"I can't," wrote Henry James in 1888, "look at the English and American worlds . . . save as a big Anglo-Saxon total." He had noted a year earlier: "It sounds like a paradox, but it is a very simple truth, that when today we look for `American art' we find it mainly in Paris." Aside from James himself, among the most striking exemplars of this late-nineteenth-century unity of the French, English, and American aesthetic worlds are two painters: James McNeill Whistler and John Singer Sargent. We will look at the careers of these two, arguably the most influential and well known American artists of their era, in light of this internationalism. Discussion and readings will benefit from consideration of objects in the Clark Art Institute's collection. Basis for evaluation: class participation and two brief writing assignments; an oral presentation that will form the basis for a fully developed term paper; and a commentary on a colleague's presentation. Enrollment limit: 15. Preference given to graduate students in the history of art.

Hour: SIMPSON