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Art Theory and Psychological Thought in Mid-19th-Century America: The Case of The Crayon

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2009

Dennis Raverty
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Extract

Associationism as a school of 19th-century psychological thought has been mentioned as an important influence on American landscape painters of that period by several authors, yet little systematic investigation of the influence of contemporaneous psychological theories on 19th-century artistic thought has been attempted. This essay explores these psychological dimensions in the writings of Henry James Sr., Justin Winsor, and John B. Brown, regular contributors to the Crayon: A Journal Devoted to the Graphic Arts and the Literature Related to Them. Published in New York from 1855 to 1861, the Crayon was unique among art publications in its theoretical emphasis. Among the philosophical problems the Crayon took up were questions that today would have been identified as psychological. The ideas of these three authors concerning perception, creativity, and reception are among the clearest and most articulate of the essays in the Crayon in terms of displaying a coherent psychology. Their psychological thought will be extracted from the texts and reconstituted within the contending psychological debates of the time. It will be shown that although associationism was an important influence on artists and critics, other psychological theories stemming from different premises were of equal or even greater importance.

Type
Research Article
Information
Prospects , Volume 24 , October 1999 , pp. 285 - 296
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1999

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References

Notes

1. The periodical had almost no illustrations, unlike the art union bulletins and the majority of popular monthly magazines. As Janice Simon points out in her unpublished dissertation, this was at least partly a function of the costliness of engravings. Nonetheless, the lack of pictures served to separate it from the more popular journals and underlined the serious theoretical nature of the writings (Simon, , “The Crayon 1855–1861: The Voice of Nature in Criticism, Poetry, and the Fine Arts” [Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1990], 40Google Scholar).

2. Woodward, William R. and Ash, Mitchell G., eds., The Problematic Science: Psychology in Nineteenth-Century Thought (New York: Praeger, 1982), 1Google Scholar.

3. Ibid.

4. Thomas Kuhn is probably the most widely used model of historical development today in the sciences (Kuhn, , The Structure of Scientific Revolutions [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962]Google Scholar).

5. See, for example, Arens, Katherine's Structures of Knowing: Psychologies of the Nineteenth Century (Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic, 1989)Google Scholar.

6. Watson, Robert I., “Psychology: A Prescriptive Science,” in Historical Conceptions of Psychology, ed. Henle, M., Jaynes, J., and Sullivan, J. J. (New York: Springer, 1973), 13–28Google Scholar.

7. Ibid., 16.

8. Ibid., 15–16. The entire grouping that Watson has identified is here listed in 18 pairs.

9. Simon, , “Crayon” (“Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained,” 75–90Google Scholar; and “The Ideals of Universalism, Perfectionism, and Progress,” 91–113).

10. Ibid. Also see Craig Eliason, “Beauty, Nature and Art in the Crayon: The Aesthetics of a Nineteenth-Century American Art Journal,” unpublished essay (1993). Eliason treats at length Stillman, James's series of articles collectively titled The Nature and Uses of Beauty, which ran through most of volume 3 (1856)Google Scholar of the Crayon.

11. Mill, John Stuart, “Thoughts on Poetry and its Varieties,” parts I and II, Crayon 7 (1860): 93–97, 123–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12. For example, see “Human Physiology,” Crayon 4 (1857): 14–16Google Scholar. This article is a lengthy treatment of a recent book by Jno. Wm. Draper, M.D., L.L.D., in which the author, among other things, refutes empiricism and makes a case for inherited qualities. Volume 3 carried two articles on phrenology: “What Makes an Artist?” Crayon 3 (1856): 218–19Google Scholar — an argument between an academician and a phrenologist — and “The Phrenological Gauge,” Crayon 3 (1856): 298–300Google Scholar. — a curious analysis of work by the Old Masters in which the figures in the paintings or sculptures are analyzed by the shape of their depicted heads. A letter to the editor was also published in the same volume (284–85).

In “The Physiology of Common Life,” the author makes an eloquent plea for naturalism, and the treatment of Man as “a subject for scientific investigation” (Crayon 6 [1859]: 71–73)Google Scholar.

13. Henry, James [James Henry], “The Incentives and Aims of Art,” Crayon 1 (1855): 50CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The author identifies himself as James Henry, but as editor James Stillman noted later, he was actually Henry James Sr. (Stillman, William James, The Autobiography of a Journalist [New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1901], 1: 229Google Scholar).

14. Ibid.

15. Ibid., 51.

16. Ibid.

17. Ibid.

18. Ibid.

19. Ibid.

20. Ibid.

21. Ibid.

22. For an excellent discussion of Emmanuel Kant's impact on 19th-century psychology, see Leary, David E.'s “Immanuel Kant and the Development of Modern Psychology,” in The Problematic Science: Psychology in Nineteenth-Century Thought (New York: Praeger, 1982), 17–42Google Scholar.

23. Cited in Fay, Jay Wharton's American Psychology Before William James (New York: Octagon, 1966), 91Google Scholar.

24. James, Henry, “The Incentives and Aims of Art,” Crayon 1 (1855): 51Google Scholar.

25. James, Henry, “The Transition from the Un-Beautiful to the Beautiful,” Crayon 1 (1855): 322Google Scholar.

26. James, Henry, “Pennsylvania Forest Scenery,” Crayon 1 (1855): 130Google Scholar.

27. Ibid.

28. Simon, , “Crayon,” 7–8Google Scholar.

29. Winsor, Justin, “Natural and Artistic Sympathy,” Crayon 2 (1855): 32CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30. Ibid.

31. Ibid.

32. Winsor, Justin, “Natural and Artistic Sympathy, no. II,” Crayon 2 (1855): 47CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33. Winsor, Justin, “Man and Nature,” Crayon 2 (1855): 96CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34. Ibid., 49.

35. Ibid., 48.

36. Fuller, Robert C., Americans and the Unconscious (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 29–34Google Scholar.

37. Ibid., 34.

38. Winsor, , “Natural and Artistic Sympathy,” 33Google Scholar.

39. Simon, , “Crayon,” 8Google Scholar.

40. Brown, Joseph G. Brownlee, “Purity of Imagination,” Crayon 4 (1857): 170CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41. Brown, Joseph G. Brownlee, “Selection in Art,” Crayon 4 (1857): 140CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

42. Brown, , “Purity of Imagination,” 170Google Scholar.

43. Brown, , “Selection in Art,” 138Google Scholar.

44. Ibid., 139.

45. Ibid., 138.

46. Brown, , “Purity of Imagination,” 173Google Scholar.

47. Ibid., 172.

48. Ibid., 173.

49. Brown, , “Selection in Art,” 139Google Scholar.