Vistas de España: American Views of Art and Life in Spain, 1860–1914
M. Elizabeth Boone
Print publication date: Mar, 2007
Subject areasArt History and TheoryWomen's, Gender, & Sexuality StudiesAmericanSpanish
1. Samuel Colman, Washington Irving, and the Landscapes of Southern Spain
2. George Henry Hall, Costumbrismo, and the Vogue for Murillo
3. Thomas Eakins, Harry Humphrey Moore, and the Politics of Painting in Spain
4. Mary Cassatt, Modern Woman, and the Ritual of Spanish Travel
5. Performing Bizet's Carmen: John Singer Sargent, El Jaleo, and the Cigarreras of Seville
6. Sunny Spain: The Castilian Paintings of William Merritt Chase and Robert Frederick Blum
7. España negra: Painting in Spain with the Generation of '98
Appendix A: Chronological List of American Artists in Spain
Appendix B: Visitor and Copyist Registers at the Prado
Appendix C: Visitor Registers at the Alhambra
BOOKVistas de España: American Views of Art and Life in Spain, 1860–1914
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00172
In the decades following the American Civil War and leading up to the First World War, a definitive shift in power took place between Spain and the United States. This original book explores American artists' perceptions of Spain during this period of turmoil and demonstrates how their responses to Spanish art helped to answer emerging, complex questions about American national identity.
M. Elizabeth Boone focuses on works by Thomas Eakins, Mary Cassatt, William Merritt Chase, John Singer Sargent, Robert Henri, and other American artists who traveled to Spain to study the achievements of such great masters as Murillo, Velázquez, and Goya. The resulting American paintings, some well known and others now largely forgotten, provide intriguing insights not only into the 19th-century American struggle to define itself as an imperial power but also into the relations between the United States and the Spanish-speaking world today.
Print publication date March 2007 (out of print)
Copyright© 2007 by M. Elizabeth Boone
Illustrations 141
Print Status out of print
Madrid: Vista general de la Puerta del Sol
Copyists in the main gallery of the Museo del Prado
Alhambra Palace
Toledo: Entrada de Toledo por el puente de Alcántara
Frontispiece to Washington Irving, The Alhambra, 1832. Author's rev. ed. New York: George P. Putnam, 1851
Storm King on the Hudson
Harbor of Seville
The Giralda
Cathedral, Torre del Oro and Guadalquivir River, Seville
Harbor Scene (Seville)
The Torre del Oro
Sevilla en tiempo de los árabes
Vista de Sevilla
Washington Day (On the River Darro, Granada)
Old Buildings on the Darro, Granada
Torres Bermejas
The Hill of the Alhambra
The Rocky Mountains, Lander's Peak
Children Playing Dice
Sevillian Youths Reading the Poster for a Bullfight
Return of the Spanish Laborers from the Field
The Flower Seller
The Flower Girl
Trying His Luck: A Group of Spanish Children
Gambling for the Buck
Young Lady of Seville and Her Dueña at Church
La Caridad
La Feria de Jueves (The Thursday Fair of Seville)
The Early Career of Murillo
Roman Fish Market, The Arch of Octavius
An Egyptian Peasant Woman and Her Child
Arab Fantasia
The Spinners, or the Fable of Arachne
Carmelita Repueña
Spanish Head
A Street Scene in Seville
Cathedral of Seville
The Dancing Lesson
At the Water Trough
Musiciens ambulants, illustrated in Baron Charles Davillier, "Spain"
Interior of a Mosque
In Algiers
Spanish Gypsies of Granada
Old Moor Sharpening His Sword
An Arab Guard
Mosque at Córdoba
Execution sans jugement sous les rois maures de Grenade
Studio of H. Humphrey Moore, A Distinguished Deaf-Mute Painter
Dance of the Almeh
Sevilla: General View of the Patio of the Casa de Pilatos
In the Mirador
A Street in Toledo
Majas on the Balcony
The Women at a Window
In the Loge
After the Bullfight
Offering the Panal to the Toreador
A Matador
Cartes-de-visite of Bullfighters
Pelando la pava
A Bit of Old Spain
Peasant Woman Peeling an Orange
Spanish Dancer Wearing a Lace Mantilla
Woman with a Fan
El jaleo: Danse des gitanes
Sargent in his Studio at 41 boulevard Berthier, Paris
The Interior of Santa María la Blanca
Patio de los Arrayanes
Smoke of Ambergris (Fumée d'ambre gris)
Gipsy Dancing the Vito Sevillano
Two of a Kind (Tal para qual)
Spanish Ballet
Cigarreras at Work in the Fábrica de Tabacos of Seville
Sevilla (n. 193), fá[bri]ca de tabacos
Cigarette Girls, Seville
Prelude!
