COMPASS & CLOCK - Hardcover

John Wilmerding focuses on three turning points -- around 1800, when America began to find its identity as a republic; 1850, a self-confident period of prosperity and growth; and 1900, a time of anxiety over profound changes in the psychological as well as the physical dimension. The author provides stimulating discussions of the great works of these three periods -- from Thomas Jefferson's Monticello and Charles Willson Peale's Staircase Portrait to Thoreau's Walden and George Caleb Bingham's Fur Traders Descending the Missouri to The Education of Henry Adams and the late paintings of Thomas Eakins and Winslow Homer -- finding common threads and complementary expressions in the images that writers and visual artists alike drew upon to convey the mood and vision of each distinctive era.

A preeminent scholar in the field of American art, Wilmerding brings fresh ideas to the whole range of American creativity, including paintings and sculpture, journals and autobiography, novels and poetry, music and architecture. His close reading of such literary classics as Moby-Dick and Leaves of Grass, juxtaposed with thoughtful discussions of formal and iconographical aspects of such artistic masterpieces as the Washington National Monument and Fitz Hugh Lane's luminous landscapes, provide the reader with a new understanding of recurrent themesin American culture: the expanding geographical scope of the nation, the increasing pace of life and social change in American cities, the growing body of scientific knowledge as a result of exploration and self-examination.

This important book is handsomely illustrated with reproductions in both color and black and white of the significant paintings and other objects discussed in the text, and it is equally enriched by extensive quotations from literary examples the author has selected for analysis.

With the new century upon us, we are moved to reflect not just on the recent past but on the previous century, which brought America to maturity. Compass and Clock enables us to examine that crucial period in our history through its finest works of art, which provide us with clues to our own evolution as a nation and as a people.