Art 427: American Art

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Art 427 American Art Architecture
Image Notebook
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Architectural Image One, Group Six
1. The Rotch House in New Bedford, Massachusetts
2. Architect Andrew Jackson Downing, the
leading popularizer of picturesque aesthetics in
the U.S. 3. Gothic Revival, 1845 4. The
architectural forms on the Rotch House direct
inhabitants upward, drawing on the tradition of
spiritualizing the forms. It provided the family
with a space designed to be both nurturing and
uplifting. As Dell Upton noted, the exterior of
the home projects an authoritative masculinity,
while the landscape surrounding it seems to be
influenced by the spirituality of the wife and
mother. 5. Client The text does not say but it
is assumed that it was designed for a middle
class family. Downing designed cottages for the
middle class which is how the Rotch House is
introduced to us in our text. 6. In a few of
Downings works interestingly, the arrangement of
the rooms reinforced growing class divisions. The
kitchen was separated from the house by closets,
pantries, and servants stairwells. This division
provided both the family and the servants with
the privacy and freedom to converse amongst
themselves. So, while the prosperous middle class
family enjoyed their picturesque surroundings,
the servants labored to maintain the
picturesque-ness. Downing emphasized honesty and
truth in his domestic architecture felt that
the house should reflect the social
http//www.artstor.org
A.J. Downings Rotch House, 1845
status of its inhabitants. Downings homes
announced what sort of people inhabited it
through style, size, and embellishment. His homes
reemphasized the importance of social divisions,
providing a clear vision of social place and
hierarchy.
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Architectural Image Two, Group Six
1. Lyndhurst near Tarrytown, New York 2.
Architect Alexander Jackson Davis 3. Gothic
Revival, 1838 (with substantial additions in
1865) 4. Lyndhurst was built of gray cut stone
and exhibits the earthy colors, busy skyline,
pointed tracery windows, and steep gables
characteristic of the Gothic style. Other
elements, such as stained glass, bay windows,
wrap-around verandas, display careful attention
to visual effects. Structures in this style are
typically irregular and un-predictable, and
Lyndhurst is just thatwindows vary in size,
character, and treatment and masses jut forward
or step back. There is no same view from any two
sides. 5. Client Owned by a sequence of men
prominent in business and politics in nearby New
York City 6. A Gothic Revival structure is known
for its distinctive elements, and unlike other
Revival styles, the Gothic structure gives
priority to the interior space. The character
and uses of a buildings individual rooms are
expressed in the footprints, exterior façade, and
massings. These
http//www.artstor.org
A.J. Davis Lyndhurst, 1838
rooms tend to extend further than the typical
rectilinear shape. Four aspects of Lyndhurst
signify uniqueness in American building that
appeared with the Gothic Revival tall bay
windows, library, great hall, an exemplary
tower.

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Art Image One, Group Six
1. Painting, Domestic Happiness 2/3. Artist
Lilly Martin Spencer Domestic Genre Painter,
1849 4. Domestic Happiness features a radiant
couple watching their children sleep. The unique
aspect we begin to see in Spencers paintings is
the family beginning to engage in activity. The
position of the womans hand suggests intimacy as
well as restraint. She is physically connecting
with her husband, as their children are also
connected, but is also warning him not to wake
them as he seems to be preparing to do so. This
emphasizes her control in the home over her
husband but adds a new question as to whether or
not the children are actually governing their
parents. It seems as if the parents are lessening
their control over their children to please them.
5. Client Spencer sold her paintings but they
were not commissioned for a certain person before
she painted them. 6. Sentimental culture adorned
the qualities of honesty ease. It bowed down to
pure, innocent women selfless mothers. Womens
work was associated with childbearing and
emotional nurturing. On a daily basis, women
provided their husbands with emotional support
for work and educated their children for future
responsibilities. Their work seemed invisible and
was evaluated on an emotional level versus
monetary. All of these things contributed to the
new concept of domesticity.
http//www.artstor.org
Lilly Martin Spencers Domestic Happiness, 1849
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Art Image Two, Group Six
1. Painting, Looking East from Denny Hill 2.
Artist Ralph Earl 3. Picturesque Landscape
Painting, 1800 4. This painting portrays a
productive, rural Massachusetts landscape. Were
shown the pattern in which they conducted their
daily work routineshaying, crop cultivation,
livestock care. This is a landscape in which
labor, land, and know- how produces crops,
beauty, order, and money. It helps us to see the
way in which landscape was viewed at the time in
an aesthetic sense. 5. Client The
picturesque supplied a rapidly changing,
modernizing society with a comforting, pre-modern
image of itself. 6. The picturesque style
developed as a halfway point between the
beautiful and the sublime. The beautiful being
sensible, soft, and feminine, and the sublime
evoking power, force, and masculinity.
Picturesque resulted from landscape compositions
characterized by asymmetry, surprise, and
variety, where farmers flourished shepherds
reflected. It was a pastoral world neither wild
http//www.artstor.org
Ralph Earls Looking East From Denny Hill, 1800
nor over-cultivated. Picturesque painting offered
reassurance that country life was free from
industry and modern technologyor was it? Perhaps
it didnt suggest reality and only portrayed the
reality in which they only dreamed still exist.

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Image Group Six Comparison
L The Rotch House R Lyndhurst
http//www.artstor.org
http//www.artstor.org
Although both of these structures are Gothic
Revival, they portray different aspects of the
style and are made up of different
characteristics. The Rotch House features Gothic
ornamentation heavily visible along the steeply
gabled roofline as well as a bay window in the
center of the house and what appears to be a
stained glass window above it. Lyndhurst, on the
other hand, represents a more obvious aspect of
Gothic Revivalfeaturing pointed tracery and bay
windows, a variety of steep gables, stained
glass, and wrap around verandas. The more
dramatic steeply gabled roofline of the Rotch
House seems to be pointing to the heavens and
suggests a more spiritual Gothic influence. In
contrast, Lyndhurst has more subdued gables
placing more emphasis on the reference to power.
The major differentiating factor between the two
is the symmetry. The Rotch House seems to be
perfectly symmetrical, whereas Lyndhurst is
clearly asymmetricalwhich causes me to wonder
how the interior rooms relate. Does this symmetry
increase or decrease the function of the rooms?
Another interesting aspect is the size of the two
homes. Lyndhurst, which is clearly a large
structure, gives out a sense of power and
authority. We dont know the exact dimensions of
the Rotch House but it is assumed (i.e. the four
chimneys) that it is a larger home and too
portrays a powerful image. Both of these
structures also give us a sense of its
inhabitants and their social status. Both the
Rotch House and Lyndhurst are masculine
structures, but what fluctuates the two is their
landscape. Downing designed the landscape of the
Rotch House to reflect a feminine persona. In
contrast Lyndhurst is a more sparse and open
landscape which would support or enhance the
projection of the power of the building design.
The building denotes power and if you covered it
up with a softened landscape it would take away
from the emphasis of power.
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references

• All Images from http//www.artstor.org
• All written information
• -Course textbook
• -Class notes of Dr. Barris lectures
• -Dr. Barris outline notes

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