Copyright 2014 Adam M. Thomas THE SPECTRAL IMAGINATION: AMERICAN ART BETWEEN SCIENCE AND SUPERSTITION IN THE LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY BY ADAM M. THOMAS DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Art History in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2014 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Associate Professor Jennifer A. Greenhill, Chair Associate Professor Terri Weissman Associate Professor David O’Brien Associate Professor Cara A. Finnegan ABSTRACT This dissertation explores how tensions between science and superstition were embedded in and constitutive of the visual arts in late nineteenth-century America. By focusing on the work of artists Henry Alexander (1860–94), William Merritt Chase (1849–1916), Edwin Romanzo Elmer (1850–1923), and Irving Ramsay Wiles (1861–1948), this project examines the interplay of these ostensibly opposing worldviews in painting. It traces how the interdependence of these terms—which were very much in flux during the era— provided a creative paradigm for negotiating the professionalization of science, the emergent discipline of psychology, new theories of perception and memory, as well as scientific and spiritual efforts to unlock material, psychic, and supernatural worlds broadly. This dissertation reassesses distinctions between so-called realistic and visionary idioms in American art and offers a revised conception of the intersections between art and science in this period. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Many people have contributed to my work on this dissertation. I am exceptionally grateful to my advisor Jennifer Greenhill for her enthusiasm about this topic since its inception and for her incisive comments at every stage of the process. The feedback of committee members Terri Weissman, David O’Brien, Cara Finnegan, and Suzanne Hudson was also extremely valuable. At the University of Illinois, my thinking additionally developed from advice and observations offered along the way by Oscar Vázquez, Lisa Rosenthal, Jeri Wood, and Irene Small. I greatly appreciate Eun Young Jung’s initial encouragement in working on one of the artists in this project. Jonathan Fineberg enabled my stint at the Center for the Study of Modern Art at the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC, putting me in contact with myriad resources. Similarly, Jordana Mendelson’s generous support is not forgotten. I recognize the service of Chris Quinn in the Ricker Library of Architecture and Art; and the indispensable aid of Marsha Biddle and Ellen de Waard in navigating administrative matters. I benefited from the camaraderie and knowledge of graduate student colleagues at Illinois: Miriam Kienle, Maria del Mar Gonzalez y Gonzalez, Sunny Jang, Lauren Applebaum, Dan Fulco, Betsy Brandt, and Julia Sienkewicz. My cohort at the Smithsonian American Art Museum considerably enlivened the research and writing process. Among the many fellows who enriched my experience in Washington, I wish to single out Laura Turner Igoe, Miri Kim, Shana Klein, Catherine Holochwost, Emily Burns, Greg Zinman, Hyewon Yoon, and Berit Potter for their thoughtful comments and research suggestions. My project also profited from iii conversations with Eleanor Harvey, David Ward, Bill Truettner, and Emily Shapiro. Thanks are due to Amelia Goerlitz for fostering an inviting and stimulating environment in which to work. The assistance of Anne Evenhaugen and Alexandra Reigle in SAAM’s library; Marisa Bourgoin, Margaret Zoller, and Wendy Hurlock Baker at the Archives of American Art; as well as Wendy Shay in the Archives Center at the National Museum of American History was vital. The personnel of many institutions facilitated my research. Special thank-yous to: Ellen Lee, Rebecca Long, and Alba Fernández-Keys at the Indianapolis Museum of Art; James Glisson, Krystle Satrum, and David Mihaly at the Huntington Library and Art Collection; Geoffrey Fleming at the Southold Historical Society; Eileen Keremitsis at the California Historical Society; Genevieve Cottraux at the Berkeley Art Museum; Emma Acker at the de Young Museum; Elsa Smithgall and Karen Schneider at the Phillips Collection; Sylvia Yount at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts; Sara Woodbury and Thomas Denenberg at the Shelburne Museum of Art; Linda Muehlig and Henriette Kets de Vries at the Smith College Museum of Art; and Janet Parks at the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library at Columbia University. Staff members at the following institutions also deftly lent a hand with different queries and requests: Mount Holyoke College Art Museum; Cincinnati Art Museum; Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley; San Francisco History Center, San Francisco Public Library; Frick Art Reference Library; Watson