There was a period in which the American did not mind stepping from his daily bath, and going from his sumptuous home immaculately attired to a railway station or court-house which was screamingly hideous and reeking with dirt. And similarly there was a time in which the Germans and the French moved in and out of the wonderful architectural monuments of their past in dirty clothing, and perhaps without having bathed for many days. In Germany the public building has influenced the individual, and eventually worked toward beautifying his house. In America the individual and the private house have only very slowly spread their æsthetic ideals through the public buildings. The final results in both countries must be the same. There is exactly the same contrast in the ethical field; whereas in Germany and France public morals have spread into private life, in America individual morals have spread into public life. As soon as the transition has commenced it proceeds rapidly.
In Germany few private houses are now built without a bathroom, and in America few public buildings without consideration for what is beautiful. The great change in railway stations indicates the rapidity of the movement. Even ten years ago there were huge car-sheds in the cities, and little huts in country districts, which so completely lacked any pretensions to beauty that æsthetic criticism was simply out of place. Now, on the contrary, most of the large cities have palatial stations, of which some are among the most beautiful in the world, and many railway companies have built attractive little stations all along their lines. As soon as such a state of things has come about, a reciprocal influence takes place between the individual and the communal desire for perfection, and the æsthetic level of the nation rises daily. So, too, the different arts stimulate one another. The architect plans his work from year to year more with the painter and sculptor in mind, so that the erection of new buildings and the growth and wealth of the people benefit not merely architecture, but the other arts as well.
Still other factors are doing their part to elevate the artistic life of the United States. And here particularly works the improved organization of the artistic professions. In former times, the true artist had to prefer Europe to his native home, because in his home he found no congenial spirits; this is now wholly changed. There is still the complaint that the American cities are even now no Kunststädte; and, compared with Munich or with Paris, this is still true. But New York is no more and no less a Kunststädte than is Berlin. In all the large cities of America the connoisseurs and patrons of art have organized themselves in clubs, and the national organizations of architects, painters, and sculptors, have become influential factors in public life; and the large art schools with well-known teachers and the studios of private masters have become great centres for artistic endeavour. A general historical study of architecture has even been introduced in universities, and already the erection of a national academy of art is so actively discussed that it will probably be very soon realized. Certainly every American artist will continue to visit Europe, as every German artist visits Italy; but all the conditions are now ripe in America for developing native talent on native soil.
The artistic education of the public is not less important nor far behind the professional education of the artist. We have discussed the general appreciation of architecture, and the same public education is quietly going on in the art museums. Of course, the public art galleries of America are necessarily far behind those of Europe, since the art treasures of the world were for the most part distributed when America began to collect. And yet it is surprising what treasures have been secured, and in some branches of modern painting and industrial art the American collections are not to be surpassed. Thus the Japanese collection of pottery in Boston has nowhere its equal, and the Metropolitan Museum in New York leads the world in several respects. Modern German art is unfortunately ill represented, but modern French admirably. Here is a large field open for a proper German ambition; German art needs to be recognized much more throughout the country. It must show that American distrust is absolutely unjustified, that it has made greater artistic advances than any other nation, and that German pictures are quite worthy of a large place in the collections.
There are many extraordinary private collections which were gathered during the cosmopolitan period that the nation has gone through. Just as foreign architecture was imitated, so the treasures of foreign countries in art and decoration were secured at any price; and owing to the great wealth, the most valuable things were bought, often without intelligent appreciation, but never without a stimulating effect. One is often surprised to find famous European paintings in private houses, often in remote Western cities; and the fact that for many years Americans have been the best patrons of art in the markets of the world, could not have been without its results. At the height of this collecting period American art itself probably suffered: a moderately good French picture was preferred to a better American picture; but all these treasures have indirectly benefited native art, and still do benefit it, so much that the better artists of the country are much opposed to the absurd protective tariff that is laid on foreign works of art. The Italian palace of Mrs. Gardner in Boston contains the most superb private collection; but just here one sees that the cosmopolitan period of collection and imitation is, after all, merely an episode in the history of American art. An Italian palace has no organic place in New England, although the artistic merits of the Gardner collection are perhaps nowhere surpassed.
