The American Pre-Raphaelites used a vivid, realistic style and, unlike their English counterparts, avoided figurative paintings in favor of landscapes and still lifes.

[2]: 90 Ranging from painting to architecture, The New Path often published essays critical of artists like Erastus Dow Palmer and generally supported the detailed, "truthful" works favored by the Pre-Raphaelites and Ruskin.

[2]: 84–85  Similarly, the Pre-Raphaelites often criticized artists like Albert Bierstadt for not conducting enough studies before executing their paintings: they rebuked Bierstadt's The Rocky Mountains, Lander's Peak by saying, "twenty times the study that the artist has given to this picture—study represented by actual sketches, built upon a previous ten years ... would not have justified him in attempting to fill so large a canvas".

[10] This focus sometimes led the group to be called "Realists", reflecting their opposition to academic art and the New York National Academy of Design.

[11]: 14  The overall effect is that "the world, subjected to a scientific gaze, is made to disclose a surfeit of detail, turning nature into ornament", according to critic Bailey Trela.

[3] As time passed, the American Pre-Raphaelites were criticized as "unimaginative" and for adhering too closely to Ruskin's refutation of emotive art, which uses what he called the pathetic fallacy.