The early years of the American Art Association, 1879-1900.
Item
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Title
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The early years of the American Art Association, 1879-1900.
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Identifier
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AAI9820513
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identifier
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9820513
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Creator
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Bolas, Gerald Douglas.
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Contributor
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Adviser: William H. Gerdts
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Date
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1998
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Art History | American Studies
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Abstract
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In 1883 James F. Sutton, Thomas E. Kirby, and R. Austin Robertson founded the American Art Association (AAA) in New York City for the "encouragement and promotion of American art." The history of the AAA illuminates the changing fortunes of American artists, expresses the growing cosmopolitanism of the American art world, and delineates the establishment of a stable and broad-based market for art in the United States. This dissertation focuses on the AAA's birth and maturation in the context of late-nineteenth century art galleries, auction houses and institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Additionally, this study reconstructs the physical appearance of the AAA and several other commercial art galleries.;Conceived as a commercial gallery devoted to American art, in its first year the AAA exhibited Thomas B. Clarke's collection of American pictures, the finest collection of native art in the country. The AAA's "Prize Fund Exhibitions" of American art, launched in 1885, were initially hailed as extraordinary shows. Later "Prize Fund Exhibitions" grew increasingly irrelevant as the Association moved into the auction business and expanded its exhibition program and inventory with European art. Most notable was the collaboration with Paul Durand-Ruel, who brought Impressionist pictures to New York in 1886 at the invitation of the AAA. The Association's 1889 exhibition to benefit the Antoine-Louis Barye Memorial Fund, which included some 450 of the sculptor's works together with one hundred oils and watercolors by his French contemporaries, was acclaimed the greatest show of French painting ever held in the country. Meanwhile, the AAA speculated in European art, stock-piling Barbizon and Impressionist pictures, and in 1889 paid a world record {dollar}110,000 for Jean-Francois Millet's {lcub}\it The Angelus{rcub}.;At the AAA's sale of the Thomas B. Clarke collection ten years later in 1899, auctions records of {dollar}10,150 for a George Inness landscape and \{dollar}4,500 Winslow Homer's Lifeline, though modest in comparison to the Millet's cost, were hailed as evidence of the rise in value--financial and cultural--of American art. Thus, the Association fulfilled its original aim of promoting American art by providing an exhibition venue and highly visible auction arena where collectors could buy, sell and appreciate American art within a cosmopolitan context.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
