Bryant's Criticism of the Fine Arts

Abstract

During the last few years, the close association of William Cullen Bryant with contemporary American artists has been clearly established. Catalogues of recent exhibitions of Hudson River paintings have pointed up the relation,1 and I have written elsewhere of Bryant's intellectual and artistic affinities with Thomas Cole—the leading painter among the Hudson River men.2 Since a popular magazine of wide circulation recently mentioned similar information,3 the general nature of Bryant's artistic connections may well be considered common knowledge. Less well known, however, is that Bryant's interest in the fine arts was not limited solely to the works of his friends at the National Academy of Design. For Bryant was a man of wide cultural background: his experience with the arts encompassed both sculpture and painting, European works as well as American, the old masters as well as contemporary artists. He has left, moreover, a full record of his artistic interests, for his travel letters and other prose works include numerous references to the fine arts, which, if read collectively, provide a substantial, if fragmentary and scattered, body of art criticism.