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~/o;'J~/ 2o/fo
Th e S¡)(!Il;sh C,.aze: The Disn}lwry of Spanish ArL
and Cultnrc in the UniLed Stat!:'s
Richard L. Kagan

"But you know what Spaniards are- hospitality itself =and

that grand airl By Jovel 1 don't tbink any nation in Europe can
approach it."! Such was the opinion of William Merritt Chase,
tbe New York artist whose sympathy for Spain, its people, and
especially its art epitornizes what can be caUed "The Spanish
Craze" in the United States. The term relers to a particular era
in US hislory when seemingly everything Spanish- art, music,
language, literature, architecture, and more- was in vogue.
This particular "craze" began in 1890s, and lasted, with few
interruptions until the early 1930s, when a combination of factors
associatee! with the Creat Depression, the victory of General
Francisco Franco ane! his Falange Party in Spain's bloody civil
war (1936-1939), and changing tastes and fashions in the United
State brought it to an abrupt enel.

This craze, 1 should add, was not exclusively Spanish

in the peninsular sense of the tenn. Rather it intermingled with
various elements of Mexican culture, in part because of racialist
terminology that era tended to confíate Spanish and Mexican
under the rubric Hispanic, or simply Spanish. Thus Zorro, played
by Douglas Fairbanks Sr. in several Hollywood films of the early
1920s, was interchangeably Mexican and Spanish, whereas is
j known Spanish Reviva! architecture - a style popularized through

I
f
out the United States during the 1920s - was actually a blend
of Spanish design elements with others, elaborately decorated

I
"1
8
....•
'le

On the [en: the first "Giralda" in the Uniied Staies (1890). Jt was designed by the Iarnous New Yorker architect
Stanford While for a new Madison Square Garden. Unlil it was demolished in 1920 it was the seeond lall",1 building
in the eity. On the right: The "Giralda" that was built up in 1901 Ior the Pan-American Exhibilion in Buílalo (NY).
, 1
doorways for example, thal are more properly defined as Spanish
Colonial, or Mexican.
But whatever one calls it, the discovery of Spanish art and
culture in the United States began at precisely that moment when,
as Stanley Payne has explained in the previous text, was marked
by growing political tensions between Spain and the United States
over Cuba and which culminated in that short but decisive Spanish-
American War of 1898. In the years leading up to this conflict,
anti-Spanish rhetoric ran high in the United States, especially in
the newspapers controlled by William Randolph Hearst (1863-
1951). These papers, stating with the New York [oumal, drew
upon that deep-well spring of anti-Spanish sentiment known as
the Black Legend in order to headline the inhumanity, the cruelty,
backwardness, and other failings of the Spanish regime in Cuba
along with those of the Spanish nation as a whole. Such criticism
was also reflected in the 1898 publication of a new English edition
of Bartolomé de las Casas, Brief Relation on the Destructiori o/ the
lndies, one of the texts that initially helped the Black Legend. In
~() ,.."Ift,," L J...a;:{/Il
¡"ss than transparenl effort to cash in on the anti-Spanish fervor
,,1" the rnoment, the translation appear under the sensationalist
I itle of An Historical and True Account o/ the Cruel Massacre and
Slaughter 0/20,000,000 People in the West lndies by the Spaniards.
'l'hen there was the famous historian of the Spanish Inquisition,
llenry Charles Lea, who attributed Spain's defeat by the United
Slates to a defective national character distinguished by a "blind
nnd impenetrable pride" and a " spirit of conservatism which
rcjected all innovation - especially modern industrialism - in a
world of incessant change."2 .The juxtaposition between this kind
01" inflammatory criticism and the pro-Spanish sentiments of Chase
on the other is striking. One of the aims of this essay is to address
this apparent contradiction, and in doing so attempt explain the
connection between the "Spanish Craze" and the war of 1898.
First the "Spanish Craze." What were its dimensions and
what form did it take? Its beginnings are ill-defined, but a possible
slarting point is 1890, ayear marked by the inauguration, in the
lieart of Manhattan, of a new Madison Square Garden, the second
I of four] such amphitheaters known by that name. Designed by
I he farnous New York architect, Stanford White (1853-1906), the
most striking feature of the new Garden was not its main building
- designed in ltalian Renaissance style - but its soaring, three-
hundred [001 tower, then the second tallest in a city already famous
lor its skyscrapers. Most early sky scrapers, in New York and other
North American cities, were generally built in neo-classical design
and intended to emulate the glory and the power associated with
the ernpires of ancient Greece and Rome. When it came lo the
Carden, however, White wanted something different, a real crowd
Iileaser, anel to do this he modeled its tower upon the Giralda in
Seville. Built by the Almoravicls n the 12,h Century, the Giralda
originally served as the minaret of that city's greal mosque, That
mosque was demolished following Seville's capture by Christians
in 1248, but the Giralda, somewhat miraculously, survived, and
was soon transformed into a bell tower attached to the sprawling
Gothic cathedral erected on the site where the mosque once stood.
In the sixteenth century the Giralda acquired a new spire topped
hy an angel, called the Giraldillo and symbolically intended to
demonstrate the triumph of Christianity over Islam. In his version
ul the Giralda, White, a notorious womanizer, replaced the angel
with a gilded statue of the naked Diana, the Roman goddess of the
Y.f

