Among the Ruins of a Republic: An Afternoon in the American Wing

Washington Crossing the Delaware, 1851, oil on canvas, Emanuel Leutze

With the Semiquincentennial of These United States fast approaching, I recently found myself feeling especially patriotic and made a brief excursion to the American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In truth, I was looking for any excuse to spend a few hours in the company of good art, revisiting old favorites, reconsidering familiar works, and discovering something new along the way.

Often critical of the government, its corrupt political factions, and the ideologies that increasingly dominate public life, I still love this country and remain grateful for the inheritance it has given us. For all our divisions and shortcomings, there remains much that is worthy of admiration and preservation.

The American Wing offers a reminder of that inheritance. Its paintings, sculptures, furnishings, and decorative arts bear witness to a civilization confident in beauty, craftsmanship, permanence, and higher ideals. They reveal a people who believed art should elevate, instruct, and inspire rather than merely provoke or entertain.

Sadly, the museum itself has not remained entirely immune to the fashionable ideological tendencies of our age. I have come to abhor the Met’s practice of placing contemporary works alongside acknowledged masterpieces in an attempt to create a “conversation.” Such experiments are better confined to the Modern Art galleries.

The pairing of Kay WalkingStick’s Thom, Where are the Pocumtucks (The Oxbow) with Thomas Cole’s The Oxbow was a particularly striking example. Standing before the two works, one is struck by the immense difference separating a master from a lesser talent. The result was less a dialogue than a demonstration of how far our artistic standards have fallen. Rather than “enriching” Cole’s achievement, the juxtaposition only made his genius more apparent.

Walking through those galleries, I could not escape the feeling that we are living amid the ruins of a saner civilization. The artistic achievements remain, preserved behind glass and gilded frames, while many of the assumptions that produced them have faded from public life. Yet perhaps that is why museums matter. They remind us not only of what once was, but of what might still be recovered.

As the nation approaches its two hundred and fiftieth year, the American Wing stands as a quiet testament to the best of our inheritance and to the enduring possibility that beauty, memory, and gratitude may yet help guide us forward.

~ By Giovanni di Napoli, July 1st, Feast of the Most Precious Blood

My Bunkie, finished 1899, oil on canvas, Charles Schreyvogel

On the Southern Plains, 1907, oil on canvas, Frederic Remington

Repose, 1895, oil on canvas, John White Alexander

Across the Room, ca. 1899, oil on canvas, Edmund Charles Tarbell

(L) Madame X (Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau), 1883-84, oil on canvas, John Singer Sargent. (R) A Rose, 1907, oil on canvas, Thomas Anshutz

La Pêche (Fishing), 1901-4, oil on wood panel, Thomas Wilmer Dewing

(L) George Washington, carved after 1844, marble, Hiram Powers.
(R) George Washington, ca. 1782, oil on canvas, James Peale

(L) Thomas Jefferson, 1788, oil on mahogany, John Trumbull.
(R) Antislavery medallion, Stoke-on-Trent, ca. 1787, jasperware,
Josiah Wedgwood and William Hackwood

(L) Abraham Lincoln (Standing Lincoln), cast 1911, bronze, Augustus Saint-Gaudens. (R) Victory, cast ca. 1914-16, bronze, gilt, Augustus Saint-Gaudens

(L) California, carved 1858, marble, Hiram Powers.
(R) A Young Mother, cast ca. 1906, bronze, Bessie Potter Vonnoh

The Babes in the Wood, carved 1851, marble, Thomas Crawford

(L) Descending Night, cast by 1917, bronze, Adolph Alexander Weinman.
(R) Standing Torso of a Woman, cast ca. 1909, Paul Wayland Bartlett

Scratching Her Heel, 1921, bronze, Alexander Stirling Calder

(L) Seated Torso of a Woman, cast ca. 1909, bronze, Paul Wayland Bartlett.
(R) Pavlova, 1916, bronze, Alfred David Lenz

(L) Daphne, carved 1854, marble, Harriet Goodhue Hosmer.
(R) Peace, ca. 1998, marble, William Ordway Partridge

(L) Diana, this cast, 1928, gilt bronze, August Saint-Gaudens.
(R) Fragilina, 1923, marble, Attilio Piccirilli

Mexican Girl Dying, this carving, 1848, marble, Thomas Crawford

(L) Cleopatra, this carving, 1869, marble, William Wetmore Story.
(R) The Libyan Sibyl, this carving, 1861, marble, William Wetmore Story

(L) Ruth Gleaning, this carving, 1856 or 1856, marble, Randolph Rogers.
(R) Evening, this carving, 1891, marble, Fredrick Wellington Ruckstull

(L) Clytie, this carving, 1872, marble, William Henry Rinehart.
(R) Medea, this carving, 1868, marble, William Wetmore Story