Rendering Violence: Riots, Strikes, and Upheaval in Nineteenth-Century American Art

Rendering Violence explores the problems and possibilities that the subject of political violence presented to American painters working between 1830 and 1890, a turbulent period during which common citizens frequently abandoned orderly forms of democratic expression to riot, strike, and protest violently. Examining a range of critical texts, this book shows for the first time that nineteenth—century American aesthetic theory defined painting as a privileged vehicle for the representation o...