In Pursuit of Refinement: Charlestonians Abroad, 1740-1860.

In Pursuit of Refinement: Charlestonians Abroad, 1740-1860. By Maurie D. McInnis in collaboration with Angela D. Mack. With essays by J. Thomas Savage, Robert A. Leath, and Susan Ricci Stebbins. (Columbia: Published by the University of South Carolina Press for the Gibbes Museum of Art with the cooperation of the Historic Charleston Foundation, c. 1999. Pp. xxii, 348. Paper, $29.95, ISBN 1-57003-315-3; cloth, $75.00, ISBN 1-57003-314-5.)

In Pursuit of Refinement--an exhibition catalogue that is a joint project of the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston and the Historic Charleston Foundation--is the first major study of Charleston's romance with Britain and Europe. The authors claim that, more than any other colonial and antebellum city in America, Charleston retained close ties to Europe through trade, the education of its privileged sons abroad, and the tradition of the Grand Tour. These essays explore some of the economic, political, and social factors that made Europe "Charleston's cultural fountainhead, perhaps more than ... any other American city" (p. 10) and examine how this allegiance helped to create an identity peculiar to Charleston. As Eliza Lucas Pinckney phrased it in 1740, "[t]he people [of Charleston] live very Gentile and very much in the English taste" (p. 55). Her words have served as a banner of Charleston uniqueness ever since.

The authors rather cursorily rely on the similarity in the social stratification of the two societies to explain the disposition of these elite southerners to mimic the tastes and patterns of consumption of their European counterparts. They set out to prove Charleston exceptionalism visually, however, by highlighting the objects that travelers acquired for their elegant homes in Charleston. The authors describe in 146 catalogue entries portraits commissioned from Thomas Gainsborough, Sir Joshua Reynolds, John Singleton Copley, and George Romney; paintings of mythological subjects by Angelica Kauffman and landscapes by Salvator Rosa; Renaissance drawings by Leonardo da Vinci; neoclassical drawings by Wilhelm Tischbein; Grand Tour vedute by various artists; portrait miniatures; British high-style furniture; London silver and French porcelains; and such primary documentary materials as travel journals and picture inventories (pp. 89-334). The book's greatest value probably resides in the documentation of these objects, the result of a prodigious research effort by the scholars and curators that included a two-year survey conducted across Europe and the United States to locate paintings with a Charleston provenance. Most of the other objects are from the collections of the Gibbes Museum, the Historic Charleston Foundation, and other South Carolina institutions, or remain in the possession of descendants of Charleston's original "who's who": the Smiths, Manigaults, Middletons, Izards, and Pinckneys.

Other essays discuss the history of collectors and collecting in Charleston, including Charlestonians' unparalleled patronage of English portrait artists--a fascinating and little known chapter in the history of American art--and wealthy Charleston merchants' shopping sprees for decorative and fine arts. The book concludes with an informative account of John Izard Middleton, whose cultural work as an archaeologist, watercolorist, book and painting collector, and amateur architect placed him in the vanguard of Charleston's refined European-educated connoisseurs.

The authors unfortunately do not situate Charleston within a national or international context in which the pursuit of refinement and gentility was widespread (in this regard, see Richard L. Bushman's The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities [New York, 1992]). They instead take a familiar story and, using many previously unpublished primary sources, present it from a Charleston point-of-view. This strategy gives Charleston the place it deserves at the national cultural table but that success comes at the expense of issues that, had the authors delved deeper, would have produced a richer, more nuanced argument. The authors claim Charleston was different but provide almost no comparative support for their case. The reader is expected to take it on faith, for example, that no other colony or state evidenced the same level of cultural infatuation with England and Europe. The rare exceptions include a brief account comparing Charleston cabinetmaking traditions to those of the New England and mid-Atlantic colonies, and an essay discussing how southern traditions were affected by Europe's constant lure to Charleston patrons (p. 58).

These examples raise a larger issue that the catalogue authors do not address: how did the conspicuous consumption of English and European goods affect the development and growth of an American tradition of artists and artisans? Did the "Pursuit of Refinement" stunt or enrich the local art scene? Wealthy Charlestonians clearly were avid collectors, but were they also supportive of the professional practice and production of art? Did they recognize the social value of putting private collections on public display? The story of the philanthropically enlightened Joseph Allen Smith (known as Allen Smith) is especially relevant in this regard and worthy of a separate essay. Smith counted among his friends Madame Recamier in Paris, Emperor Alexander in Russia, and, most importantly, William Hamilton in Naples--one of England's greatest collectors of antiquities and one of the British Museum's early champions. It was Hamilton who probably encouraged Smith to found a public collection in America, a remarkable idea at a time when permanent public collections were a new concept even in England. Smith's buying sprees, beginning in the 1790s, created one of the most extensive collections of art in America at the time. His collection included paintings, prints, casts, gems, and drawings, some by da Vinci that the authors describe as "probably the most significant drawings owned by an American in the early nineteenth-century" (p. 42).

Smith recognized that the social value of art collecting went beyond signifying membership in elite culture. He used his collection to help the embryonic Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia (founded in 1805) and so turned conspicuous consumption into civic virtue. Why did he not use his collection to found an institution in Charleston? The reason given but unexamined by the authors came from Smith's friend John Vaughan. Vaughan claimed that Philadelphia was "more central than Charleston & that his views [to encourage the study of painting and sculpture] would be better answered by placing them there" (p. 45). The fact that Philadelphia was both the political and cultural capital of the United States in the 1790s, as well as the country's greatest population center, presumably played some role in Smith's decision, as did the fact he maintained a home in Philadelphia as well as his native Charleston. The authors surely could have examined the implications of Smith's decision to place his collection in Philadelphia, such as the argument that it delayed Charleston's founding of an art museum and academy of its own--ultimately one of the most meaningful signs of a city's "refinement."

In Pursuit of Refinement, with its generous illustrations and enormous quantity of data, will provide a valuable source for future projects that explore the history of Charleston's political, economic, and cultural links with Britain and Europe. This volume joins a small but growing body of literature on the arts in the South that includes such recent works as Page Talbott's Classical Savannah: Fine and Decorative Arts, 1800-1840 (Savannah, Ga., 1995), Martha Severens's The Charleston Renaissance (Spartanburg, S.C., 1998), Severens's Greenville County Museum of Art: The Southern Collection (New York, 1995), Ronald L. Hurst and Jonathan Prown's Southern Furniture, 1680-1830: The Williamsburg Collection (Williamsburg, Va., 1997), and publications on southern ceramics supported by University of South Carolina's McKissick Museum.

EMILY BALLEW NEFF 

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston