Excerpt from Art in America: A Critical and Historical Sketch

The aim of this book has been. To give a historical outline of the growth of the arts in America. But while this has been the dominating idea in the mind of the writer, criticism has necessarily entered, more or less, into the preparation of the work, since only by weighing the differ ences or the comparative merits of those artists who seemed best to illus trate the various phases of American art has it been possible to trace its progress from one step to another.

It is from no lack of appreciation of their talents that the author has apparently neglected mention of the American artists resident in foreign capitals - like Bridgman, Duveneck, Wight, Neal, Bacon, Benson, Ernest Parton, Millet, Whistler, Dana, Blashfield, Miss Gardner, Miss Conant, and many others who have done credit to American aesthetic culture. But it was necessary to draw the line somewhere; and to discuss what our artists are painting abroad would have at once enlarged the scope of the work beyond the limits of the plan adopted. An exception has been made in the case of our sculptors, because they have so uniformly lived and wrought in Europe, and so large a proportion of them are still resi dent there, that, were we to confine this branch of the subject only to the sculptors now actually in America, there would be little left to say about their department of our arts.

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