"Giralda" built hy the well-knwon architect A. Pagl' Brown rinished in 1898 for the San Frallci"""
hunt. From the outset, however, White's Giralda elicited nothing
but praise. "So big and so beauiiful," one critic wrote. "Nothing
else in NY has done so much lo clignify, adorn, and enliven its
neighborhood"." An <.1 even though the original Giralda was arguably
more "Moorish" than "Spanish," critics generally refcrred lo this
slriking new landrnark as a building of Spanish baroque design.
Al the same time, the novelty of White's " Spanish"
Giralda was not slow to wear oIL In the decade that followed
New York City acquired two other buildings rnodeled on Giralda
together with the famous "Spanish flats," a slring of luxury
apartment buildings - each named after a diíferent city in Spain
- constructed on the southern edge Central Park South. Wh ite's
Giralda also led to a series of copy cat structures in various
cities across the United States. First in line was San Francisco,
wbere the New York trained architect A. Page Brown aclded a
striking Giralda-like tower to the city's new ferry terminal that
was completed in 1898. Next came Buffalo, NY, where another
Giralda replica, feslooned with 1000s of electric lights, stood
as the center piece of the Pan-American Exposition that was
held there in 1901. Miami and Kansas City came next, and then
finally Cleveland, where construction of yet another replica of the
~H u.. h'll./ L AII,,,,I//
r-.
TI1(~Country Cluh P!uZi.l in Kan-as Cil.y is an mal! with fourleen oren squares
~~n()rIl10US
inspired in Sevilliallurehileclure. 11was nne of Ihe Iirst american rnalls conceived hy .J.C.
Forry Ternrinal.
Nichols in rhe lweeruies. loIlO\'1tin~the idea 01' huying around the romantic ami Ilowered
squares olthe Sevilla «ourtyanls that he rell"'lIlberecl Irorn his travels around Andalucia.
Giralda, in the guise of the soaring Terminal Tower, was completed
in 1928. By Ibis dale, the United States boastecl no fewer than
I welve replicas 01' Seville's famous landrnark.'
But the interest of American developers in buildings of
Spanish design did not end with the Giralda. In 1926, for example,
ihe budding resort town of SI. Pelersburg, Florida added to its
growing array of luxury botels one called the Royalat, the central
part of which was modeled after the Seville's Torre de Oro, another
building thal dated from the era in rnuch of Spain was subject to
Muslim rule. The H.oyalat, however, was only one among many
Florida hotels anel houses built in tbe so-called "Spanish Revival"
style of architecture. Dating Irorn around 1912, this style first
made its appearance in southern California where it represented
the outgrowth of the earlier "Mission Style," with its roots in the
churches and other buildings built by Spanish friars in California
and other parts of hat is now the American southwest. The first
such buildings, simple and relatively unadorned dated from
the 1890s, but it did not take belong before the Mission Style
metamorpbosed into él more eleganl mixture of Spanish and
Spanish colonial architecture in the hands of Bertram Grosvenor
'~IJ

