Looking at the methodological principles and rhetorical forms that structure James Jackson Jarves's often-cited 1864 book The Art-Idea, this essay reconsiders Jarves's role in the historiography of American art. Jarves has long been associated with post-Civil War shifts toward international aesthetic trends, which eroded the native bias in favor of verisimilitude and anecdote. He is thought to mark a turning point. His texts, however, only partially corroborate the reputation. Here, firstly, I reread Jarves's art theory to suggest what were the aesthetic preferences he hoped to foster among Americans, and why. Secondly, I propose that the reputed Jarves fulfills an apparently unrecognized need in the subdiscipline of American art history – a fundamental understanding of American art as automatically, necessarily, indexical. It is primarily a manifestation of American culture, and more specifically American culture as defined by change, growth, disruption, reintegration.
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