The Pragmatic Approach 523come to America,” he announced grandly, “when the
duty on works of art is abolished!”
Whistler made a profession of eccentricity, but he
was a talented and versatile artist. Some of his portraits
are triumphs of realism, whereas his misty studies of
the London waterfront—which the critic John Ruskin
characterized as pots of paint flung in the face of the
beholder and which Whistler conceived as visual
expressions of poetry—are thoroughly romantic in
conception. Paintings such asWhistler’s Motherrepre-
sent still another expression of his talent. Spare and
muted in tone, they are more interesting as precise
arrangements of color and space than as images of par-
ticular objects; they had considerable influence on the
course of modern art.
The second important expatriate artist was Mary
Cassatt, daughter of a wealthy Pittsburgh banker and
sister of Alexander J. Cassatt, who was president of the
Pennsylvania Railroad around the turn of the century.
She went to Paris as a tourist and dabbled in art like
many conventional young socialites, then was caught
up in the impressionist movement and decided to
become a serious painter. Her work is more French
than American and was little appreciated in the United
States before World War I. When once she returned to
America for a visit, the Philadelphia Public Ledger
reported, “Mary Cassatt, sister of Mr. Cassatt, president
of the Pennsylvania Railroad, returned from Europe
yesterday. She has been studying painting in Paris, and
owns the smallest Pekinese dog in the world.”
The Pragmatic Approach
It would have been remarkable indeed if the intellec-
tual ferment of the late nineteenth century had not
affected contemporary ideas about the meaning of
life, the truth of revealed religion, moral values, and
similar fundamental problems. In particular the the-
ory of evolution, so important in altering contempo-
rary views of science, history, and social relations,
produced significant changes in American thinking
about religious and philosophical questions.
Evolution posed an immediate challenge to reli-
gion: If Darwin was correct, the biblical account of
the creation was apparently untrue and the idea that
the human race had been formed in God’s image
was highly unlikely. A bitter controversy erupted,
described by President Andrew D. White of Cornell
in The Warfare of Science with Theology in
Christendom(1896). While millions continued to
believe in the literal truth of the Bible, among intel-
lectuals, lay and clerical, victory went to the evolu-
tionists because, in addition to the arguments of
the geologists and the biologists, scholars were
throwing light on the historical origins of the Bible,
showing that its words were of human rather than
divine inspiration.Mary Cassatt’s Children Playing on the Beach(1884). Now widely
recognized as one of America’s finest impressionist painters,
Cassatt’s talent was ignored in this country during her lifetime.
Source: National Gallery of Art, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Collection.James McNeill Whistler’s Arrangement in Grey and Black(1872) was
nearly rejected at the Royal Academy showing of that year, but in
later years viewers and critics were beguiled by the contrast
between the painter’s somber composition and the heartfelt
emotion.Whistler’s Motherbecame arguably the most famous
painting in the United States.
Source: James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Arrangement in Black and Gray: The
Artist’s Mother. 1871. Oil on Canvas. 57' 64 1/2" (144.8 163.8 cm). Musee
d’Orsay, Paris. RMN Reunion des Musees Nationaux/Art Resource, NY.