Library, The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Boston Public Library; and Library of Congress. iv Audience members and fellow presenters at the Art Institute of Chicago, the University of Iowa, and Wellesley College who posed questions and ventured comments about various aspects of this project helped shape my thinking. Museum-world mentors Barbara Weinberg at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Charlie Brock at the National Gallery of Art entertained my art-historical interests with good cheer and guidance. In the same arena, I cannot thank Kevin Sharp enough for his sage counsel and steadfast generosity. Jay Phelan graciously opened his personal collection to me and provided spirited conversation. For meals and shelter, friendly ears and fortifying words at opportune moments, I thank Robin and Angela Spayde, Matico Josephson and Michelle Cheng, Hunt and Donna Bonan, Chris Platts and Charlotte Gray, Eileen Straussman, Tom Erler, and Farshad Talebi. Most of all, my heartfelt gratitude to Gloria, Michael, David, Matt, and Eve, to whom I owe so very much. v TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION...............................................................................................................1 CHAPTER ONE: Henry Alexander: Exacting Transmutations........................................14 CHAPTER TWO: William Merritt Chase: Fantasy and Selfhood....................................57 CHAPTER THREE: Edwin Romanzo Elmer: Ways of Knowing..................................113 CHAPTER FOUR: Irving Ramsay Wiles: Drawing in the Dark....................................148 CONCLUSION................................................................................................................205 BIBLIOGRAPHY............................................................................................................210 LIST OF FIGURES.........................................................................................................248 FIGURES.........................................................................................................................252 vi INTRODUCTION In 1898, the British writer James Fullarton Muirhead mused, with Tocquevillian perspicacity, on the “extraordinary clashes” he had witnessed during his travels in the United States. The country, he declared, “stands out preeminently as […] the land of stark, staring, and stimulating inconsistency; at once the home of enlightenment and the happy hunting ground of the charlatan and the quack.” Elaborating on this foremost cultural conflict, he noticed how the “curious contrast to the practical, material, matter- of-fact side of the American is his intense interest in the supernatural, the spiritualistic, the superstitious.” As if a single individual embodied these cross-purposes as a national trait, Muirhead’s representative “American” was a special contradiction. Muirhead admits that the account of his social observations “is merely a record of personal impressions,” but his remarks succinctly testify to an important quandary at the end of the nineteenth century.1 The literary critic Andrew Lang, writing in 1886, expounded on a similar antagonism. “Why,” asked Lang, “as science becomes more cock-sure, have men and women become more and more fond of the old follies, and more pleased with the stirrings of ancient dread, within their veins? As the visible world is measured, mapped, tested, [and] weighed, we seem to hope more and more that a world of invisible romance may not be far from us.” The attraction of supernatural causes and unseen fantasies, despite living “in a positive age,” was, in Lang’s estimation, on the rise.2 Science’s knowingness and ever-expanding reach only seemed to foster and deepen a fascination with unshakeable terrors—with ghosts and other paranormal phenomena. The 1 fundamental friction and perceived overlap between the domains of science and superstition, which both Lang and Muirhead pondered, are at the core this dissertation. Focusing on the years spanning their comments, I explore how these competing forces exerted pressure on, and were harnessed toward generative ends in, the work of four American artists. The last decades of the nineteenth century were rife with both popular and specialized attempts to take stock of superstition, even distinctively obsessed with it— with defining and understanding the development of superstition, with gauging the perniciousness of superstition, with ascertaining the level of popular adherence to superstition, and with distancing the activities of contemporary life from bygone superstition. One article from 1889, for instance, noted “how desperately [superstition] has clung to mankind, with what difficulty and after how many years it has been practically subdued. For its subjection