Visitable Past

In this ambitious and imaginative study, Margaretta M. Lovell analyzes the large body of accomplished, sometimes startling, often brilliant work of American artists drawn to Venice's ragged splendor in the last century. Including major works by such diverse and talented painters as James McNeill Whistler, John Singer Sargent, and Maurice Prendergast, these richly varied paintings portray sleepy canals, architectural monuments, and scenes of picturesque everyday life while they also reveal surprising aspects of American culture.


Contents:

List of Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgments

1. The Splendid Common Domicile
The Venetian Subject
Modes

2. Nobility and Hierarchy: The High Mimetic Mode
A Sense of Possession: The Venetians
A Sense of Loss: The Romantics
A Repossession

3. Belatedness in a Fallen World: The Low Mimetic Mode
The Slide off the Monument
A Ghost upon the Sands of the Sea
Canals and Campi: The Unimportant and the Unrecognizable
Apertures
Figures

4. No Object but the Subject: The Ironic Mode
Monuments Re-viewed: Maurice Prendergast
Monuments Re-viewed: John Singer Sargent

5. The Ozymandias Problem

Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index