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Home , Aestheticism, April Love (painting), Charles Herbert Moore, William Trost Richards

THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY SCHREYER HONORS COLLEGE

DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY

DETAILS OF GRANDEUR: HOW THE PRE-RAPHAELITES INFLUENCED AMERICAN

LINDSAY WELLS SPRING 2013

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for baccalaureate degrees in Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies, , and Medieval Studies with honors in Art History

Reviewed and approved* by the following:

Joyce Robinson Curator, Affiliate Associate Professor of Art History Thesis Supervisor

Brian Curran Professor of Art History Honors Adviser

* Signatures are on file in the Schreyer Honors College.

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ABSTRACT

The British Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, in the spirit of , strove to paint detailed and heartfelt works of art, with subject matter faithfully recorded from nature. After

Ruskinian and Pre-Raphaelite influences crossed the Atlantic in the 1850s, a trend toward naturalism focused on botanical detail emerged in American art. While the Pre-Raphaelites became famous in England for their literary , their American admirers were inspired to paint pure lacking almost all narrative and figural references. The following thesis explores why this mid-century phenomenon occurred. Pre-Raphaelite techniques were applied to

American because of the growing interest of artists during the nineteenth century in American scenery. Pre-Raphaelite publications and exhibitions in the also impacted how American artists appropriated Pre-Raphaelitism. The nature-centric trajectory of this movement may be more deeply understood through an examination of the career of

William Trost Richards, whose landscapes were praised as quintessential examples of Pre-

Raphaelite . I will argue that exposure to Pre-Raphaelitism led Richards, who early on developed a great interest in nature, to paint meticulous compositions such as The Forest (1868), in which every inch of flora on the canvas is defined with observed precision and clarity. At the close of the nineteenth century, Pre-Raphaelitism was attacked by critics as time consuming and uninspired, which plunged the accomplishments of the American Pre-Raphaelites into obscurity for many decades.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Figures...... iii

Acknowledgements ...... iv

Chapter 1 Introduction: The Pre-Raphaelites ...... 1

Chapter 2 A Changing Landscape: The , The Crayon, The New Path, and the Exhibition of English Art ...... 6

Chapter 3 The Career of ...... 13

Chapter 4 Conclusion: The Decline of American Pre-Raphaelitism...... 23

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 26

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LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1-1: , Portrait of John Ruskin (1854), oil on canvas, 31” x 27 ½”, Private Collection...... 3

Figure 2-1: John William Hill, Apple Blossoms (ca. 1874), watercolor on paper, 8 13/16” x 15 1/2”, ...... 8

Figure 2-2: John Ruskin, Fragment of the Alps (1854-1856), watercolor and gouache over graphite on cream woven paper, 13 3/16” x 19 7/16”, /Fogg Museum...... 11

Figure 3-1: Paul Weber, Border Crossing (1855), oil on canvas, 15" x 20", , The Pennsylvania State University...... 15

Figure 3-2: William Trost Richards, The Blackberry Bush (1858), oil on canvas, 14 3/4” x 12 1/2” Brooklyn Museum ...... 16

Figure 3-3: William Trost Richards, The Forest (1868), oil on canvas, 40" x 54 1/2", Palmer Museum of Art, The Pennsylvania State University...... 17

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

A Very Special Thanks…

To my thesis advisor, Dr. Joyce Robinson. Thank you for introducing me to the

American Pre-Raphaelites and for generously helping me visit the William Trost Richards exhibition, A Mine of : Landscapes by William Trost Richards, at the Pennsylvania

Academy of the Fine . Your support and mentoring has meant so much to me.

To my honors advisor, Dr. Brian Curran. Thank you for all of the helpful advice on how to write a great thesis. I have loved discussing this topic with you over the past year.

To Dr. Elizabeth Smith. Thank you for assisting me with this project at its very start. I have really appreciated your encouragement and support.

To my parents. Thank you for the enthusiastic and unconditional support of my education.

And thank you to the Palmer Museum of Art, the Penn State University Libraries, the

Schreyer Honors College, and Penn State for supporting all of my undergraduate research endeavors. 1

Chapter 1

Introduction: The Pre-Raphaelites

In the 1850s and 60s, a trend towards naturalism in art emerged in the United

States that inspired the creation of some of the most detailed landscapes ever painted by

American artists. This occurred shortly after the formation of the Pre-Raphaelite

1 Brotherhood in England and the introduction of John Ruskin’s literary voice in America.

Although Ruskin wrote on many subjects, he became well known in America for his writings on nature and art. Ruskin’s influential treatise Modern Painters was published in the United

2 States in 1843. In this book, he urged artists to “Go into Nature in all singleness of heart ... rejecting nothing, selecting nothing, and scorning nothing, ” which became a touchstone not

3 only for the British Pre-Raphaelites but also for several American landscapists. Inspired by

Ruskin, American artists began to advocate and reject sentimentalism in their art

4 much as the British Pre-Raphaelites had before them. While the Pre-Raphaelites became famous in England for their literary paintings of scenes from Shakespeare, Dante, and Keats, their American admirers were inspired to paint pure landscapes lacking almost all narrative

5 and figural references. This phenomenon can be explained by the growing interest of artists in

American scenery during the nineteenth century. In addition, Pre-Raphaelite publications and exhibitions in the United States also impacted how American artists appropriated Pre-

Raphaelitism. The essential features of the American Pre-Raphaelite movement may be

1 William Gerdts, "The Influence of Ruskin and Pre-Raphaelitism on American Still-Life Painting," American Art Journal 1, no. 2 (1969): 82. 2 Roger B. Stein, John Ruskin and Aesthetic Thought in America, 1840-1900 (Cambridge, Mass.: Press, 1967), 80. 3 David H. Dickason, The Daring Young Men: The Story of the American Pre-Raphaelites (: Indiana University Press, 1970), 76. 4 Stein, 152. 5 Stein, 112. 2 more deeply understood through an examination of the career of William Trost Richards, one of the most prolific and successful American Pre-Raphaelites. Although their methods came under harsh scrutiny at the close of the nineteenth century, the American Pre-

Raphaelites are recognized today not only for their fastidious skills, but also for their devotion to celebrating the details of America’s varied scenery.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the American Arts and Crafts journal The

Craftsman retrospectively defined the Pre-Raphaelites as a group of artists who “revolted against as a foreign element introduced into England by Sir Joshua Reynolds and his contemporaries for whom the later Italian schools represented all that is beautiful and

6 desirable in art … [rejecting] conventions of the followers of ‘the grand ;’” David H.