Goodhue, the New York architect primarily responsible for the
Spanish style buildings erected in San Diego in conjunction with
the Panama-California Exposition of 1915. Within the course of
the next decade different iterations of this new Spanish style found
its way into domestic architecture across southern California.
Notable examples include the Casa de Herrero, in Montecito, CA,
designed by George Washington Smith in 1924, and the complex
of bungalow and houses Julia Morgan designed for William
Randolph Hearst in San Simeon, CA. Meanwhile, Addison Mizner
brought Spanish Revival domes tic architecture to Palm Beach,
Boca Raton, Coral Gables and other cities in south Florida. This
same style soon arrived in Maryland, New York, and other parts of
the United States, and in doing so sparked a growing demand for
Spanish iron work, tiles, and furnishings of various kinds.
Architecture alone, however, was not enough to contain
America's growing enthusiasm for Spanish culture and arto In
1890, the same year in which Manhattan inaugurated its version
of the Giralda, a Flamenco dancer known as La Cannencita
became something of a celebrity in New York following her
performance at a private party in the studio of the artist, William
Merritt Chase. That Chase served as a Carmencita's New York
sponsor was no accident. He was part of generation of American
artists who, starting in the 1860s, journeyed to Spain in search
of themes defined as picturesque, the name given that genre of
painting that had its roots in the Romantic movement of the early
ninteenth century and which, as it developed, embraced crumbing
ruins, peasants garbed in traditional dress, and in the case 01
Spain, gypsies, bullfighters, and the like. The the British artists
David Roberts (1796-1864) who created the US market Ior the
Spanish picturesque with his large portfolio volumes featuring
views of the Alhambra, and scenes of bullfights set against the
backdrop of the Giralda.s Such were the images of Spain that US
artists, starting in the 1850s, would emulate. One of the first was
the New York artist Samuel Colman, whose paintings of "sunny"
Spain met with favorable critical reviews. Soon, other more
famous artists - Thomas Eakins, Iohn Singer Sargent, and Mary
Cassatt- followed in Colman's tracks." As for Chase, his initial
visits to Spain in 1881 and 1882 also led to drawings and pictures
featuring picturesque themes. But Chase also took advantage of
these visits to discover the work of Velázquez, an artist whose
:~o/(¡'·"III~II .. ¡":lIg(U/
'111111 ralistic style of painting he endeavored to emula te, especiaUy
I11 portraiture. Chase in fact was so smitten with Velázquez that he
. j1IlI,1 ically announced that this Spanish master a as "the greatest
Iltl inter that ever lived."? He also went as far to dress up his
Ilallghter in dresses modeled after those depicted in Velázquez's
.Iwknowledged masterpiece, Las Meninas.8 Starting in the 1890s,
IlIon·,over,Chase led groups of art students to the museum so that
Jltey, too, could have the opportunity to - and here 1 quote him
. rlircctly - "revel in Velázquez ...not forgetting Greco, Goya, and
11 f<:wmore [Spanish artists ]," a list that included both Joaquín
MI,rollaand Ignacio Zuloaga, two contemporaries whose artistic
lulcnls he was the hrst North American to promete."
It is easy to exaggerate Chase's influence on America's
urtistic tastes, but his enthusiasm for the glories of Spanish art
,,¡-••ved infectious. It also helped lo change US attitudes about the
f\ignificance of Spanish art. For most of the nineteenth century
111'I:-;l US critics agreed with Iackson Jarves, whose opinion of
"Spanish school of art,' was decidedly low, as the following quole
·1'1'0111 his 1874 book, Art- Thoughts, readily attest:
We !le,," nol look for the poetical or imaginative in Spanish art;
seldom Ior very refined treuunent, and never for any intellectual
elevalion above íhe actual life out of which it drew its restricted
stock-motives. Whal could be expected of painting in a. country
where masked inquisitors visited every sludio and either destroyed
and dauberl over any details thal did not accord with their Ianatical
scruples .. .There are admirable points in Spanish painting, but il is
nol a school of popular value or interest. l3esides its two chicf names
[Velazquez and MurilloJ it has no repulation beyond its own locality,
The fixed purpose of its priesl-ridden work was lo stultily the human
intellect ami make life a burden instead of a blessing."
Such beliefs, inspired by the anti-Spanish beliefs altached
!o the Black Legend, only began to change in the 1890s, as a
series of art critics, picking up on the ideas of Chase and other
urtists who had discovered the glories of Spanish Old Master
nrt, detected a similarity between the freedom of expression and
uaturalistic style of Velázquez and El Greco and that of Manet,
1legas and the French Impressionists, that is, the artists whose
work American collectors were especially eager to acquire.
The rapid diffusion of ideas about the supposed "modernity"
01" Spanish Old Master art unleashed the artistic equivalent of the
:11

