The Eccentrics and Other American Visionary Painters

Here for the first time, is a study of an important body of Americans paintings from around 1800 and on into the twentieth century in which the scene depicted appears to be caught in the middle of a dream rather than based in palpable reality. In these visionary paintings the conjured-up world seems to be more deeply felt, is more authentic, more integrated, and more deeply moving than it is in mere fantastic paintings. Authentic visionary paintings was like a small stream meandering slowly beside the two great torrents of nineteen-century American painting: the one realist, the other insipidly ideal. Each of the painters studied in this book, whether in a few canvases or many, produced an art that was arrestingly individual for its time, and this art is well worth our interest and deeper appreciation today. The main artists discussed in this fascinating book are Erastus Salisbury Field, William Page, William Rimmer, Thomas Wilmer Dewing, George Fuller, Robert Loftin Newman, John Quidor, Edward Hicks, Elihu Vedder, John la Farge, George Inness, Ralph Albert Blakelock, Benjamin West, Washington Allston, Thomas Cole, and Albert Pinkham Ryder. Abraham Davidson is a Professor of Art History in the Tyler School of Art at Temple University in Philadelphia. His articles have appeared in ARTnews, Art in America, Artforum, American Quarterly, and Art Quarterly, among others; and hes is the author of The Story of American Painting (1974).