Dickason notes that the British Pre-Raphaelites a model for change in the advice of

7 John Ruskin (1819-1900), who felt artists should strive to be completely faithful to nature.

This meant that an artist was expected to rely on his or her own observations and experiences when painting. The Pre-Raphaelites believed art was meant to be straightforward and heartfelt, as opposed to formulaic and academic. Instead of imitating the artists of the

High that their predecessors had esteemed, the Pre-Raphaelites looked to earlier painters whom they believed had responded honestly to nature, such as Giotto and Botticelli.8

The Pre-Raphaelites also admired the artists of the Northern Renaissance. In his collection of essays The Elements of Drawing, Ruskin suggested that artists look to the painstakingly

9 detailed art of Albrecht Durer for inspiration. John Everett Millais (1829-1896), Dante

Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882), and (1827-1910) founded the Pre-

Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 in order to dedicate themselves to these new artistic ideals.

Millais and Hunt in particular strove for precise depictions of the natural world in their early

6 Irene Sargent, “The Opera of ‘’ and ‘The Aesthetic Movement,’” The Craftsman 1, no. 1 (October 1901): 33- 34. 7 Dickason, 76. 8 Dickason, 18. 9 John Ruskin, The Elements of Drawing (New York: Watson-Guptill Publications, 1997), 99. 3

10 careers. Millais’s famous (1851, ), for example, includes an extremely detailed background filled with a variety of plants and flowers.

Merely replicating nature was not enough for the Pre-Raphaelites. Rather, they used

11 intense local colors and sharply focused details to highlight nature’s entire splendor. Many well-known Pre-Raphaelite paintings feature landscape settings of extreme clarity with carefully defined details. Millais’s Portrait of Ruskin (1854), for example, shows the celebrated theorist standing atop craggy rocks, as a frothing brook streams by in the background.12 (Figure 1-1) Rich coloring is used to distinguish the various types of leaves in the brush behind Ruskin’s head, as well as the weathered rock patterns by his feet. Space recedes only as far as the riverbank in the background, allowing the viewer to focus on the individual features of a single section of woods. Precise botanical detail gave Pre-Raphaelite paintings a specificity that appealed to American landscapists.

Figure 1-1: John Everett Millais, Portrait of John Ruskin (1854), oil on canvas, 31” x 27 ½”, Private Collection

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Millais_Ruskin.jpg

10 Christopher Wood, The Pre-Raphaelites (: Seven Dials, Cassell & Co., 2000), 9. 11 Elizabeth Prettejohn, The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites (London: Tate Publishing, 2010), 165. 12 Prettejohn, 168. 4 Among the artists who adopted Pre-Raphaelitism in America, some of the most important were Thomas Charles Farrer (1839-1891), John Henry Hill (1839-1922), John

William Hill (1812-1879), (1840-1930), Henry Roderick Newman

(1843-1917), and William Trost Richards (1833-1905), all of whom were landscape painters.

After studying drawing under Ruskin at the Working Men’s College in London, Farrer moved to America and spearheaded a formal organization of artists and intellectuals interested in

13 naturalist art called the Association for the Advancement of Truth in Art. The group was founded at Farrer’s New York studio in January of 1863, echoing the earlier formation of the

British Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848. To a great extent Ruskin’s Modern Painters

14 inspired the tenets of the Association, like those of the Brotherhood.

In the American Pre-Raphaelite journal The New Path, Farrer attacked older artistic traditions that lacked Ruskinian detail:

It is just as wrong for a man to paint leaves when he cannot see leaves, as for the old fogies to paint trees and weeds that are close to the spectator, with a few careless daubs of the brush, that mean nothing but imbecility.15

Farrer was opposed to artificial interpretations of nature. He preferred paintings that had not only been observed in person, but that recorded more than the general features of a landscape. Painting each leaf was just as important as painting a whole tree. Even weeds, if the artist could see them, deserved as much attention as the rest of the canvas. This would ensure that a painting remained true to its subject matter. In the same article, Farrer summarized what was admirable in the paintings of artists who had adopted the style of the

Pre-Raphaelites:

You can really tell, by looking at their pictures, whether it is an Oak, an Elm, or a Pine ... Nature is absolutely right; it makes not difference to her whether Durand looks upon her, or W.T. Richards; an Elm leaf is still oval and pointed, and a Hickory leaf

13 Linda S. Ferber, “ ‘Determined Realists’ : The American Pre-Raphaelites and the Association for the Advancement of Truth in Art,” in Linda S. Ferber and William H. Gerdts, The New Path: Ruskin and the American Pre-Raphaelites (New York: The Brooklyn Museum, 1985), 16. 14 Linda S. Ferber, William Trost Richards: American Landscape and Marine Painter, 1833-1905 (Brooklyn: The Brooklyn Museum, 1973), 26. 15 Thomas Charles Farrer, “A Few Questions Answered". An Essay Read before the Society, Tuesday, March 31, 1863,” The New Path 1, no.2 (June 1863): 15. 5 long and sharp, and summer’s foliage still green, and shadows on tree stems still purple, and rocks still stratified.16

This passage ignores the stylistic differences between artists such as Richards and Asher

B. Durand (1796-1886), but it attempts to explain how following the example of Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelites would leave no doubt in the minds of spectators what an artist had actually seen in nature. Ideally, all landscapes painted with exacting accuracy would be sincere and honest. Farrer was aware of what could be accomplished by following the style of

Millais and Hunt, which led him to proudly declare, “If ever a body of men stood on a foundation of granite, it is the Pre-Raphaelites.”17

16 Farrer, 15. 17 Farrer, 17. 6

Chapter 2

A Changing Landscape: The Hudson River School, The Crayon, The New Path, and the Exhibition of English Art

The American Pre-Raphaelites’ emphasis on nature as an important factor in painting was hardly new in American art. Nature had become closely associated with nationalism in American art during the first half of the nineteenth century thanks to the

Hudson River School. Prominent members of this American school of painting included

18 (1801-1848), Frederick Church (1826-1900), and Asher B. Durand. The

School became well known for its vast, paintings of American scenery, such as Cole’s

View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm (1836), popularly known as . The paintings of Church and Durand feature similar stunning views of American mountains, rivers, and forests. Cole explored the appeal of

American landscapes in his “Essay on American Scenery,” which was first published in

American Monthly Magazine in 1836. Cole wrote that American nature “is a subject that to every American ought to be of surpassing interest ... it is his own land; its beauty, its

19 magnificence, its sublimity.” He declared, “Though American scenery is destitute of many of those circumstances that give value to the European, still it has features, and glorious ones, unknown to Europe.”20 Lacking ancient monuments and historical ruins, American artists were encouraged to take pride in their country’s unique natural wonders. Elizabeth M.

