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Abstract
This is a study in transatlantic cultural influence, demonstrating that the same enlightened ideals that informed the politics also informed the arts of early America. The philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment exerted a profound influence on American thought about morals, government, and taste. Francis Hutcheson, Henry Home (Lord Kames), Archibald Alison, and other Scottish philosophers contended that either an internal faculty or a process of association created ideas of beauty. Painters and architects transformed this philosophy into an artistic method which I term "associational eclecticism," the pragmatic willingness to adopt any style that is associationally appropriate. Benjamin West used a classicizing style to depict such stoic themes as The Death of Socrates and Agrippina Landing at Brundisium, a more dynamic baroque composition for his heroic Death of General Wolfe, and even Rubensian colourism for the apocalyptic Death on a Pale Horse. Thomas Jefferson, following Lord Kames, believed in an innate sense of proportion, which justified his life-long use of the Palladian orders. Jefferson's experience in France, however, broadened the range of his eclecticism and deepened his understanding of the role of associations in architecture. Thomas Cole, an admirer of Alison, painted allegorical cycles like "The Course of Empire" and "realistic" landscapes such as The Oxbow of the Connecticut; associational eclecticism informed both types of painting. This study concludes that many early American artists were not nationalistic but cosmopolitan, given their acceptance of Scottish philosophy and associational eclecticism. Moreover, this study demonstrates that "neo-classicists" were actually eclectics who used whatever style was associationally appropriate, and that this eclecticism continued well into the 1840s; thus, the period usually termed "Romantic" was also largely informed by the Scottish philosophy.
