The Art Students League Begins!
Who gets to be an artist in America? Let’s get into the by-laws, people.
150 years ago, you could train at a couple of art schools in America—Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts was one of the sturdy ones, but RISD didn’t yet exist and there was no such thing as a fine art MFA. To be able to list your post-nominal credentials like a doctor or a lawyer, you needed to be voted in by the National Academy in New York. And to do that, you needed to complete a course of rigorous, old-school instruction, devoting the first ten weeks of each year’s study to drawing from plaster casts only after which you could go on to Life Drawing—drawing from the model. If you found your way through that gauntlet, more years of study in the refined arts of landscape and portraiture stood between you and being sponsored for consideration as an associate academician. A great many very talented artists got no further than “A.N.A.,” but a lucky determined few would surmount the pile to become full academicians.
Artists worked hard for their “N.A.,” and unsurprisingly, some of that cohort were not eager to let the next generation off any easier than they had it. President of the (earlier, failed) American Academy, John Trumbull, summarized that Old Guard view:
“When I commenced my study of painting, there were no casts to be found in the country. I was obliged to do as well as I could. These young men should remember that the gentlemen have gone to great expense in importing casts, and that they have no property in them. They must remember that beggars are not to be choosers.”1
Old Man Trumbull says it was uphill both ways! And then, on to the tedium of Life Drawing!
In the spring of 1875, the National Academy had but one Life instructor—Lemuel Wilmarth2—and when the Academy determined not to renew him, Wilmarth gathered his students and dropped more bad news, possibly true: the Academy had declined to find a replacement for Wilmarth for the coming fall semester. Missing Life class meant going back to square one the following September—back to the plaster casts. Wilmarth presented his own termination as a setback to the students and may have been the source of the rumor that all classes at the Academy would be cancelled. Worthington Whittredge, the president of the Academy, went to the press to deny the rumors, but Wilmarth’s students were rattled. And anyway, they added it to their list of grievances: inadequate access to plaster casts; no access to the library; and a general complaint at the two-tiered governance of the Academy. The perception was that Academicians had many privileges—from voting rights in the organization to membership in the professional guild—and students at the Academy had none.
So the dispossessed rallied around Wilmarth to charter their own ad hoc school. Wilmarth offered his instruction for free, and students passed the hat to rent classrooms. A young Theodore Robinson suggested a name: the Art Students League. They printed up a pamphlet detailing their ambitions, and sent a copy to the Academy.
We can’t know if Whittredge actually did intend to cancel all classes forever—ultimately, classes resumed in full at the Academy by 18773—but the students were right about the two tiers of privilege. In private, the tier on top vented their resentment of the students. Jervis McEntee wrote privately in October of 1875:
“Wilmarth the teacher of drawing at the Academy has combined with the students and established a ‘League’ whose prospectus preaches an uncontrolled hostility to the Academy because we do not go on incurring debt to educate these ungrateful students.”4
The Academy had a brand to protect, and if there was any “uncontrolled hostility” in the equation, it came from Academicians. Two years later, another group of Academicians formed the Society of American Artists, complaining of the Academy’s aesthetic backwards-ness. European-trained painters, advocates of Impressionism and photography, from Augustus Saint-Gaudens and John Henry Twachtman to Louis Comfort Tiffany—all chafed under the Academy’s conservative tastes. The League succeeded at servicing these grievances just as the Academy doubled down on its resistance to new trends in arts education.
The National Academy soldiered on, but the value of its credential withered. No one has cared about post-nominal initials in painting for a long time; the turf McEntee5 and Whittredge fought to protect was finally sold in 2018; the institution continues from a modest space in Chelsea in a considerably diminished capacity.
The League, however, turns 150 this year, and it appears to be greeting the anniversary on a major upswing. We’ll join that celebration this year by examining moments in the League’s history that illuminate the continuing conundrum: Who gets to be an artist? One facet of that story is on view at Graham Shay and Lincoln Glenn galleries as they present 150 Years of Influential Instructors: Historical Teachers at the Art Students League. It opens Thursday, January 16, 2025, with a reception from 5:30-7:30 PM, and a catalogue essay by yours truly. Join us as the conversation continues, both here and in the galleries, as an important year begins.
Thanks for reading,
Jonathan
Jonathan@JonathanMillerSpies.com
As quoted by Raymond J. Steiner, The Art Students League of New York: A History, 1999, p. 33. For more on John Trumbull’s formidable career, see our “Show to Europe a Specimen of the Mind.”
How many Lemuels do you know? Wilmarth was the first American to study with Jean-Léon Gérôme, and people always thought he’d be something great if only his “arduous duties” as a teacher didn’t “prevent his giving the time he ought to his art.” Alas, Lemuel, you gave too deeply of yourself at the lectern!
And Wilmarth left the League when he was reinstated at the National Academy! Wilmarth seems to have genuinely loved the Academy—he turned down a teaching post at Yale, too!—which only goes to show how membership-driven the early League was. If Wilmarth could have commanded a cult of personality, he certainly did not attempt to build one at the League. There is no “Wilmarth Day” at the League; I did not hear his name until very recently, and I’m certain because “Lemuel Wilmarth” is not a name easily forgotten.
As quoted by Steiner, 1999, p. 29.
McEntee is the villain of today’s story, but he was a fascinating character and a prodigiously talented painter. He apprenticed with Frederic Church and spread the good word—and, as we’ll see over the coming year, he was not the last painter to begin a Revolutionary and end as the Establishment.