Kornhauser points out that topography was viewed as a defining feature of America as a nation in the nineteenth century. The Hudson River School thus used landscape painting to

18 Elizabeth Mankin Kornhauser, Amy Ellis, and Maureen Miesmer, Hudson River School: Masterworks from the Museum of Art (New Haven: Yale University Press in association with the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, 2003), 7. 19 Thomas Cole, The Collected Essays and Prose Sketches (St. Paul, Minn.: J. Colet Press, 1980), 3. 20 Cole, 7. 7 distinguish America’s artistic identity.21 Lloyd Goodrich writes that landscape painting also developed a nativist element due to America’s westward expansion in the first decades of the

22 nineteenth century. Additionally, Carol M. Osborne notes that the Hudson River School emerged around the same time as when Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau were writing about the importance of nature, as well as when new treatises on geology were being published.23 It is clear that there was a literary, scientific, and political interest in nature in American culture during the nineteenth century. In the wake of all this, America’s distinct and varied terrain was elevated by the Hudson River School to the status of a national symbol.

The Hudson River School dominated landscape painting in America through the

1870s.24 However, several artists in the 1850s were inspired by the British Pre-Raphaelites to depart from the panoramic Hudson River style. The Ruskinian philosophies of the Pre-

Raphaelites fell on fertile ground in America and provided a new lens through which

25 indigenous American scenery could be interpreted. Artists such as Richards abandoned expansive vistas in favor of shaded sylvan interiors and minute natural still lives. Some

American artists even experimented with Pre-Raphaelitism by painting solitary boulders, shrubs, and patches of grass. John William Hill (1812-1879), for example, painted a single cluster of flowers in his Apple Blossoms (ca. 1874), which captures the textures of ridged leaves, gnarled branches, and creamy petals. (Figure 2-1) Such detailed paintings were the results of the appropriation of Pre-Raphaelite techniques by American artists. In The

Elements of Drawing, Ruskin argued that there was a wealth of variety to explore in something as simple as a blade of grass: “grass may be ragged and stiff, or tender and flowing;

21 Kornhauser, 6. 22 Lloyd Goodrich, A Century of American Landscape Painting, 1800-1900 (Pittsburgh: Dept. of Fine Arts, Carnegie Institute, 1939), 7. 23 Carol M. Osborne, William Trost Richards: True to Nature: Drawings, Watercolors, and Oil Sketches at Stanford University (Stanford, Calif.: Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Center for at Stanford University in association with Philip Wilson Publishers, 2009), 11 and 31. 24 Kornhauser, 7. 25 Linda Ferber, "An American Pre-Raphaelite in New York: William Trost Richards," Archives of American Art Journal 47, no. 1-2 (2008): 5. 8 sunburnt and sheep-bitten, or rank and languid; fresh or dry; lustrous or dull: look at it, and

26 try to draw it as it is.” Nature was brimming with potential subject matter for the artist who was willing to look close enough for it. Through Pre-Raphaelitism, artists were given the means to paint the same subject matter established as nationally important by the Hudson

River School, but on a more intimate scale.

Figure 2-1: John William Hill, Apple Blossoms (ca. 1874), watercolor on paper, 8 13/16” x 15 1/2”, Brooklyn Museum

Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Brooklyn_Museum_-_Apple_Blossoms_-_John_William_Hill_-

_overall.jpg

Pre-Raphaelite innovations were initially disseminated and popularized in America by two journals: The Crayon and The New Path. These publications, although they ran articles on a variety of art and design topics, were instrumental in acquainting the American artistic community with the paintings and principles of the British Pre-Raphaelites. The Crayon, founded in 1855 by an American artist named William J. Stillman, was one of the first American journals

26 Ruskin, 99. 9 seriously devoted to art and art criticism. Stillman was a painter, photographer, and journalist who developed an interest in Ruskinian naturalism as a young man. He made several trips to

England during his lifetime, and became well acquainted with both Ruskin and the Rossetti family.27 Stillman’s wife, Maria Spartali Stillman, even modeled for .28

Stillman was struck by the natural detail used in Pre-Raphaelite paintings, which he had personally viewed while visiting England. The Crayon declared that, “The energy of modern

English painters has led them into localities where certainly no artist had ever set down before, with the resolve of exactly representing extraordinary phases of Nature.”29 From its start, The

Crayon published articles that drew a relationship between Pre-Raphaelite naturalism and

American scenery. Durand, who adopted a more detailed artistic style later in his career, wrote a monthly column for the journal titled “Letters on Landscape Painting,” in which he encouraged landscapists to “boldly originate a high and independent style, based on ... native resources.”30

The Crayon strongly suggested Americans need look no further than their own surroundings for artistic inspiration. This helps explain why American forests (and not English ) became the preferred subject matter of the American Pre-Raphaelites.

