American Art-Union
[5] The business of advertising was in its infancy and the companies could provide consumers with commodities at their own postal box within shrinking delivery schedules due in large to a growing rail system.
Businessman James Herring opened the Apollo Gallery in New York City in 1838, to provide a place for American artists to exhibit and sell their art.
[7] It was at this time that he received an analysis of the second year experiment from “The Edinburgh Association for the Promotion of Fine Arts in Scotland”.
[8] Thus inspired, he encouraged a group of other prominent New York City businessmen to develop the concept using the Apollo Gallery as their venue for America's first art union.
[10] The first was a moral task of developing the taste of the middling classes towards (what was in the AAU's estimation) the best kind of American art and its themes.
), Augustus Greele (paper merchant), James W. Gerard (lawyer, philanthropist), William L. Morris (lawyer), William Kemble (merchant), T. N. Campbell (broker), Aaron R. Thompson (merchant), George Bruce (typefounder), Duncan C. Pell (auctioneer), Eleazar Parmly (dentist), F. W. Edmonds (Cashier of the L. M. Bank), Treasurer, Benjamin Nathan (broker), Recording Secretary, James Herring (gallery proprietor), Corresponding Secretary.
[14] The Artists (in part): George Caleb Bingham, Thomas Cole, Jasper Francis Cropsey, Ferdinand Raab, Francis D’Avignon, Thomas Doney, Asher Brown Durand, Daniel Huntington, John Frederick Kensett, Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze, William Sidney Mount, James Smillie, Richard Caton Woodville.
Artists, like Emanuel Leutze, would paint Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way to emphasize the vastness of possibilities in the American future and Washington Crossing the Delaware (to inspire the reformers in Europe).
George Caleb Bingham would reflect the tension of the unknown and the excitement of the West in The Concealed Enemy (1845) as well as the independent and optimistic spirit in his The Jolly Flatboatmen (1846).
Thomas Cole's Arcadia and Youth would lend a comforting, moralizing tone to the landscapes that inspired two generations of artists, such as his student Frederic Edwin Church, who had a lasting affiliation with the AAU.
[20] A petition was made to the New York State Assembly to investigate the conduct of the AAU's affairs; a committee was appointed and took testimony for several days in the summer of 1853.
[22] In an open letter to the state Assembly, published in The New York Times, the President of the AAU reported that the management "felt deeply injured...the extensive circulation of engraved copies... of American genius [afforded] the surest means for educating the public taste...thus keeping alive and extending a knowledge of the progress and condition of the arts".
