saltbox house is a
traditional New England style of house with a long,
pitched roof that slopes down to the back, generally
a wooden frame house. A saltbox has just one story in the
back and two stories in the front. The flat front and
central chimney are recognizable features, but the
asymmetry of the unequal sides and the long, low rear roof
line are the most distinctive features of a saltbox, which
takes its name from its resemblance to a wooden lidded box
in which salt was once kept.
 Good for climate, flat roof is not good for snow and ice,
lesser danger on the structure, it was build with timber not
concrete
 The 18th century - growth of middling classes, mercantile
wealth, importation of European customs and etiquette
 Formality and display of status
 Federal style – marked the change from Georgian style
 Overlapped with the beginnings of the age of Romanticism
 Included early examples of both Neoclassical and Neo-
Gothic styles and progressive as well as conservative trends
 After the 1750s new aesthetic philosophy is Neoclassicism
 The new artistic ideal was ancient Greece, with its clarity of
form and line
 Simple volumes, geometric shapes – cubes, cylinders
Charles Bulfinch
 Admired Neoclassicism for its plastic language of
rectangular and spherical solids
 Expressive shapes
 His most famous work and America’s first great public
building with a dome is the Massachusetts State House
 Mock gold leafing of the dome
Thomas Jefferson – influenced by the Roman temple Maison
Carrée in Nimes
 He travelled to France
 Monticello - near Charlottesville, Virginia
 He wanted his own residence, incorporating the dome and
columns
 Climate in Virginia – he could make balustrades
 University of Virginia
 Developed the design and curriculum
 Influenced by Pantheon in Rome for University in Virginia
 Design of grounds is geometric
 University of Virginia – made out of pavilions, each pavilion
has classrooms on the first floor, on the second floor are
 offices for the teachers and dorms are between the
pavilions
 New State House in Virginia
