Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2007. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 69-02, Section: A, page: 0410. Adviser: Anne D. Hedeman. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 249-271) Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.

The purpose of this thesis is to identify essential characteristics of the first generation of Romantic landscape painters and painting movements in a given English-speaking country which followed the generation of Turner, Constable and Martin in England, and then trace how the second generation of Romantic-realist painters represents a different paradigm. For a paradigmatic construct of the first generation, the focus is on the lives and major works of the American arch-Romantic landscape painter Thomas Cole (1801--1848) and the Australian Romantic landscape painter Conrad Martens (1801--1878). The second generation model features the American Frederic Edwin Church (1826--1900), the Australian William Charles Piguenit (1836--1914), and the British Canadian Lucius Richard O'Brien (1832--1899). Cole and Martens, closer to their predecessors in England, created dynamic paradigm shifts in their new countries. Following them, the second generation of Romantic-realists produced a synthesis of romanticism, scientific naturalism, and nationalistic symbolism.

Universal expositions of the later nineteenth century were opportunities for the host country to reinforce its sense of nationalism and to showcase its technological progress or, read differently, the progress of man. This thesis examines nationhood as defined in terms of masculinity at the 1889 Paris Universal Exposition, which demonstrated French technological, colonial, and artistic superiority over all other nations. This superiority was trumpeted not just through architecture and colonial exhibits, but also through criticism of other countries' artwork, particularly painting and sculpture from the United States. Also discussed is the reaction of American artists to the criticism received in 1889 by producing art at the 1900 Paris Universal Exposition that resonated with masculinity, thereby projecting an enhanced national identity in fine art.

Charles Frederick Ulrich (1858-1908) is best-known today for his paintings of figures at work, exhibited in New York between 1882 and 1884. By portraying both males and females at their work tables, Ulrich was showing middle-class individuals occupied with tasks informed by both knowledge and culture. This thesis describes these works as a way of exploring the artist's New York career, especially in regards to such current issues as immigration, labor, and social awareness. Charles F. Ulrich left no diaries, journals, or sketches to aid in the investigation of his artwork and life. While no verbal clues exist, this study reveals how Ulrich's work is filled with visual signs that invite interpretation. Not surprisingly, since he was raised in a household of German immigrant parents and spent several years of artistic training in Munich, Ulrich's pictures manifest, above all else, the strength of his German heritage.

This thesis deals with the development of and the interaction between the ideals of classical universalism and the ideas of Gothic particularism. Part One traces the birth and the development of classical universalism; Part Two, medieval particularism. Part Three deals with the renaissance of the classical formulas, the adversary position the Renaissance held against medievalism and its consequences for the succeeding centuries. Part Four deals with the ideas of particularism making a come-back, leading to the formation of the Gothic Revival Movement. The Gothic Revival Movement and its adversary position against classical universalism is treated in Part Five. Part Six looks at the ninteenth century Revivalism and the birth of the new industrial era.

<p> This study examines the South Side Community Art Center in Chicago, its history, educational mission, and the ways in which its collection of primarily African American art can be used as an art education resource. The data collection for this qualitative case study included questionnaires focusing on the collection and the Center&rsquo;s history and mission, in-depth interviews with three Center administrators and one visual artist, informal personal communication, and observational notes. All data was examined using content analysis. Respondents indications concluded that the mission and goals of the Center grew out of its WPA beginnings and was primarily to support the artists and to educate the community about the value of African American art; that the Center&rsquo;s education mission revolved around its educational programming; that the art collection had been used in the past to teach about the Black Power Movement and makes references to important events in history; and that the Center&rsquo;s relationship to the community was multi-faceted and included outreach to local schools in after-school art programs. </p><p> The center&rsquo;s art collection, because of the themes inherent in many of the works, make important connections to key events in American history such as the WPA, WWII, the Great Depression and the Black migration that facilitates meaning making across the life span. The study&rsquo;s results provided evidence of the South Side Community Art Center&rsquo;s role as not only a repository for regional and national African American art and artists, but also as an educational hub for visual culture, art study and relevance for contemporary life themes.</p>

Dahl-Wolfe (1895-1989) is best-known as a fashion photographer, her photographic life encompassed a pattern of art and documentary ideas interwoven over a forty-year period. This thesis describes her early art influences and explores her photography career in regards to the historical and cultural developments from World War I through the 1950s. Dahl-Wolfe is compared with her contemporaries such as Consuelo Kanaga, Dorothea Lange, Edward Weston, Richard Avedon, and Henri Cartier-Bresson. The study reveals how Dahl-Wolfe's work reflects photography's evolution over a specific period and how traditional constructions affect the reception of commercial photographers. Conclusively, Dahl-Wolfe's oeuvre straddles such an array of constructed arenas that she virtually fell through the cracks and has been narrowly defined as a result of art historical definitions.

In 1910 Alfred Stieglitz published two pamphlets titled Photo-Secessionism and Its Opponents, reproducing letters written by Stieglitz and fellow Secessionist Annie W. Brigman, to Frank Roy Fraprie, Walter Zimmerman, and Francis J. Mortimer, members of the international photographic community in public opposition to the activities of the Photo-Secession. The extent of Stieglitz's frustration with the frequent pictorialist quarrels occurring from 1900 to 1910, and the degree to which "secessionist" principles and actions were misunderstood is apparent from the correspondence. This thesis examines the letters published in Photo-Secessionism and Its Opponents, the statements of the opposition figures which these letters answer, and the situations which produced them. From this examination a clearer understanding of pictorial photographic politics and the principles and purposes of the Photo-Secession is gained.

In July of 1888 Vincent van Gogh produced a series of drawings of the plain the Crau. Two drawings from this series are particularly shaped by the circumstances surrounding van Gogh at that time, and what he wanted to communicate about the French countryside. Wanting to produce drawings that would sell, van Gogh turned to methods of composition and style based on Dutch seventeenth-century panoramic landscapes, which were themselves shaped by the practices of map making. Van Gogh produced representations of the French countryside that reveal his nostalgic attitude and the biases of his class. What van Gogh saw in France was the old Holland of the seventeenth-century landscape artists, not France of the late nineteenth century. The drawings re-connect the artist to his Dutch visual heritage. They also reveal van Gogh's nostalgic view of the rural landscape, and his particularly Dutch attitude toward changes in this landscape caused by nineteenth-century modernization. (Abstract shortened with permission of author.)

Previous art historical scholarship has approached the portraits of court jesters painted for the Buen Retiro Palace by Diego Velazquez between the late 1620s and 1630s as fascinating character studies that provided the artist with the opportunity to display psychological nuances and to experiment with painterly techniques that were precluded in his formal portraits of the royal family and members of the court. In addition, they have been discussed as an interesting intermingling of Northern and Southern Italian traditions of jester and dwarf imagery. This thesis will show that Velazquez was also deliberately including sophisticated references to prevailing philosophical ideas concerning inverted realities, and that these paintings, as well as their placement, provide information about the function of the jester as an instrument of opposition and comparison for the monarch at the court of Philip IV.