Realism in Art 521was contemptuous of Howells’s writings and consid-
ered him hopelessly middle-class in point of view,
appreciated his aid and praised his influence on
American literature. Dreiser’s first novel, Sister
Carrie(1900), treated sex so forthrightly that it was
withdrawn after publication.
Henry James
Henry James was very different in spirit and back-
ground from the tempestuous naturalists. Born to
wealth, reared in a cosmopolitan atmosphere, twisted
in some strange way while still a child and unable to
achieve satisfactory relationships with women, James
spent most of his mature life in Europe, writing nov-
els, short stories, plays, and volumes of criticism.
Although far removed from the world of practical
affairs, he was preeminently a realist, determined, as
he once said, “to leave a multitude of pictures of my
time” for the future to contemplate.
Although he preferred living in the cultivated
surroundings of London high society, James yearned
for the recognition of his fellow Americans almost as
avidly as Mark Twain. However, he was incapable of
modifying his rarefied, overly subtle manner of writ-
ing. Most serious writers of the time admired his
books, and he received many honors, but he never
achieved widespread popularity. His major theme was
the clash of American and European cultures, his pri-
mary interest the close-up examination of wealthy,
sensitive, yet often corrupt persons in a cultivated but
far from polite society.
James dealt with social issues such as feminism and
the difficulties faced by artists in the modern world, but
he subordinated them to his interest in his subjects as
individuals.The American(1877) told the story of the
love of a wealthy American in Paris for a French noble-
woman who rejected him because her family disap-
proved of his commercial background. The Portrait of a
Lady(1881) described the disillusionment of an intelli-
gent woman married to a charming but morally bank-
rupt man and her eventual decision to remain with him
nonetheless.The Bostonians(1886) was a complicated
and psychologically sensitive study of the varieties of
female behavior in a seemingly uniform social situation.
James’s reputation, greater today than in his life-
time, rests more on his highly refined accounts of the
interactions of individuals and their environment and
his masterful commentaries on the novel as a literary
form than on his ability as a storyteller. Few major
writers have been more long-winded, more prone to
circumlocution. Yet few have been so dedicated to
their art, possessed of such psychological penetration,
or so successful in producing a large body of impor-
tant work.
Realism in Art
American painters responded to the times as writers
did, but with this difference: Despite the new concern
for realism, the romantic tradition retained its vitality.
Preeminent among the realists was Thomas Eakins,
who was born in Philadelphia in 1844. Eakins studied
in Europe in the late 1860s and was influenced by the
great realists of the seventeenth century, Velasquez
and Rembrandt. Returning to America in 1870, he
passed the remainder of his life teaching and painting
in Philadelphia.
The scientific spirit of the age suited Eakins per-
fectly. He mastered human anatomy; some of his
finest paintings, such asThe Gross Clinic(1875), as
seen on page 510, are graphic illustrations of surgical
operations. He was an early experimenter with
motion pictures, using the camera to capture exactly
the attitudes of human beings and animals in action.
Like his friend Walt Whitman, whose portrait is one
of his greatest achievements, Eakins gloried in the
ordinary. But he had none of Whitman’s weakness for
sham and self-delusion. His portraits are monuments
to his integrity and craftsmanship: Never would he
touch up or soften a likeness to please his sitter. His
study of six men bathing (The Swimming Hole) is a
stark portrayal of nakedness; his surgical scenes catch
the tenseness of a situation without descending into
sensationalism.
Winslow Homer, a Boston-born painter best
known for his brilliant watercolors, was also influenced
by realist ideas. Homer was a lithographer as well as a
master of the watercolor medium, yet he had had
almost no formal training. Indeed, he had contempt
for academicians and refused to go abroad to study.
Aesthetics seemed not to concern him at all; he liked
to shock people by referring to his profession as “the
picture line.” “When I have selected [a subject],” he
said, “I paint it exactly as it appears.”
During the Civil War, Homer worked as an artist-
reporter for Harper’s Weekly,and he continued to do
magazine illustrations for some years thereafter. He
roamed America, painting scenes of southern farm life,
Adirondack campers, and, after about 1880, magnifi-
cent seascapes and studies of fishermen and sailors.
The careers of Eakins and Homer show that the
late-nineteenth-century American environment was
not uncongenial to first-rate artists. Nevertheless, at
least two major American painters abandoned native
shores for Europe. One was James A. McNeill
Whistler, whose portrait of his mother, which he called
Arrangement in Grey and Black, is probably the most
famous canvas ever painted by an American. Whistler
left the United States in 1855 when he was twenty-one
and spent most of his life in Paris and London. “I shall