We are working on a redesign of this website. Subsequently, this class will be available for registration by August 6.
Instructor: Craig Griffeath
Thursdays, October 16, 23, 30 and November 6, 3:00 – 5:00 PM, East Rec
4-week session. Cost: $65
Course Description:
Local art historian Craig Griffeath leads a scintillating tour through four hundred years of American promise and progress, as portrayed by America’s greatest artists. From the first New World settlements to the Gilded Age of the Robber Barons, to the turn of the 20th century, explore development of American art and society through the works of painters, sculptors and architects.
Course Detail:
This course traces the development of American art and society from the time of the first European settlements to the birth of the skyscraper. Join local art historian Craig Griffeath as he presents America’s storied past, as seen through the eyes of America’s greatest artists. Each week will examine the work of the painters, sculptors and architects who documented and shaped our nation’s progress: from settlement and colonization, through the Revolution, the Westward expansion, the Civil War, and on to the Gilded Age and the turn of the 20th century.
Week 1: Roots of American Art: Settlement and Colonial Life
Legacies of Spanish Colonial art and the Mission Trail, John Winthrop and his “City on a Hill,” the artistic legacy of the Shakers, Quakers, Amish, and Pennsylvania Germans.
Week 2: Art of The Revolutionary and Federal Periods
The limner tradition. America’s first professional artists: West, Copley, and Peale. American fine furnishings and the Triangle Trades. The Federal Style and the founding of the nation’s capital: L’Enfant, Bulfinch, Latrobe, Jefferson. Federal portraiture: Gilbert Stuart and John Trumbull.
Week 3: American West: The Art of Manifest Destiny
Thomas Cole and the Hudson River School. Frederick Church and the Romantic Sublime. George Bingham’s frontier yarns. John James Audubon. The shifting depiction of Native Americans. Thomas Moran and the National Parks. Mythologizing the West: Bierstadt, Remington, Schreyvogel.
Week 4: American Impressionists, Expatriates, and Realists: The Late 19th Century
Americans abroad: Mary Cassatt and John Singer Sargent. The American Renaissance and the Gilded Age, Tiffany and LaFarge, The Civil War and American Realism: Brady, Saint-Gaudens, Homer, Eakins. The Age of Iron, the American Skyscraper, the Brooklyn Bridge and the threshold of Modern Art.
Instructor Biography:
Veteran art historian Craig Griffeath taught art and music programs at San Francisco’s Academy of Art University for 25 years. He holds a Masters in Humanities/Art History from Dominican University and a Certificate in Western Arts Education from the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, where he served ten years on the Docent Council, creating tours and educational programs for the de Young and Legion of Honor museums. Since retiring and moving to Sonoma in 2021, he has continued to produce multimedia enrichment programs in visual and performing arts for community groups throughout the Bay Area.