In 1890, the flamenco dancer Carmen Dausel, Carmencua beca me a celebrity in New
York City aíter a performance in MerriL Chase studio. On Ihe left, \Villia", Merrit Chase,
Carmencua, 1890, oil on canvass, The Metropolitan Museum 01' Arl. Gift ofSir \Villiam
Van !-lorne, 1906. On the right: .lohn Singer Sargent, Carmencua, 1890, oil on canvass,
Musee Quai D'Orsay, Paris.
Alaska gold rush of 1897. Across the country wealthy collectors
competed with one another in a seemingly no-holds-barred
competition to span up choice examples of works then attributed to
El Greco, Goya, Velázquez, etc. 1 have written elsewhere about the
growing demand for Spanish Old Master art,!' but the key players
in this particular (and expensive) game included Isabella Stewart
Gardner in Boston; Charles Deering in Chicago; John W Johnson,
P.A. B. Widener, and William Wilstach in Philadelphia; Charles
Taft in Cincinnati; and William Van Horne, an American living
in Toronto and one whose predilection Ior Spanish Old Masters
merited an extensive article in the New York Times in 1915.12
The Times' s decision to run an article on Van Horne's
Spanish pictures speaks directly to that city's growing fascination
with Spanish art. Just as the New York architect Stanford White
helped establish the fashion for Spanish style building, the
nation's grawing taste for Spanish pictures can be traced to
William H. Aspinwall (1807-1875), who, starting already in
1857, made it business to add works then attributed to Murillo
and Velázquez to his growing collection of Old Master. Even in
:~2 U¡"/¡"nf 1" !\lIg(1I/
N.·w York, however, the demand Ior Spanish pictures did not
~4,c "'lIl1y begin until the 1890s, the moment at which Spanish art
\VIISrapidly coming into vogue. One sign of change carne in 1897
wllt'lI Henry and Louisine Havemeyer, a wealthy couple who had
liI't'viously specialized in collecting pictures by contemporary
Vr¡,nch artists, decided to purchase two portraits by Goya-
hollt are today in the National Gallery, in Washington, De. The
l luvemeyers would subsequently acquire another ten works
1IIIributed to Goya, in addition to two notable works by El Greco
The Cardenal seated in a Chair and View ofToledo. These and
111 lier acquisitions allowed Louisine to boast that "We were, so to
"peak, Loopen the market for Greco's and Goya's, at least in the
l lnited States.?" Mrs. Havemeyer was right, as it did nol take long
holore other NeIVYork co11ectors- a graup that included Benjamin
Altrnan, Philip Lehman, and Henry Clay Frick - clamo red to add
wurks by El Greco, Velázquez, and Goya to what were arguably
IIIClargest and most important private art collections in the
IJ nited States.
Yet this interest, novel for its time, in Spanish pictures
was one simply one, admittedly pricey, aspect of America's
p;rowingfascination with the artistic and cultural patrimony of
~pain. In 1903, for example, William Randolph Hearst made
head line news, in both Spain and the United States, when he
uuempted to purchase an en tire Spanish patio of Renaissance
rlesign - that of the Casa de Miranda in Burgos -, dismantle
it, and then have it shipped and re-assembled in New York. A
popular outcry in Burgos prevented this particular sale, although
in later years Hearst successfully managed lo export to the United
States a11manner of Spanish artefacts, including two monastery
e o$e r.loisters and the elaborate choir screen from the cathedral 01'
Valladolid which now can be seen on the main floor of New York's
Metropolitan Museum."
Another New Yorker with similar interests was Archer
Milton Huntington (1870-1955). To be sure, Huntington's
collecting career was markedly different than Hearst's. The latter
hought mainly for personal enjoyment; the former to enrich the
collections of the Hispanic Society of America, an institution
that he founded in 1904 in order to promote Hispanic culture in
the United States. Huntington's particular passion was Spanish
:Ia
 literature, especially that of medieval and Renaissance. In 1897,
for example, just turned twenty six, he translated and published
the Poem o/ El Cid, and in the course of the following years
financed the publication of facsimile editions of another forty
important works of Spanish literature in the belief that they were
relatively unknown and underappreciated in the United States He
also sponsored the teaching of Spanish in New York schools as
well as to support the activities of the famed Casa Hispánica that
Frederco de Onís established at Columbia University in 1920.15
Huntington, however, is best remember for the Hispanic
Society of America was he dedicated to "the advancement of
the study of the Spanish and Portuguese languages, literature,
and history." Originally conceived as a "Spanish museurn,"
Huntington envisioned an institution similar to that of London's
British Library to the extent that it combined a library with
selected works of art. But whereas the collections of the British
Library were universal in scope, those the Hispanic Society, as
its name suggests, were to be focused exclusively on the Iberian
world, Spain in particular, His goal: the preservation of that
nation's cultural patrimony and to make that patrimony known to
an American audience.
With these aims in rnind, Huntington purchased (in 1902)
one of Spain's finest private libraries - that of Marqués de Ierez de
los Caballeros - and shipped it to New York, where it constituted
the nucleus of Hispanic Society. In addition to books and
manuscripts, the Hispanic Society housed paintings, ceramics,
sculpture and other artefacts that Huntington and his agents
purchased in Europe with an eye towards creating a collection
that would demonstrate what he once referred to as "the soul of
Spain.?" Opened to the public in 1908, the Hispanic Society
attracted vast crowds to its Neo-Classical building in uptown
New York, and the crowds returned in the following years for
exhibitions of paintings by Joaquín Sorolla and Ignacio Zuloaga,
the first of Spain's "rnodern" artists to acquire a large following
in the United States. Their success, in fact, led one New York art
dealer to comrnent that "Spain sank low in our defeat of her, she
has repliedwith the lightnings of art."!"
The comment is apt, and directly relevant to the question
posed at the outset of this essay: the relationship between the
~llJ, Hirhuní L Koaon
:-;I'"nish American War of 1898 and America's enthusiastic
I,,,dlrace of a culture it previously held at arms length. 1 do not
prctend at this point lo be able to answer this query, but it in and
uround the year 1890, various factors united to help change the
i\ merican attitudes about Spain and its culture.
Arnong these Iactors the lasting influence of the Iamous
NI~wYork author, Washington Irving (1783-1859) was key.
Irving's interest in Spain began with Columbus, and began with
lIis decision to write a biography of the famous mariner using
I.ooks and manuscripts that were only available in Madrid and
Soville. Irving embarked on this particular emission during
III{~winter of 1825, but it was only a mater of months before
iuterest in Columbus broadened to include the whole of Spain's
«ornplex history, especially that of the MiddIe Ages when much
,,1' the country was subject to Muslim rule, Irving's best-selling
l.iography of Columbus appeared in 1829, and was followed two
years latter by his Tales o/ the Alhambra, a book whose romantic
vision of Spain arguably did more to alter the image of Spain
in the United States than any other.!" Previously, the American
image of Spain was Spain of the Black Legend: dark, sad, a
uation weakened by ignorant priests, malevolent inquisitors, cruel
und tyrannical kings. Irving conjured up another Spain: sunny,
happy, brimrning with adventure. Most importantly, Iriving's
Spain was iredeerningly picturesque, owing to the Alhambra and
oiher Muslim monuments, its gypsies, valient toreros, and dark-
eyed wornen whose beauty mantillas were unable to hide. The
result - and to be honest, Irving was by no means the 0111)' writer
who created this image of sunny Spain - was that of an quasi-
exotic yet accessible country, one that any American interested
in the picturesque - a magic word for many nineteenth-century
Iravellers, - needed to experience first hand.
During lrving's life time - he died in 1859 - the number of
Arnericans who visited Spain were relatively few. But what began
¡IS a trickIe SOOI1 developed into a steady stream. The turning
point was the 1870s, the decade in which marked the opening
01' direct raillink between Paris and Madrid together with a
prolonged period of political stability that was ushered in by the
restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in 1875. This increase is
reflected in the visitor books of the Prado Museum, a mecca for
~.
:'~
 foreigners visiting Spain, many of whom identified themselves in
these registers as tourists, a neo-logism that suggested travelers The
whose primarily concerns were artistic and cultural. Increases in Land of the Castanet
the number of Arnericans visiting the Prado and other Spanish
Spanish Sketches
sites - the standard itinerary - was París to Madrid, then south
toward Toledo, Granada, Córdoba and Seville-also reflected
H .. C. Ch~tficld- Taylor
the start of America's fabled Gilded Age - un era of drama tic
economc growth and one that increased the number of Americans "ii•.LlJSTRATiD