A Sacristy in Aragon
Contrebandier aragonais
Smugglers of the Serrania de Rona
The Quartette
Spanish Women
La Carmencita
El Jaleo intalled in the Spanish Cloister
Spanish Peasant
A Spanish Bric-a-Brac Shop
Vendedor de tapices
Spanish Street
Washerwomen, Seville
Outskirts of Madrid (Scene Near Madrid)
Sunny Spain
My Watercarrier
Toledo Water-Carrier
A Water-Carrier
Tipos toledanos: El azacán
Plaza and Street, Toledo
San Juan de la Penitencia
Street Scene: La Puerta del Convento de las Comendadoras o El Convento de Santa Fe
Spanish Courtyard
The Home of "Solitude"
Balcony in Toledo, 1882
Patio toledano
Venetian Lacemakers
A Street Incident
Pobres a la puerta de un convento en Toledo
The Romance and The Dry Reality
Saint Martin and the Beggar
Gregorio in Sepúlveda
The Young Amphibians
Spanish Soldiers
Hospital at Granada
Blind Musicians
Gypsy Encampment
Jardines de Carlos V, Alcázar de Sevilla
Garden at Granada
Jardín de Aranjuez
Dogma of the Redemption, from "The Triumph of Religion"
Madonna of Sorrows, from "The Triumph of Religion"
El Cristo de la Sangre
Mañana de Viernes Santo en Orduña
Spanish Mendicants
Street in Ronda
Fountain in a Courtyard
Commemorative reproduction of F. Luis Mora's "Beach Scene at Valencia," c. 1909
Spanish Dancing Girl
La reina mora: Milagros Moreno
María y Consuelo
Procession in Spain
Blind Guitar Singer
Spanish Girl of Segovia
~This book had its gestation in 1979, when I first traveled to Spain to see for myself the vistas de España. I have accumulated many debts during the twenty-five years that have elapsed since that time, foremost among them to my teachers: William H. Gerdts taught me the value of primary research and allowed me to mine his incomparable library, H. Barbara...
American paintings of Spain reveal as much about the United States as they do about people and places on the Iberian Peninsula. During the years from 1860 to 1914, a period that encompasses the American Civil War, the Spanish Revolution of 1868, and the Spanish-American War, citizens of these two countries grappled with...
Chapter subject tags:Painting, American--Spain--19th centuryPainting, American--Spain--20th centurySpain--In art
Samuel Colman (1832–1920) was the first artist from the United States to paint an extensive number of images based on a journey through Spain. Son of a bookseller and publisher, Colman grew up in the city of New York, where his exposure to the artists, engravers, and writers...
Chapter subject tags:Irving, Washington, 1783-1859Painting, American--Spain--20th centurySpain--In art
George Henry Hall (1825–1913) arrived in Spain a few months after Samuel Colman and like his compatriot began to illustrate the writings of Washington Irving, Alexander Slidell MacKenzie, and Richard Ford; Colman painted landscapes of Spain's southern cities, and Hall peopled his canvases with the picturesque residents of Seville. Hall's...
Chapter subject tags:Murillo, Bartolomé Esteban, 1617-1682Painting, American--Spain--20th centurySpain--In art
When Thomas Eakins (1844–1916) traveled through Spain with William Sartain (1843–1924) and Harry Humphrey Moore (1844–1926) during the winter and spring of 1869–70, Spain was in the midst of a political crisis. Queen Isabella II had been deposed in the Revolution of 1868, and Marshal Juan Prim, one...
Chapter subject tags:Eakins, Thomas, 1844-1916Painting, American--Spain--20th centurySpain--In art
By the time Mary Cassatt (1844–1926) began painting majas on a balcony, bullfighters at the ring, and flirting taberneras in the city of Seville, the journey to Spain had become a popular artistic pilgrimage. I began working out these ideas in "Bullfights and...
Chapter subject tags:Women artistsPainting, American--Spain--20th centurySpain--In art
Six years after Mary Cassatt left the toreadors of Seville to begin her career as a modern artist in Paris, John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) arrived in Spain to paint the preliminary sketches for El jaleo, arguably the most famous American painting of Spanish life (fig. 5.1)....
Chapter subject tags:Carmen (Fictitious character) in artPainting, American--Spain--20th centurySpain--In art
William Merritt Chase (1849–1916), Robert Frederick Blum (1857–1903), and Frederick Porter Vinton (1846–1911) traveled to Spain in the summer of 1882, the same year Sargent exhibited El jaleo at the Paris Salon...
Chapter subject tags:Blum, Robert Frederick, 1857-1903Painting, American--Spain--20th centurySpain--In art
John Singer Sargent repeatedly traversed the Iberian Peninsula in the three decades after painting El jaleo (see fig. 5.1), during which time he extended his knowledge of Spain and its people well beyond that of first-time travelers. F. Luis Mora (1874–1940) began his career with a trip to visit his father's...
Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) maintained a sustained interest in Spain during much of the twentieth century, painting from 1948 until his death more than two hundred works known as the Elegies to the Spanish Republic. Motherwell's involvement with the Iberian Peninsula differed from that of the nineteenth-century artists who form the body of this book, however, as he had little...
~This chronologically ordered list of Americans who traveled in Spain between the years 1800 and 1899 was compiled primarily from the copyist registers in the Archives of the Museo del Prado, the visitor registers in the Archives of the Alhambra, periodical notices, exhibition records, correspondence, and dated works that were executed in Spain. Following each...
~The Museo del Prado in Madrid has preserved many of the copyist and visitor registers from the nineteenth century, and although some years are incomplete or missing, these records form an important source of information about the activities of Americans in Spain. The following is a select translation of the information inscribed in these volumes. The artist's...
~The Archives of the Alhambra in Granada has preserved three nineteenth-century visitor registers that were sometimes signed by visitors to the palace. They cover successively the dates 1829–72, 1872–83, and 1896–1903. The following is a select translation of names and dates inscribed in those volumes. Included are artists, art dealers, and...