Art Critiques: Discuss Elihu Vedder’s Rome, Kenyon Cox’s Venice, and Abbott Thayer’s Florence for the Walker Art Building (1894) as allegorical public murals of the American Renaissance

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    Prose essay, using complete sentences and phrased using your own words, on one of the questions below. Make sure to answer the questions. Use information provided by class lecture and your text (Wayne Craven, American Art; History and Culture (McGraw-Hill, 2003 or WCB Brown & Benchmark, 1994)—no additional research should be necessary. This is not a research essay!

    Select one (1) of the following questions:
    1. Discuss Elihu Vedder’s Rome, Kenyon Cox’s Venice, and Abbott Thayer’s Florence for the Walker Art Building (1894) as allegorical public murals of the American Renaissance. What were the artistic intentions of each? Discuss their subject matter and how it is presented (composition), and, where applicable, their artistic influences, creative process and painting techniques/style of the artist. How do their depictions relate to the function of the building for which they were created?

    2. Discuss Saint-Gaudens’ The Puritan (1887), French’s The Minute Man (1873-75), and MacMonnies’ Nathan Hale (1890) as large-scale public monuments. How are the characteristics of the French Beaux-Arts style reveled in these works? Also discuss the selection of subject matter. What do each of these subjects represent, what do they have in common and why were they selected at this time in America?

    3. Discuss the domestic architecture of Richard Morris Hunt using the William K. Vanderbilt residence, New York, NY (1879-81), Biltmore, Asheville, NC (1888-95), and The Breakers, Newport, RI (1892-95). Why did the Vanderbilts and Hunt pick the styles they did for each of these structures? Which revival style is represented by each and why was it selected?

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