II.

The Colonial Era

The early colonists took with them their varied artistic traditions, albeit adapted to the dangers and harsh conditions of a vast wilderness. Spanish influences prevailed in the west, while British styles, with an admixture of Dutch and French, predominated in the east.

A.

Colonial Architecture

The earliest surviving colonial buildings were erected by Spanish settlers in the early 17th century in the south-west of the country, in what is now the state of New Mexico. They are built predominantly of adobe (sun-dried mud), which the local Native Americans had already been using for centuries. The governor's palace at Santa Fe (begun 1610) is a good example. Other building types of the period included churches, missions, and fortresses. All these buildings tend to be in a very plain, rugged style, virtually devoid of ornament.

In the areas colonized by the British, wood was initially the predominant material. Houses were built in a range of sizes, although only more modest dwellings have survived. The Parson Capen House (1683), in Topsfield, Massachusetts, is typical of the two-storey New England house built of overlapping weatherboards. Its gables, overhangs, and lack of symmetry lend it a late-medieval flavour. In Virginia and Maryland, brick construction was preferred for the typically storey-and-a-half homes, with chimneys at both ends and a more nearly symmetrical façade, as in the Thomas Rolfe House (1652), in Surrey County, Virginia. The New England colonists were predominantly Puritans and the buildings they used for their religious meetings were appropriately plain, externally looking very like houses.

Dutch influence on architecture was mainly in the region of New York (which was known as New Amsterdam before it was captured by the British in 1664). The manor house, Fort Crailo (1642), in Rensselaer, New York State, is a good example.

B.

17th-Century Painting and Sculpture

Like colonial architecture, 17th-century colonial painting reflects British styles of a century earlier, which had been perpetuated in the rural areas from which the colonists came. The earliest surviving paintings, all portraits and all by artists whose names are unknown, were made in New England and date from the 1660s, a long generation after the founding of the colony. The most notable are the portraits of John Freake and Mrs Elizabeth Freake and Baby Mary (c. 1674, Worcester Art Museum, Massachusetts). The relatively flat figures are arranged decoratively, with attention to firm line and areas of patterning, the sitters stiffly posed in their finery, as in portraits of the Elizabethan age in England. Documentary evidence indicates that portraiture began at about the same time in the Hudson Valley area in the Catskill Mountains area of New York State. Although portraiture was the only kind of art for which there was much demand, religious paintings and church decoration were created in the American Southwest, the figure carving being at the level of sophisticated folk sculpture.

C.

The 18th Century

By the turn of the 18th century, the colonies had begun to take on a more permanent and established character, as the hardships of the wilderness were overcome and increasing commerce and production permitted the growth of prosperous cities. Newly founded cities, such as Williamsburg, in Virginia, Annapolis, in Maryland, and especially Philadelphia, in Pennsylvania, were laid out on a regular grid, with public squares—the kind of logical organization that planners had been unable to implement in London during the same period. In contrast, cities founded in the 17th century, such as Boston, did not develop along pre-planned lines and retain their unplanned layout to this day.

C.1.

Architecture Before the War of Independence

Architects began to adopt current European (particularly British) styles in larger and more ambitious buildings. Modest versions of London's late 17th-century styles can be seen in the so-called Wren Building (begun 1695) at William and Mary College, in Williamsburg, with its symmetry and central pediment; the Capitol (1699-1705), in Williamsburg; and the Philadelphia Courthouse (1709). The adoption of more up-to-date ideas was aided by the increasing availability of architectural pattern books. Of these, the most influential was A Book of Architecture (1728) by James Gibbs. Its impact is seen in the impressive St Michael's Episcopal Church (1751-1753), in Charleston, South Carolina, with its distinctive steeple, which is clearly based on Gibbs's London church, St Martin-in-the-Fields. Domestic architecture in the first quarter of the 18th century is represented by the McPhedris-Warner House (1718-1723), in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, two rooms deep with a central-staircase hall. Country houses built around the mid-century show the influence of the English Palladian style (see Andrea Palladio), most obviously in the use of a central entrance portico. An early example is Drayton Hall (1738), near Charleston. Important public buildings were also treated in the Palladian style, as for example in the Pennsylvania Hospital (begun 1754) in Philadelphia.

C.2.

Painting Before the War of Independence

At the beginning of the 18th century, artists were active in several parts of the colonies. Henrietta Johnston (active 1705-1729), the first recorded American woman artist, worked in Charleston, executing the earliest-known pastel portraits in the New World. However, the most active school of painting was in the Hudson River valley, where the major Dutch landholders required portraits for their manor houses. These landowners were known as patroons, and the semi-trained artists who worked for them are called patroon painters. They produced relatively flat images that show little control of modelling, often basing their compositions, including the elaborate backgrounds, on English prints. The school culminated in the monumental full-length portraits Pieter Schuyler (c. 1719, City Hall, Albany, New York State) and Ariandtje Schoomans (c. 1717, Albany Institute of History and Art), which have an imposing, almost iconic quality.

As the century advanced, artists with more training began to migrate to the colonies. The best of them (though he was undistinguished by European standards) was John Smibert, who had enjoyed a fairly successful career in London as a portraitist working in the tradition of Sir Godfrey Kneller. In 1730 Smibert settled in Boston, where as well as painting he opened a shop selling artists' materials and engravings. His own collection of engravings, copies, and casts was displayed above the shop, forming a kind of art gallery (America's first), which was a stimulus to other painters in the locality.

By 1750 the pace of artistic activity had quickened considerably, with many more artists working than before. Smibert's principal successor in New England was the talented native-born portraitist Robert Feke, whose sense of line and surface design contrasts with Smibert's bulky manner. Among the other leading artists were Joseph Blackburn (active in America 1753-1764) in New England and John Wollaston (active c. 1734-1767) in New York and the mid-Atlantic colonies.

Shortly after the middle of the 18th century, the first two American artists of international significance came to prominence: Benjamin West and John Singleton Copley. West spent almost all his career in England, where he settled in 1760 after spending three years in Italy. He was the first American artist to make a mark in Europe, and he was so successful and admired that he succeeded Sir Joshua Reynolds as president of the Royal Academy. Because of his fame he acted as a magnet for other American artists visiting Europe, and he was unstintingly generous in encouraging and helping them. His work consisted mainly of portraits and ambitious figure compositions, and he holds a significant place in the history of art through his role in popularizing history paintings in modern dress rather than in the “timeless” draperies that had become customary. His breakthrough work in this vein was the Death of Wolfe (1770, National Gallery, Ottawa).

Copley spent the first part of his career in his native Boston, then followed in West's footsteps by settling in London in 1775 after a visit to Italy. The portraits he painted in Boston are far and away the best of the colonial era, showing a sense of life and characterization that made the figures of his predecessors look like puppets: John Adams, the second president of the United States, summed this up when he said of Copley's portraits: “You can scarcely help discoursing with them, asking questions and receiving answers.” After settling in England, Copley's greatest achievements were in history painting (in which he followed West in using modern dress), but after initial successes his career went into decline, partly because of the jealousy of rivals, and he died in debt.