The temporary exhibitions which are just now much in fashion have, perhaps, more influence than the permanent museums. Every large city has its annual exhibitions, and in the artistic centres, one special collection comes after another. And the strongest general stimulation has emanated from the great expositions. When the nation visited Philadelphia in 1876, the American artistic sense was just waking up, and the impetus there started was of decisive significance. It is said that the taste for colour in household decoration and fittings, for handsome carpets and draperies, came into the country at that time. When Chicago built its Court of Honour in 1893, which was more beautiful than what Paris could do seven years later, the country became for the first time aware that American art could stand on its own feet, and this æsthetic self-consciousness has stimulated endeavour through the entire nation. In Chicago, for the first time, the connection between architecture and sculpture came properly to be appreciated; and, more than all else, the art of the whole world was then brought into the American West, and that which previously had been familiar only to the artistic section between Boston and Washington was offered to the masses in Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, and Missouri. Chicago has remained since that time one of the centres of American architecture, and the æsthetic level of the entire West was raised, although it is still below that of the Eastern States. And once more, after a very short pause, St. Louis is ambitious enough to try the bold experiment which New York and Boston, like Berlin and Munich, have always avoided. The World’s Fair at St. Louis will surely give new impetus to American art, and especially to the artistic endeavour of the Western States.
If a feeling for art is really to pervade the people, the influence must not begin when persons are old enough to visit a world’s fair, but rather in childhood. The instruction in drawing, or rather in art, since drawing is only one of the branches, must undertake the æsthetic education of the youth in school. It cannot be denied that America has more need of such æsthetic training of children than Germany. The Anglo-Saxon love of sport leads the youth almost solely to the bodily games which stimulate the fancy much less than the German games of children, and other influences are also lacking to direct the children’s emotional life in the road of æsthetic pleasure. On the other hand, it must be admitted that the problem has been well solved in America. The American art training in school, say on the Prang system, which more than 20,000 teachers are using in class instruction, is a true development of the natural sense of beauty. The child learns to observe, learns technique, learns the value of lines and colours, and learns, more than all, to create beauty. In place of merely copying he divides and fills a given space harmoniously, and so little by little goes on to make small works of art. Generations which have enjoyed such influences must look on their environment with new eyes, and even in the poorest surroundings instinctively transform what they have, in the interests of beauty.
Corresponding to these popular stimulations of the sense of beauty is the wish to decorate the surroundings of daily life, most of all the interior; even in more modest circles to make them bright, pleasing, and livable, whereas they have too long been bare and meaningless. The arts and crafts have taken great steps forward, have gotten the services of true artists, and accomplished wonderful results. The glittering glasses of Tiffany and many other things from his world-famous studios are unsurpassed. There are also the wonderfully attractive silver objects of Gorham, the clay vases of the Rockwood Pottery, objects in cut-glass and pearl, furniture in Old English and Colonial designs, and much else of a similar nature. And for the artistic sense it is more significant and important that at last even the cheap fabrics manufactured for the large masses reveal more and more an appreciation of beauty. Even the cheap furniture and ornaments have to-day considerable character; and no less characteristic is the general demand, which is much greater than that of Europe, for Oriental rugs. The extravagant display of flowers in the large cities, the splendid parks and park-ways such as surround Boston, the beautification of landscapes which Charles Eliot has so admirably effected, and in social life the increasing fondness for coloured and æsthetic symbols, such as the gay academic costumes, the beautiful typography and book-bindings, and a thousand other things of the same sort, indicate a fresh, vigorous, and intense appreciation of beauty.
While such a sense for visible beauty has been developed by the wealth and the artistic instruction of the country, one special condition more has affected not only the fine arts but also poetry and literature. This is the development of the national feeling, which more than anything else has stimulated literary and artistic life. The American feels that he has entered the exclusive circle of world powers, and must like the best of them realize and express his own nature. He is conscious of a mission, and the national feeling is unified much less by a common past than by a common ideal for the future. His national feeling is not sentimental, but aggressive; the American knows that his goal is to become typically American. All this gives him the courage to be individual, to have his own points of view, and since he has now studied history and mastered technique, this means no longer to be odd and freakish, but to be truly original and creative. He is now for the first time thoroughly aware what a wealth of artistic problems is offered by his own continent, by his history, by his surroundings, and by his social conditions. And just as American science has been most successful in developing the history, geography, geology, zoölogy, and anthropology of the American Continent, so now his new art and literature are looking about for American material.
His hopes are high; he sees indications of a new art approaching which will excite the admiration of the world. He feels that the great writer is not far off who will express the New World in the great American novel. Who shall say that these hopes may not be realized to-morrow? For it is certain that he enjoys an unusual combination of favourable conditions for developing a world force. Here are a people thoroughly educated in the appreciation of literature and art—a people in the hey-day of success, with their national feeling growing, and having, by reason of their economic prosperity, the amplest means for encouraging art; a people who find in their own country untold treasures of artistic and literary problems, and who in the structure of their government and customs favour talent wherever it is found; a people who have learned much in cosmopolitan studies and to-day have mastered every technique, who have absorbed the temperament and ambitions of the most diverse races and yet developed their own consistent, national consciousness, in which indomitable will, fertile invention, Puritan morals, and irrepressible humour form a combination that has never before been known. The times seem ripe for something great.