with the wealth - and the inclination - to visit Europe. It is

difficult to know the percentage of these travellers included
Spain on their itineraries, but apart frorn the treasures to be
.Aa
¡1. C. Chatfiel-Taylor wrote The Larui o/
seen in the Prado, what seems clear is that they visited Spain in
Custanet (1896) alter he was invited by ~
seaerch of the picturesque, a term that also embraced the idea 11", ¡níanta Doña Eulalia de Borbon lo the
of authentieity, naturalness, along with a society and a culture lr-ria de Sevilla in 1896 and slayed with
lu-r al the Palacio San Telmo. The book is
still relatively untouched by the twin forces of industrialization CHICAGO
11 f'IO'"pilation of lexts that where published
and modernization. Such was one of the concepts that apparently lu-Iore in The Cosmopoliuui journal: He HERBERT S. STONE é!f CO.
1896
attracted Huntington to Spain, and his diary he freely admitted recalled the hampa setullana 01' Triana
\\'I,i,'" he related to the Gangs 01' New York.
that the Spanish "back country" preserved the "true [Spanish]
type."!? Spain in this sense appeared "authentic" in ways that
other European cultures were not. Spain, of course, was not as a
~itch a title was the equivalent of calling the United States "the
changing as rnost Americans and other foreigners imagined, nor
'1llflelof bacon."?'
was it ever isolated from influenees from abroad. Nevertheless,
US publishers, capitalizing on the success of Irving's romantic The reviewer is correct, but Spain: Land of the Castanet
vision of the country, seemingly could not get enough of books und similar books both reflected and helped to construct a cultural
I and articles that conjured up images of a country caught in a time tll.ereotype that ignored the nation's emergent industries in the
! warp and where scenes straight out of the Middle Ages could still Busque Country and Catalonia, let alone the nascent anarchist
il be seen in its streets. The list of these publications is far too long movernent that culminated in Barcelona's Tragic Week in 1900,
to ennumerate here, but faidy typical is the essay, "Street Life in 111113 Iocused on romanticized descriptions of gypsy dancers,

I Spain" that appeared in Ceruury Magazine in 1889 accompanied

by illustrations by William Merritt Chase. The author, Susan
Carter, Director of Painting at New York's Cooper Union, drew
upon well-established racial tropes to describe what she wed as
the timeless, unchanging character of the "Spanish type." "One is
constantly amused and surprised, "she wrote," to see that habits
and manners of the Spanish people, as well as their faces, are
ilushing matadors, and picturesque peasants stretched for a siesta
in the aftemoon sun. That stereotype was, of course, just that,
hut it also served to generate new interest in both Spain and its
culture.
Equally important was the emergence, starting again in the
r-losing decades of the nineteenth century, of the idea of Spain as
Il country that contributed enormously to the march of civilization

precisely the same to-day as when Velázquez painted his sharp . in the New World. The seeds of this idea can be traced back to the
wiry faces in the " Buveurs" or Murillo his dark children." 20 íumed Boston historian William Hickling Prescott (1796-1859),
\ Similar ideas could be found in a host of travel books, among «specially his best-selling History of the Conquest of Mexico

I :~(INil'IIII/I/ L
them H.C Chatfield-Taylor's Spain: Land ofthe Castanet (1896),
a book that prompted one irate Spanish reviewer to comment that
A."gtlll
(1.843) which credited Spain with the overthrow of the semi-
iivilized Aztecs anel advancing the cause of progre ss and religion

:1'1
 in the Americas. The next major writer to address this partrcular
theme was Charles Lummis (1859-1928), another New Englander
who, following his education at Harvard, moved to California in
the 1880s and who soon became known as the "apostle of the
South- West" on account of books and essays the devoted to history
and culture of that part of the United States. Of key importance
was his The Spanisli Pioneers (1st edition, 1893), which argued that
the culture and civilization of the United States owed as much, if
not more, to Spain's conquistadors and missionaries who settled
he south wesl than the English men and women who settled the
East. Turning his back on the Black Legend, Lummis went so far
as lo characterize what he termed Spanish "pioneering" in the
Americas the "human and progressive spirit which marked it first
to last" in addition to describing it as nothing less than "the most
marvelous feaL in manhood in a11history."22
1:,1). Arnold, photographer, Chicago Exposition 1893, Avery Plate no, 8. Columbia
t luivcrsity Libraries.
Similar sentiments emerged, not coincidentally, at the '1'1,,:world's Columbian Exposilion celebrating the 400'10 anniversary 01' Chrislopher
great Colurnbian Exposition celebrated in Chicago during i;plombus landing in America wus allended by 716.881 people. Spain senl more than
the surnrner of 1893. Attended by hundreds of thousands of 1,,,,, hundred works of L86 artists lo the Palace of Fine Arts.