The Crayon was printed until the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, but the journal’s message was carried on in a new publication called The New Path. The New Path, which ran from 1861 through 1863, was created and edited by the New York-based American Pre-

Raphaelite Association for the Advancement of Truth in Art.31 Echoing the argument in

Ruskin’s Modern Painters, the August 1863 issue of The New Path urged artists to paint

32 nature with diligent accuracy. The articles in The New Path were arguably even more focused on detailed naturalism than those published in The Crayon. For example, Farrer

27 Dickason, 5. 28 Wood, 132. 29 L.L. “The Two Pre-Raphaelites,” The Crayon 4, no. 11 (November 1857): 329. 30 Asher B. Durand, “Letters on Landscape Painting. Letter II,” The Crayon 1, no. 3 (January 1855): 35. 31 Dickason, 71. 32 Gerdts, “The Influence of Ruskin and Pre-Raphaelitism on American Still-Life Painting,” 90. 10 boldly declared in the pages of the journal: “if a young artist finds that it is ‘agonizing’ to him to draw nature as she is, painful to be faithful, then most certainly he has mistaken his calling.”33 Both The Crayon and The New Path printed articles similar to Farrer’s alongside ones that chronicled the activity of the British Pre-Raphaelites. By the time Americans were able to personally view the paintings of the original Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood at the

Exhibition of English Art, landscape painting had been well promoted as the preferred vehicle of Pre-Raphaelite naturalism.34

The Exhibition of English Art has been described as a watershed for Pre-Raphaelite

35 influence in American landscape painting. The purpose of the exhibition was to promote

36 international artistic exchange between America and Great Britain. It opened on October

20th, 1857, at ’s National Academy of Design, traveling later to both Boston and . On display were nearly three hundred oils and watercolors, filling six

37 rooms. The Crayon declared in a review of the show that, “The most interesting feature of

38 the exhibition will, to many, be the works of the Pre-Raphaelites.” Selection of the paintings on display was assisted by , the brother of Dante Gabriel

Rossetti and editor of a short-lived British Pre-Raphaelite magazine, . Rossetti also served as the British literary correspondent to The Crayon, for which he wrote several

39 articles. Some of the Pre-Raphaelite painters included in the exhibition were Arthur Hughes

(1832-1915), (1821-1893), Charles Alston Collins (1828-1873), John

Brett (1831-1902), and William Holman Hunt. Highlights in the show included Hughes’s

April Love (1855-56, Tate), Hunt’s The Light of the World (1851-56, Manchester Art

33 Farrer, 14. 34 Susan Casteras, “The 1857-58 Exhibition of English Art in America and Critical Responses to Pre-Raphaelitism,” in Ferber and Gerdts, The New Path (Brooklyn, NY: The Brooklyn Museum, 1985), 109. 35 Gordon J. Howard, "A Germantown Painter and His Chemist Son," Germantown Crier of the Germantown Historical Society 48, no. 2 (Fall 1998): 44. 36 N.R. and Rose Madder, “Sketchings: Exhibition of the Works of British Artists,” The Crayon 4, no.10 (October 1857): 315. 37 Dickason, 66. 38 F. , R. and S.L.G. “Sketchings: American Exhibition of British Art,” The Crayon 4, no. 11 (Nov. 1857): 343-351. 39 Stein, 102. 11

40 Gallery), and Brown’s King Lear (1849-54, Tate). Many lauded the inclusion of the Pre-

Raphaelites in the exhibition; however, the reviews of the Pre-Raphaelite literary and figural paintings displayed were mixed. For example, The Crayon admitted that Hughes’s April Love

“did not please us at first sight.”41 Meanwhile, many of the exhibition’s landscapes, including

Collins’s May in the Regent’s Park (1851, Tate) and Brett’s The Glacier at Rosenlaui (1856,

42 Tate), garnered widespread praise. Ruskin exhibited a geological still life titled Fragment of the Alps (1854-1856), which was described as “masterly” by critics.43 (Figure 2-2)

Figure 2-2: John Ruskin, Fragment of the Alps (1854-1856), watercolor and gouache over graphite on cream woven paper, 13 3/16” x 19 7/16”, Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum

Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:John_Ruskin_-_Fragments_of_the_Alps.jpeg

Unfortunately, the directors of the Exhibition of English Art were for various reasons unable to obtain works by Millais or Rossetti. The lack of paintings from two of the most renowned Pre-Raphaelite masters was lamented as one of the exhibition’s primary shortcomings. Susan Casteras has examined in length the reaction of William Stillman, editor of The Crayon, to visiting the exhibition. Stillman wrote a letter to the National Academy

40 Dickason, 66. 41 F. , R. and S.L.G. “Sketchings,” 343. 42 L.L. “The Two Pre-Raphaelites,” 327-328. 43 F. , R. and S.L.G. “Sketchings,” 343. 12 of Design in which he shared his criticism of the show. He was pleased that Pre-Raphaelite paintings had been included in the exhibition, but felt that they should have been selected more carefully. He complained that the organizers “too much neglected landscape, which to

44 us is far more interesting than your history painting.” The tone of Stillman’s letter, which was shared in other reviews of the exhibition, implied that American artists found Pre-

Raphaelite literary and figural painting less interesting than Pre-Raphaelite landscapes. In analyzing the Exhibition of English Art, it is important to remember that the Hudson River

School had already established landscape painting as a fundamental expression of American artistic identity. In addition, information on the Pre-Raphaelites had largely been limited to the nature-centric writings of John Ruskin and The Crayon prior to 1857. Responses to the paintings displayed at the Exhibition of English Art reveal how this event was one of many factors that established Pre-Raphaelitism in America as a style especially well suited for landscape painting.

The linear clarity and scrupulous detail used in British Pre-Raphaelite paintings was perceived by American artists as fresh and innovative. As noted, the Hudson River School had already brought nature to the forefront of American art, priming artists for the reception of Ruskinian and Pre-Raphaelite naturalism. In the 1850s and early 60s, The Crayon, The

New Path, and the Exhibition of English Art lent further momentum to an American Pre-

Raphaelite “movement.” For the next decade, American Pre-Raphaelites flourished as a select group of painters who continued to follow the advice of The Crayon: “Go not abroad then in search of material for the exercise of your pencil, while the virgin charms of our native land have claims on your deepest affections.”45

44 Casteras, 114. 45 Durand, 34. 13

Chapter 3

The Career of William Trost Richards

Dickason writes that it was not long before the word “Pre-Raphaelitism” became

46 synonymous with “naturalism” itself in American art. One of the most prominent

American Pre-Raphaelites was William Trost Richards, who Henry T. Tuckerman described in 1867 as one of “our landscape painters, who, in the minuteness of their limning, carry out

47 in practice the extreme theory of the Pre-Raphaelites.” Richards was prolific in his sketching and painting, both at his homes in Philadelphia and Rhode Island as well as when he lived abroad in England and Germany. He became one of the most successful and widely known members of the Association for the Advancement of Truth in Art. The progression of Richards’s career reflects several of the essential features of the American Pre-Raphaelite movement. In particular, the Hudson River School and the Exhibition of English Art, which influenced American Pre-Raphaelitism on a national level, played an important role in

Richards’s own artistic development. Also, the reasons behind Richards’s eventual departure from Pre-Raphaelitism partially explain the movement’s decline at the end of the nineteenth century.

