The flourishing of Spiritualism in the second half of the nineteenth century coincided with a growing willingness on the part of many Americans to hold the fine arts in high esteem. The simultaneity was not entirely fortuitous. Puritan austerity and republican simplicity seemed increasingly passé to the consumer culture that emerged in the Victorian era. But old mores had to be replaced with new ones that endorsed the pleasures commodities now offered. Painting and sculpture were especially problematic in this context because they seemed purely decorative; what greater purpose could they possibly serve? Spiritualism resolved the quandary by identifying them...

Spiritualism grew out of, and joined in, the debate about the nature and legitimacy of privilege that roiled Jacksonian society. The liberal orientation of believers generally set them against religious orthodoxy and the traditionalists who painted a dismal picture of humanity’s prospects. Conservatism posited power in an anointed few, persons of superior breeding capable of reining in the anarchic instincts prevalent among the common run of humanity, but Spiritualism valued the potential of each individual to imbibe wisdom from the psychic energies of the cosmos, no matter how lowly his or her station. One way these differences played out in...

Those “materialist professors” in the previous chapter who so discomfited the Stanfords were undoubtedly proponents of Max Weber’s “disenchantment of the world” mentioned earlier. While academics still tend to adhere to its agenda, the Stanfords’ preferences resemble those of the American public in general, which, then and now, has persistently relied on religion to make life meaningful. Again, Spiritualism endeavored to bridge the gap by reconciling science and faith. The discussion that follows examines how William Wetmore Story, Hiram Powers, and Harriet Hosmer adopted this agenda to advocate the virtues of reenchantment.

Their reenchantment abjured the folkways that summoned or...

We tend to think of ghosts as nocturnal beings, but what might the day reveal of their existence? This question underlies the analysis of William Sidney Mount and Fitz Henry Lane that follows. The golden glow that pervades their stilled settings implies a state of heightened consciousness, and scholars who have searched for the inspiration behind their formulations usually cite Ralph Waldo Emerson’s thoughts on the transformative powers of light. Neither artist, however, was particularly interested in Emerson’s ideals. They were believers in psychic phenomena, and this preference sanctions the use of Ockham’s razor: if the teachings of Spiritualism account...

Our focus now shifts away from the sun-drenched landscapes of luminism and toward the muted urban scenery rendered by James McNeill Whistler. The uncanny qualities of his Nocturnes and portraits, it will be argued, derive from a palpable atmosphere that alludes to ether and the numinous properties it purportedly possessed. Whistler was a committed Spiritualist and shared with the artists who will appear in the chapters that follow the feeling that Tonalism served his expressive aims in ways Impressionism, for example, could not. The latter’s want of similar evocative powers was noted by G. K. Chesterton in the early 1890s,...

The beliefs George Inness (1825–94) professed have long intrigued and frequently baffled admirers. This puzzlement is not the consequence of the artist’s reticence to explain himself; on the contrary, he was ever forthcoming to anyone who would listen, but his remarks are often so vague and arcane they tend to engender more questions than answers. His reliance on Swedenborg’s theory of correspondences, for instance, has been the source of considerable commentary and controversy. Much of this perplexity can be banished, it will be argued, by taking a more comprehensive approach to the range of phenomena governed by this doctrine...

George Fuller and Albert Pinkham Ryder managed to combine elements of late Romanticism with those of an emergent Modernism to create oeuvres that figure prominently among the lasting accomplishments of Gilded Age culture. Their subjects, which include beautiful waifs and storm-tossed ships, look back to motifs in circulation long before their careers commenced. These, however, are rendered with broad brushstrokes and heavy impastos in a manner that anticipates the abstraction of the impending century. Uniting these seemingly disparate currents is the ambition to deepen Romantic teaching about the power of symbols by allying it with psychometry and affiliated tenets of...

In the third quarter of the nineteenth century, James Jackson Jarves (1818–88) ascended to a position of prominence in the American art world attained by few other critics. His authority derived from a familiarity with current critical literature, John Ruskin especially, and a knowledge of the history of art garnered during the decades he lived in Europe, Florence especially.¹ In addition to writing perceptively about modern art, he pioneered the study of art history among his countrymen and assembled an important collection of early Italian paintings. These activities have caught the attention of modern scholars, but his belief in...

Concluding a book on Spiritualism with a review of Robert Henri might seem incongruous given his place among the principal proponents of American Realism in histories of art. It helps to recall, however, that he began formulating his aesthetic during the 1890s, when Symbolism captured the imagination of the rising generation. He emerged from the decade with the understanding that meaning resides beneath surface appearances, an attitude that endured to influence both his art and teaching. Henri’s concentration on picturesque individuals, then, looks back not only to Édouard Manet’s types, but also to Walt Whitman’s effusive embrace of a humanity...

Another way of thinking about Spiritualism, one that should tie up the threads woven through the preceding chapters, is to view it as a response to the quandaries many Protestants, Calvinists especially, experienced as they endeavored to comply with teachings of orthodoxy. Among the obligations urged on them by their pastors was the cultivation of a sense of abasement, a step designed to foster an eventual regeneration and reconciliation with the Lord. After much earnest soul searching, however, there were those who could not discern within themselves the innate sinfulness implied by the doctrine of total depravity; what were they...