Americans from all parLs of the United States, the Iair aimed at
clemonstrating the wealth, power and importance of the Unites
lo the spiritual dimension of the Columbus's enterprise. The New
States. At Yet it also represented the country, and its many
\'(IrkTimes article read: "In America Columbus is remembered
achievement, as the direct heirs of the Colurnbus and the other
os the discoverer, not the introducer of that horrible phase of
Spaniards who settled the New World, and did so s through
Christianity which destroyed in Spain the Moors and the Jews
monumental sculptures featuring the famous mariner togeLher
...and wiped out whole populations of our brethren redskin in
with a commemorative quarter featuring a likeness of Queen
South America and [he West Indies in circumstances of atrocity
Isabella, the Spanish monarch who sponsored the fabled mariner's
which the world can never forgive or forget."23
momenLous voyage across the Ocean Sea.
In contrast, Spain and its memory fared considerably
To be sure, not everything went in Spain's favor. To begin
hctter in Los Angeles, which, starting in 1895, that city launched
with, the Colurnbian quarter did not sell well; many copies had
la Fiesta, a celebration designed to demonstrate that city's -
Lobe returned to Philadelphia where it was originally minted.
lilld California's - Hispanic roots. Spain came off equally well
Another setback occurred in 1992 when a nurnber of Spaniards
[n Buffalo, New York, which, starting early in the 1890s, laid
living in New York were outmaneuverecl that city's larger and more
plans for a Pan American Exposition designed to "celebrate the
powerful Italian community when they attempted to erect a replica
supremacy of the United States in the Western hernisphere" as
of Jerónimo Suñol's Madrid statue of Columbus at the 591h Street
\Vdl as to promote the essential unity of the Western hemisphere.
entrance to Central Park. In the end the Spanish community
"This to be an American Exposition-North, South and Middle ..."
finally persuaded the local park commission to erect the statue us one of its organizers wrote. When it carne, however, to the fair's
to be in another Iocation, but when it was finally unveiled in urchitectural scheme, the organizers decided upon a Spanish
February, 1894, critic's not only attacked Suñol's artistry but íheme in the belief that this particular style best embodied the
claimed that the statue drew unnecessary and unwanted attention idea of "America." The war of 1898 postponed the opening of this
;{H I(;I'/¡(/I'II 1,. AOp:1I1I
:1'1
 exposition until190l, but the anti-Spanish rhetoric occasioned
by this conflict did nothing to alter this architectural scheme
which, as noted earlier, centered a brightly-illuminated replica
of the Giralda As for the fair's Spanish Renaissance design, one
commentator welcomed that particular style in the belief that "it
symbolizes our welcome to the genius of the Latins to mingle their
strains with the genius of the Anglo-Saxons .... "24 One can readily
object to the racialist terminology this commentator employed, but
the observation is important to the extent that it suggests that the
war of 1898 did little to arrest the momentum of the Spanish craze.
Now, 1 think, is the time to return to the question posed at
the outset of this essay, namely, the nature of relationship between
the 1898 war - "a splendid little war" in the words of the then US
Secretary of State (and former US ambassador to Spain) John Hay
- and what 1 have described here as the nearly contemporaneous
"Spanish Craze" the United States. What is that partisans of the
war viewed the victory of the United States primarily in moral,
political and religious, even racialist terms. Some, for example,
regarded it as victory for democracy over monarchy. Others saw
it as a victory for Christianity, defined in wholly Protestant terms
over Catholicism, as well as a powerful demonstration of the
superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race, as embodied in the United
States, over that of the Latins, as symbolized by Spain. To be
honest not all Americans agreed with this view, and the voices of
the so-called anti-expansionists echoed through Congress prior to
the vote ratifying the Treaty of París, the accorded that officially
ended the conflict and obliged Spain to cede its overseas colonies
to the United States. This vote, however, was wholly in keeping
with then President McKinley's notion that Arnerica's overseas
expansion was "divinely-ordained."
Such ideas were of course consistent with ideas about
America's "Manifest Destiny," the idea that America was obliged
to increase its territorial holdings and in doing so bring the
benefits of what it understood as civilization to other parts of the
world. Manifest Destiny, however, also harbored notions of what
can be termed cultural entitlement, or the idea that America,
as it expanded, not only had a need for culture but also he
right, possibly even the obligation to enrich its own culture and
traditions with that of other nations. Such ideas can be found in
40 Ricíuud L Kago¡¡
111(\writings Henry Iames (1843-1916), who work is synonymous
Willl the late nineteenth century that era of American expansion
known as the Gilded Age. A New Yorker who lived much of his
[il« in Europe, Iames wrestled with the idea of what it meant
111 he an American, a topie he addressed in both in his private
1'(1I·1:(~spondence as well as his novels. As early 1867, for example,
[iI· «onfessed that "1 think lo be an American is al1 excellent
proparation for culture ... we can deal freely with forms of
uivilisation not out"own; we can pick and choose and assimilate
!l1I.! in short (aesthetically etc) claim our property wherever we
.. tiud it."25 He suhsequently cleveloped this theme in his first major
.. novel, Roderick Hiulson (1875) where he created an he helped also
lO «stablish an agenda that many collectors would adapt, namely
111<: idea that collecting, whatever its aesthetic pleasures, was not
!lllly socia11y useful bul also patriotic, something, in other words,
in which every red-blooded American with the means to do so
t1hould engage. james's novel centers on the character of Roland
Mallet, who, as [ames describes him, "was extremely fond of all
Ih(~arts and had an almosl passionate enjoyment of pictures't."
As a good citizen, Mallel believecl he should go abroad and
I'li'cretly purchase valuahle specimens of European art then
prcsent them to an American city. To be sure, not a11collectors
were so altruisíic, but in creating Mallet as the central eharacter
Ilr his novel, Iames hel ped popularize the idea - call it "art Ior
¡he nation"---that collecting, more than an individual caprice,
wus also a patriotic act lo the extent that it served to enrich the
nrtistic and cultural patrimony of America as a wbole. From there
il was only a short step to the attendant idea that collectors had
Ih(-~ responsibility to bequeath their private collections to public
museums, a practice that quickly emerged as one of the defming
olements of American society in the course of the Gilded Age.
From this perspective, the victory of the United States
. ill the war of 1898, more than a simple affirmation of American
power, also represented a golden opportunity - one that invited
¡\ rnericans to appropriate the patrirnony of a country whose art
uud whose architecture that were just learning to appreciate. In
Ihe wake of defeat, Spain was viewed as weak and impoverished,
11.11(1 from the perspective of avid collectors such as Hearst,
hurdly in a position to adequately maintain, let alone appreciate,
ils artistic and architectural treasures. Even, Huntington, the
Id
 is also worth noting that the Neio York Times adopted asimila¡'
pfJsition in 1910 when it reported on Hearst's frustrated attempt
1', export the patio of the Casa de Miranda to the United States.
~I ri king a decidedly nationalist note, the newspaper reported
tlrat: "It is good for the people ofBurgos to be alive to the worth of
ils treasures '" foreign folk ought to be grateful to the American
«ollectors oo. for stirring up their pridc."