Richards was born in Philadelphia on November 14, 1833, and became interested in outdoor sketching at a young age.48 His early training in draughtsmanship likely nurtured his ability to sketch minute details, which he would later channel into landscape painting. After his father died in 1847, Richards left school at the age of thirteen and began working to help

46 Dickason, 76. 47 Henry T. Tuckerman, Book of the artists : American artist life comprising biographical and critical sketches of American artists, preceded by an historical account of the rise & progress of art in America (New York: James .F. Carr, 1966, originally published 1867), 524. 48 Linda S. Ferber, “Never at Fault”: The Drawings of William Trost Richards (Yonkers, N.Y.: Hudson River Museum, 1986), 9. 14 support his mother and three younger siblings. In 1850 he took a job with Archer, Warner, and Miskey, a design firm that specialized in ornamental metalwork, where he helped draft elaborately decorative plans for lamps, chandeliers, and other household objects. These formative years of Richards’s life were dedicated to drawing in a precise and extremely detailed manner.49 He later applied the skills he learned as a draughtsman to his outside artistic ventures, which can be seen in a cover page he designed to accompany an essay he wrote in 1850 titled “Flowers.” This was one of several essays Richards wrote for the

Forensic and Literary Circle, an unofficial and writing group he had joined with his friends in 1848.50 The cover page of “Flowers” is decorated with entwined vines, curling leaves, and lush blossoms. The essay itself consists of five handwritten pages of poetic musings on the inspirational beauty of flowers. In one passage, Richards examined how art, particularly traditional Classical art, could never rival the splendor of nature itself:

What are the so called miracles of Art, in all their gaudy colouring and fantasie shapes, by the side of the ... God-made forms of their great prototypes? And what are Classic Grecian Scrolls and Roman Capitals, to green wreaths of creeping ivy or bright ... wild wood flowers?51

If going outside and observing nature for oneself was important to Richards in his youth, as this passage suggests, it is understandable that he was attracted to the practices of

Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelites. Richards’s interest in detailed landscape painting may have been initially encouraged by his instruction from the German landscapist Paul Weber (1823-

1916). Weber, a loose associate of the Hudson River School, immigrated to Philadelphia in

1848.52 He specialized in landscapes defined by clear forms and lines, such as Boulder

Crossing (1855). (Figure 3-1) Set in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, Boulder

Crossing depicts three small figures leading an oxen-drawn wagon across a natural rock bridge over a wide streambed. Although the rocky landscape is softened by an array of trees and

49 Ferber, William Trost Richards: American Landscape & Marine Painter, 14 50 Ferber, “Never at Fault”: The Drawings of William Trost Richards, 16. 51 William Trost Richards, “Flowers,” 1850, handwritten essay, William Trost Richards papers, 1848-1920, Archives of American Art, . 52 Ferber, “Never at Fault”: The Drawings of William Trost Richards, 9. 15 hazy mountains in the distance, beams of sunlight sharply highlight the edges of stones and branches on either side of the canvas. Weber’s crisp and linear style seems to have made an impression on the young Richards.53 It was not until 1858, however, that Richards finally embraced the meticulousness of the Pre-Raphaelites.

Figure 3-1: Paul Weber, Border Crossing (1855), oil on canvas, 15" x 20", Palmer Museum of Art, The Pennsylvania State University

Source: Palmer Museum of Art

The Exhibition of English Art left New York and came to Philadelphia in 1858. It is generally believed that Richards attended this show, for it was in the summer of 1858 that he completed what is considered his first Pre-Raphaelite painting. Richards spent months working on The Blackberry Bush, a relatively small canvas characterized by precisely transcribed natural detail.54 (Figure 3-2) Every leaf, twig, and thorn of the tangled bramble Richards painted is carefully distinguished. Harrison S. Morris states in his 1912 memorial biography of Richards

53 Osborne, 12. 54 William H. Gerdts, “Through a Glass Brightly: The American Pre-Raphaelites and their Still Lifes and Nature Studies,” in Linda S. Ferber and William H. Gerdts, The New Path, 45. 16 that The Blackberry Bush marked the beginning of the artist’s Pre-Raphaelite career. He added that Richards “could see the details of the blackberry bush with unerring power ... he knew his strength very justly, and he shrewdly relied on it.”55 In Pre-Raphaelitism, Richards had found a style that encouraged him to express his emerging enthusiasm for the precise delineation of natural details.

Figure 3-2: William Trost Richards, The Blackberry Bush (1858), oil on canvas, 14 3/4” x 12 1/2” Brooklyn Museum

Source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Brooklyn_Museum_-_Blackberry_Bush_-

_William_Trost_Richards_-_overall.jpg

In his 1879 book American Painters, George W. Sheldon also identified 1858 as the year

Richards became a Pre-Raphaelite. He observed that Richards was “a Pre-Raphaelite, and his

55 Harrison S. Morris, Masterpieces of the Sea. William Trost Richards; a brief outline of his life and art (London: JB Lippincott Company, 1912), 12-13. Morris was an acquaintance of William Trost Richards. 17 studies proper were begun ... in 1858.”56 Everything from ferns and flowers to tree trunks and wayside weeds appeared in the array of plant studies, both sketches and finished oils, that followed The Blackberry Bush. Richards’s work attracted the attention of other Pre-Raphaelite enthusiasts, and he joined the Association for the Advancement of Truth in Art in 1863.57 He painted some of his largest Pre-Raphaelite landscapes, most of which were views of densely foliated forest interiors, in the 1860s. Many of these feature crisp lines, local colors, and an abundance of closely observed detail. According to nineteenth century critics, one of Richards’s

“triumphs” working in this style was a landscape painted in 1868 titled The Forest.58 (Figure 3-3)

Figure 3-3: William Trost Richards, The Forest (1868), oil on canvas, 40" x 54 1/2", Palmer Museum of Art, The Pennsylvania State University

Source: Palmer Museum of Art

56 George W. Sheldon, American Painters: with eighty-three examples of their work engraved on wood (New York: D. Appleton, 1879), 60. 57 Richard J. Koke, American Landscape and Genre Paintings in the New-York Historical Society vol. 3 Naegele - Yorke (New York: The New-York Historical Society, 1982), 90. 58 Sheldon, 61. 18 The Forest, located in the Palmer Museum of Art, is one of Richards’s largest oil paintings. It depicts a sunlit glen bathed in dappled light surrounded by dark green woods. Linda

Ferber has identified the actual site of The Forest as a dell in Germantown, Pennsylvania, known as the Devil’s Pool, not far from the .59 In the painting, moss-covered boulders framed by thick foliage rest motionless in the center of the canvas. The sky is almost totally obscured by leaves except for a few solitary blue patches. Lacy fans of needled pine branches hang across the cracked trunk of a sturdy oak on the right, while smaller saplings and trees crisscross one another on the left. The hues used to highlight each tree trunk range from deep ebony to silvery taupe. Every inch of flora on the canvas is precisely defined. The ferns, weeds, and moss in the foreground underbrush receive the same careful attention as the tall and glistening canopies of oak, hemlock, and pine. Exploring the variety and individuality of nature in minute detail became the hallmark of Richards’s Pre-Raphaelite landscapes.

An inscription on the back of The Forest’s canvas reads: “Painted by Wm. T. Richards

60 for George Whitney of Philadelphia.” Ferber writes that George Whitney, a Philadelphia businessman who made his fortune from a family business that manufactured railcar wheels,

61 was an important patron of Richards as well as one of his closest friends. After it was

62 finished, Whitney exhibited The Forest in his parlor during the winter of 1869. Almost a decade later, Richards wrote a letter to Whitney in which he promised a new commission would have “as much and as careful work ... as there is on the Forest.”63 The Forest was an important painting to Richards, and he mentioned it in letters to Whitney throughout the

1870s. The last time The Forest was exhibited during Richards’s lifetime was at the Paris

59 Linda S. Ferber, “A Philadelphia Legacy, William T. Richards and George Whitney,” in Anna O. Marley, Linda S. Ferber, and David R. Brigham, A Mine of Beauty: Landscapes by William Trost Richards (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 2012), 25. 60 John P. Driscoll, “William Trost Richards’s ‘The Forest’ Rediscovered,” American Art Journal 10, no. 2 (November 1978): 106. 61 Linda S. Ferber, Tokens of a Friendship: Miniature Watercolors by William T. Richards from the Richard and Gloria Manney Collection (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1982), 23. 62 Ferber, Tokens of a Friendship, 30. 63 Handwritten letter from William Trost Richards to George Whitney, July 1 or 6, 1878, William Trost Richards Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. 19 Exposition Universelle in 1878.64 Though it is arguably one of his greatest works, The Forest was one of the last large Pre-Raphaelite landscapes Richards painted.

Whitney died unexpectedly in 1886, and his art collection was almost immediately put up for sale to pay off debts. In December of that year at Chickering Hall in New York City, the

American Art Association auctioned Whitney’s collection of one hundred and six American paintings. Eighty-seven of these were by Richards.65 The Forest was listed as the final lot to be sold on the second night of the sale.66 The painting sold for considerably less than it was valued, perhaps because Pre-Raphaelitism was declining in America by the time of Whitney’s death.67

The location of many of the landscapes Richards painted for Whitney remained unknown for years after the sale until scholarly interest in the American Pre-Raphaelites revived in the 1960s and 70s.68 By the time of his death in 1905, Richards was primarily remembered as a marine painter, not a landscapist. From the 1870s on, Richards painted dozens of seascapes in both oils and watercolors. A mid-twentieth century exhibition pamphlet named a stormy voyage at sea in

1867 as the reason for this shift in subject matter.69 It is more probable, however, that Richards’s stylistic change fits into the larger picture of the end of the American Pre-Raphaelite movement in the late nineteenth century.

Instead of dense foliage and rocky glens, Richards’s marine paintings explore the translucency of moving water. Sheldon writes that a “freedom of handling ... characterizes his

70 later works.” Many of Richards’s watercolors and oils from the 1870s through the 1890s

64 Driscoll, 106. 65 Ferber, Tokens of a Friendship, 23. 66 The American Art Association, The works of Mr. Wm. T. Richards in the collection of American and Foreign paintings to be sold on account of the estate of the late Mr. George Whitney, 1885. Papers relating to the sale of George Whitney's art collection, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, 4. 67 Ferber, Tokens of a Friendship, 51. 68 Driscoll, 107. The Forest was a gift from the George Whitney Estate to the Ogontz School, now Penn State Abbington. It hung in an office at the Abington Campus until 1978. It now hangs with its accompanying oil sketch in the Palmer Museum of Art of Penn State’s University Park Campus. 69 William Trost Richards, 1833-1905: December 1, 1955 through January 8, 1956 (Philadelphia: The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1956). 70 Sheldon, 63. 20 feature expansive and atmospheric views, softened by the effects of surf and light. Ferber notes that his scenes of the Cornish coast in England in particular have a more romantic than his

Pre-Raphaelite landscapes.71 Richards did not completely abandon landscape painting in his later career. For example, paintings such as February (1887, Pennsylvania Academy of the

Fine Arts) rival his earlier works in their precise naturalism. However, extremely detailed landscapes were losing popularity in America in the 1870s, about the time Richards began to

72 paint marine subjects.