In the end, such ideas were consistent with those of

IlIany US collectors with interests in Spanish art, and it certainly
í:oi ncided with those of the art and antiques dealers who
specialized in the export of Spain's treasures abroad. Notable in
Ihis regard was Arthur Byne (1884-1935), an American arc.hitect
who initially travelecl to Spain in 1910 uncler the auspices of
Arthur Byne wrotc- with his
wife Mildrer] Stapley ""dliple I1u·: Hispanic Society in order to photograph and catalogue its
books: Rejerúi (~r¡Jle Sf'OIl;"" medieval monuments. Byne soon emerged as one of the leacling
Renaissancc (l91~.) arul cxperts in this particular field, and his expertise was even
Spanish Iroti WíJl-ks(1') I S),
Decomted lf00dell Ccaling» recognized by the Spanish government, which honorecl him with
in Spaui (1920), SpulI;sh Ihe title of Knight Grand Cross in the Order of Alfonso XII in
Cardens arul Patios ([')24)
1<)27. At the same time, Byne capitalized on his expertise to
und Sfmnish l nterinrs and
Furnuure [Three vol limes)
1iccome anirnportant antiques dealer, exporting all manner of
in 1925, objects - furniture, iron work, choir stalls, inlaid wooden ceilings,
uud more - to numerous clients in the Unitecl States. Such was
iuterest in ancl passion for this particular enterprise that in 1934,
selí-proclaimed champion of Spain in the United States, was in a letter to the architect Julia Morgan frankly admittecl that "My
seemingly of the opinion that Americans interested in Europe, uuly role in life is taking clown old works of art, conserving thern
rather than reside there, should rather "Go there and get their lo the best of my ability ancl shipping them to America.t"? An
culture if possible.v" Huntington's use of the verb "get" in isolated statement, perhaps, but one that also unclerlies much of
tbis context is somewhat vague, but at the start of the twentieth Ilu~ Spanish Craze, especially in the years following the victory of
century many Americas believed thatit was their obligation to lhe United States in the war of 1898.
acquire - rescue might be another word -Europe's art objects,
restore and display them, and in doing so, enrich their country
and culture as a whole. For this reason, just as the United States
was discussing the terms of the Treaty of Paris with Spain, articles
in the Neio York Times suggested that the government, in lieu
of territorial concessions, ought to have contents of the Prado
Museum shipped to New York. In the end the treaty tha't was soon
to be signed contained no such provision, but the suggestion itself
was in line with contemporary ideas about cultural entitlement
together with the notion tbat United States would do much better
job of preserving Spain's cultural patrimony than Spain itself. It