Richards was not blind to the changing attitude towards Pre-Raphaelitism and other older artistic traditions in the late nineteenth century. He happened to be living in London with his family during the infamous Ruskin vs. Whistler trial of 1878, when James Abbott McNeill

Whistler (1834-1903) sued Ruskin for libel. The lawsuit came after Ruskin criticized Whistler’s paintings as disgraceful, particularly Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket (1875,

Detroit Institute of Arts).73 Although Ruskin won the suit, he was publicly humiliated during the trial, a circumstance that brought detrimental scrutiny to the artistic realism he upheld. Richards described the affair in a letter to George Whitney:

This trial has been a week’s joke in London, in the papers, in the theatre, everywhere, and “arrangements” of all sort, and “nocturnes” and “symphonies” comic and grotesque have amused everybody. Whistler included. What effect this will have on Whistler’s work is hard to say ... there is just a chance that a crowd will rush to see what he exhibits next.74

Indeed, Whistler and other modern artists threatened to displace the American landscapists who had appropriated Pre-Raphaelitism back in the 1850s. According to Ferber, Richards once confessed to Whitney that his own work must look extremely realistic when compared to

Whistler’s. This particular comment was made after one of Richards’s paintings was hung

71 Ferber, “A Philadelphia Legacy,” 28. 72 Osborne, 18. 73 Lillian Freedgood, Great Artists of America (New York: Vail-Ballou Press, 1963), 140.) 74 Handwritten letter from William Trost Richards to George Whitney, December 13, 1878, William Trost Richards Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. 21 between two of Whistler’s in 1879 at the in London.75 He expressed further doubts about his reception in the art world after viewing the 1878 Paris Exposition Universelle, in which he exhibited The Forest. According to the U.S. Department of State’s report on the exposition, Richards exhibited his paintings alongside works by artists such as Winslow Homer

(1836-1910) and John Singer Sargent (1856-1925).76 A year after the Paris Exposition, Sheldon described the style of Homer in his book American Painters as “large and free … broad and bold.”77 Ten paintings by Millais were also shown in Paris; however, they were markedly different from his early Pre-Raphaelite work Portrait of Ruskin. Millais had stopped painting in the detailed style of his youth by the 1860s.78 The State Department report wrote the following of the paintings he exhibited:

Mr. Millais has quite changed his whole style since those early works which first won him his high reputation, and which were characterized by fastidious and minute elaboration. Now, on the contrary, his style is free.79

It is likely that the more modern works at the Paris Exposition made even Richards’s later seascapes look conservative, let alone his Pre-Raphaelite landscapes. It is interesting to note that the State Department report only made special mention of the marine watercolors Richard displayed in Paris, and not The Forest.80 Richards wrote in a letter to Whitney after viewing the exposition in which he admitted, “I could not keep asking myself what chance I had of interesting anybody, and how poor my work must look to somebody.”81 Undoubtedly, Richards’s awareness of changing artistic trends contributed to the loosening of his own style later in his career.

Trained in draughtsmanship and instilled with an interest in nature from a young age,

75 Ferber, William Trost Richards: American Landscape and Marine Painter, 34. 76 William W. Story, “Fine Arts,” in United States Department of State, Paris Universal Exposition, 1878, v. 2: Fine arts, education, wood carving, textile fabrics (Washington D.C.: Secretary of State by authority of Congress, 1881), 113-114. 77 Sheldon, 29. 78 Dickason, 16. 79 Story, 50. 80 Story, 114. 81 Handwritten letter from William Trost Richards to George Whitney letter, January 4, 1879, William Trost Richards Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. 22 Richards possessed the meticulous skills required to paint in the Pre-Raphaelite manner. He embraced the style of the Pre-Raphaelites in 1858 following the Exhibition of English Art, which eventually led him to paint such lauded works as The Forest. Even though he did not remain a staunch Pre-Raphaelite for his entire career, William Trost Richards made significant contributions to the American Pre-Raphaelite movement. 23

Chapter 4

Conclusion: The Decline of American Pre-Raphaelitism

John Ruskin had urged artists back in the 1840s to reject nothing, select nothing, and scorn nothing in nature. However, as the popularity of American Pre-Raphaelitism waned in the

1870s, faithfulness to nature was no longer praised as a groundbreaking strength. Instead, critics condemned it as a tiresome flaw that robbed art of creative expressiveness.

George Sheldon disliked Pre-Raphaelitism because he felt, “Art should not enter into competition with Nature, because it cannot compete with her.”82 James Jackson Jarves agreed that it was unreasonable to aspire to paint every detail visible in a landscape, as the Pre-

Raphaelites did. He wrote that attempting such meticulousness could only result in “barren imitation” and “wearisome literalness.”83 Opponents of Pre-Raphaelitism believed that, even at their best, the paintings of Richards and his contemporaries were nothing more than verbatim copies of nature. Similar complaints went back earlier, such as when Adam Badeau ranted against the Pre-Raphaelites in his 1859 book The Vagabond:

Do you call painting a tree, in which every leaf is marked out, art? Do you call the delineation ... of every blade of grass in a meadow, art? ... No human being distinguishes distant objects with the same degree of accuracy as near ones.84

Jarves similarly wrote, “Nature will not disclose herself with microscopic realism to the naked eye.”85 Another longstanding criticism of the Pre-Raphaelites was that they defined objects in their paintings with a precision that humans were not naturally capable of discerning. Ruskin had acknowledged this problem in The Elements of Drawing, in which he recognized that recording

82 Sheldon, 61. 83 James Jackson Jarves, The Art-Idea (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1960, originally published 1864), 141-142. 84 Adam Badeau, The Vagabond (New York: Rudd & Carleton, 1859), 239. 85 Jarves, 142. 24 every leaf and twig of a landscape was more or less impossible.86 However, his caveat was offset by pages of instruction on how to draw and paint the minute details that Sheldon, Jarves, and

Badeau found exhaustive in Pre-Raphaelite art. According to Jarves, “Pre-Raphaelitism robs art of her poetry in order to give the literal facts of nature.”87 He thought there could be little suggestiveness or mystery left in a landscape in which every feature had been fastidiously outlined. Sheldon also recognized that subjectivity had the power to create variety and intrigue in landscape painting. After discussing in American Painters the tonal landscapes of

(1825-1894), who painted generalized natural detail with loose brushwork, Sheldon declared that painterly works had “more of that peculiar quality called ‘freshness.’”88

Painting Ruskinian detail was also a labor-intensive practice.89 Even Richards, who had a background in draughtsmanship, took an entire summer to paint his relatively small canvas The

Blackberry Bush. In The Elements of Drawing, Ruskin suggested that artists exercise their skills in delineation by spending up to three hours drawing landscape details from photographs.90 As

Thomas Charles Farrer declared in The New Path, an artist had mistaken his calling if he found it agonizing and painful to be faithful to nature.91 It is possible that the patience and commitment required by Pre-Raphaelitism may have limited its appeal.92 Meanwhile, more painterly styles of artists such as Whistler and Homer were becoming popular in the United States. Later criticism of the creative merit of Pre-Raphaelite landscapes, along with the advent of modern artistic styles, contributed to the decline of the American Pre-Raphaelite movement. Artists such as Richards fell into obscurity in the first half of the twentieth century, and it has only been in recent decades that scholars have recognized their achievements.