42 Ni.duml L KaKfw. '1<\

 1 As cited in Donald G. Pisano, A 11 See Richard 1. Kagan, "The Spanish "1 1 •.•·I""r to H. C. Chatford-Taylor, 2S H(~lIl'y Janu::-; In '1'1 ICtllI'-IS Sargc'l1l
Lending Spiru in American Art: Tum": The Discovery of Spanish Art '''I/I!of the Castanet (New York, P"rry. 20 St:ptc·IIII,,·r 1He,7. "S
William Merriu. Chose, 1849-1916 in the United States, 1887-1920," 11\(6). For the Spanish response, see p"\.li,I",d in n",
C"III"II'/" !"IIIT.' I!/
(SeaLLI,,: Henry ArL Gallery, 1983), in Esmee Quodboch , ed .. Collecting lIara"l Sánchez Mantera, 'La imagen Hellrr l onu-s. l~t1. l'i¡'ITI' A, Walkt'1'
157. Me rr ;IL was also one of the Spanisli Art in the Unued States d,· España en los Estados Unidos', alld Crq.~ W, Za('lllIl'ias (I.i tll'ol 11.
r.rst US painrers Loadmire El (ColJege Par, PA, Pennsylvania State in la imagen. de España en América, UlliV''I',,,,iIY nI' Ndll'U."kll 1'1'1':':s. :!()()()).
Crece, ac.lvising both New York's University Press, 2010, Iorthcoming). IHC)B-1931, ed. Rafael Sánchez 1: 17'J.
MetropoliLan Museum of Art and M"lIlero, José Manuel Macarro Vero,
12 Pictures in Sir William van Horne's
the Philadelphia Museurn of Art LO )' l.candro Al várez Rey (Sevilla, 2(. l h.nry .l.unos, !úu/t:,.¡/'k I/IIt/SOIl (NI'\\'
Collection," Neui York Times, 19 Sept.
purchase paintings by this artist, See 1 ')\1/1.),38-39. York: .I.S. ()sgllod. IB7:'). ("1."1'.1. ·1·.
1915.
KatherineMeicalf Roof, Life and Art '27 As f:il(~d in CoddillJ,!;. "An,111'!'
13 As cited in Frances WeiLzenhoffer, y,~Charles Lurnmis, The Spauisli
DI lVilLiarn Merritt Chase (New York:
Pioneers (Chicago, 1912),23. l luruingron," 16:3-
Charles Scribners and Sons, 1917). The Hauemeyers. Impressionism
290. Comes to America ( Henry N. 'J:I '·N" excuse for the statue. An 28 "Pride 01' Burgos," The Ni-in };,rk
Abrams, New York, 1986), 111. See uHrout to art as well as the artists of Times, 3 Novemher ] 91 o, a.
2 As r-ited in Kagan, Spain in America,
also Lousine H. Haverneyer, Scaeen América." Neto Jork Times, Feb. 13.
256. 29 As cited in Sara Holmes 130Illl·II,·,
lo SÚ;I)'.· Menwirs of a Collector ( New 11)<)4.
3 Marianna Criswald Van Rennselaer,
[ulia Morgan Archiiect (New York,
York, (New York, Privately printed for
"Madison Square Carden," Century the family of Mrs. H.O. Haverneyer
. ,H (:. D. Arnold, The Pan-American Abbeville, 1988),247. Letter of
!lx!iOsition. Illustroied: (Buífalo. Arthur Byne to Julia Morgan, Jan 15,
Magazine 47 n. 5 (March, 1894): and The Metropolitan M useurn of
I'J01),28-30. 1934.
732-47. Arl, 1961), and Spleiulul Legacy The
Haoemeyer Collectioii ( New York,
4· [ am currently preparing a sLudy of
Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1993).
these American "Ciraldas."
14 For Hearst's collections, see Mar)' L.
5 See. Ior exarnple, David Roberts,
Levkoff, Hearst the Collector (New
Picturesque sketclies in Spain takeri
York, Abrams, 1908).
tluring the yea.rs 1832 and 1833
(London: Hodgson and Graves, 15 The best introduction to Huntington,
ls:n). as collector and philanthropist,
is Mitchell Codding, "Archer
6 For more on these artists, see Mary
Hunlington. Champion 01"Spain in
Elizabeth Boone, Vista.s de España:
the United States," in Richard L.
American Views oJ the Ar¡ and Dife
ofSpain, /860-1914 (New Haven Kagan, Spain in. Americ". The Origins
and London, Yale University Press,
ofHispanism in the Uniied Suues
Champagne-Urbana, TLL, University
2007).
of lllinois Press, 2002),142-170.
7 As ci ted i 11 H. Barbara Wei 11 berg, Mitchell Codding is the current
"William Merriu Chase and the director of the Hispanic Society of
American Taste for Painting," America.
M"gaúne Anuques (163.4, April,
16 Codding, "Archer Huruington," 154.
2003),2.
17 Ibid. 161.
8 For Chase and Spanish Art, see
Pisano,.4 Lending Spirit in American 18 lrving and other nineteenth century
Art, and Boone, Vistas de Espana, US hispanists may be approachecl
147-158. through the essays gather in Kagan,
Spain. in America, and [van [aksic,
9 For ihese remarks, see the article
The Hispanic World arul American
"GeL Together, Says Mr. Chase lo
Fellow-Artists," New York Times, May
Iniellccuuil Life, 1820-1880 (London,
Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).
21,1\105.
19 Codding, "Archer Huntington," 157.
10 James Jackson Jarves, Ar¡ Thoughts.
The Experiences arul Obseruauons oI 20 Su san Carter, "Street Life in Spain,"
American Amateur in Europa (New
al'/, Cetuury Magazine 39 (No v 1889): 32-
York, Hurd and Houghton, 1871),75. 41, as cited in Boone, 170.

44 Richurd 1_ A:crgrl11 'I,~~