86 Ruskin, 91. 87 Jarves, 142. 88 Sheldon, 33. 89 Ferber, “Determined Realists,” 24. 90 Ruskin, 105. 91 Farrer, 14. 92 Ferber, “Determined Realists,” 24. 25 In conclusion, the linear clarity and scrupulous detail used in the paintings of the British

Pre-Raphaelites had a significant impact on American landscapists. The Hudson River School brought nature to the forefront of American art, priming artists for the reception of Pre-Raphaelite ideas. This artistic trend was explored in The Crayon and The New Path journals, both of which published articles that advised artists to paint nature honestly and thoroughly. In addition, the landscapes displayed in the Exhibition of English Art inspired American artists to focus on botanical detail in their own paintings. These factors were instrumental in the artistic development of American Pre-Raphaelite painters such as William Trost Richards. Although the

American Pre-Raphaelites were a relatively small group of landscape painters, their activity demonstrates how international communication and exchange of artistic ideas were of growing importance during the second half of the nineteenth century. 26

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Badeau, Adam. The Vagabond. New York: Rudd & Carleton, 1859.

Casteras, Susan. “The 1857-58 Exhibition of English Art in America and Critical Responses to Pre-Raphaelitism.” in Linda S. Ferber and William H. Gerdts. The New Path: Ruskin and the American Pre-Raphaelites. New York: The Brooklyn Museum, 1985, 109-133.

Cole, Thomas. The Collected Essays and Prose Sketches. St. Paul, Minn.: J. Colet Press, 1980.

Dickason, David H. The Daring Young Men: The Story of the American Pre-Raphaelites. New York: Indiana University Press, 1970.

Driscoll, John P. “William Trost Richards’s ‘The Forest’ Rediscovered.” American Art Journal 10, no. 2 (November 1978): 106-107.

Durand, Asher B. “Letters on Landscape Painting. Letter II.” The Crayon 1, no. 3 (January 1855): 34-35.

F. , R. and S.L.G. “Sketchings.” The Crayon 4, no. 11 (November 1857): 343-351.

Farrer, Thomas Charles. “A Few Questions Answered. An Essay Read before the Society, Tuesday, March 31, 1863.” The New Path 1, no.2 (June 1863): 13-18.

Ferber, Linda S. "An American Pre-Raphaelite in New York: William Trost Richards." Archives of American Art Journal 47, no. 1-2 (2008): 4-15.

Ferber, Linda S. and William H. Gerdts, “ ‘Determined Realists’ : The American Pre-Raphaelites and the Association for the Advancement of Truth in Art,” in Linda S. Ferber and William H. Gerdts. The New Path: Ruskin and the American Pre-Raphaelites. New York: The Brooklyn Museum, 1985, 11-37.

------. “Never at Fault”: The Drawings of William Trost Richards. Yonkers, N.Y.: Hudson River Museum, 1986.

------. “A Philadelphia Legacy, William T. Richards and George Whitney.” in Anna O. Marley, Linda S. Ferber, and David R. Brigham. A Mine of Beauty: Landscapes by William Trost Richards. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 2012.

------. Tokens of a Friendship: Miniature Watercolors by William T. Richards from the Richard and Gloria Manney Collection. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1982.

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------. “Through a Glass Brightly: The American Pre-Raphaelites and their Still Lifes and Nature Studies.” in Linda S. Ferber and William H. Gerdts. The New Path: Ruskin and the American Pre-Raphaelites. New York: The Brooklyn Museum, 1985, 39-77.

Goodrich, Lloyd. A Century of American Landscape Painting, 1800-1900. Pittsburgh: Dept. of Fine Arts, Carnegie Institute, 1939.

Howard, Gordon J. "A Germantown Painter and His Chemist Son." Germantown Crier of the Germantown Historical Society 48, no. 2 (Fall 1998): 40-45.

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ACADEMIC VITA

Lindsay Wells

430 East Street, Pittsford, NY, 14534/[email protected]

______

Education

B.A., Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies, Art History, Medieval Studies, 2013, The

Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA

M.A. candidate, , 2014, The Courtauld Institute of Art, London, England

Honors and Awards

• College of Liberal Arts Student Marshal, Penn State, Spring Commencement 2013

• Department of Art History Student Marshal, Penn State, Spring Commencement 2013

• Creative Achievement Award, Department of Art History, Penn State, Spring 2013

• Robert Dengler Classics Grant-In-Aid Award, Penn State, Spring 2013

• Evan Pugh Scholar Award (Senior), Penn State, Spring 2013

• Paterno Fellow, Penn State College of Liberal Arts, Spring 2013

• William E. & Julia Nelo Clark Excellence Scholarship, Penn State, Spring 2012

• Ava Faltz-Miller Memorial Scholarship, Penn State University Libraries, Spring 2012

• Judge Benjamin Keller Undergraduate Latin Award, Penn State, Spring 2011 & Spring

2012

• Evan Pugh Scholar Award (Junior), Penn State, Spring 2012

• A. Whitney Frankenberry Scholarship in International Programs, Penn State, Fall 2011

• Schreyer Ambassador Travel Grant, Schreyer Honors College, Fall 2011

• Liberal Arts Undergraduate Enrichment Award, Penn State College of Liberal Arts, Fall

2011

• President Sparks Award, Penn State, Spring 2011

• Reverend Thomas Bermingham, S.J. Scholarship in the Classics, Penn State, Spring 2010

• Freshman President’s Award, Penn State, Spring 2010

• Schreyer Honors College Scholar, Schreyer Honors College, Fall 2009-2013

• Dean’s List, Penn State, 2009-2013

Association Memberships/Activities

• Phi Beta Kappa, 2012-Present

Research Interests

I have interests in a wide variety of art historical topics, particularly nineteenth century British and American painting. My research interests include the Pre-Raphaelites, Aestheticism, the , and landscape painting.

Professional Presentations

“Details of Grandeur: How the Pre-Raphaelites Influenced American Landscape Painting,”

Central Pennsylvania Intercollegiate Art History Symposium, Susquehanna University,

Selinsgrove, PA, April 5, 2013.