Document Type
Article
Filename
PaintingSonstegard.pdf
Publication Date
Winter 10-1-2003
Publication Title
Henry James Review
Keywords
American literature, 19th century, Henry James Jr. The Tragic Muse, novel, fidelity, family relations, photography, painting
Abstract
Photographs can approach the elegance of paintings, but reproductions can show the distortion of photographs - so The Tragic Muse (1890) suggests, complicating critical understandings of James and visual art. Dramatizing artists' fidelity, James resists assuming that families, races, and genders provide similar options. Fidelity in art can mean 'infidelity' in life, lead to 'adulterated' reproductions, and impugn understandings of inherited and performed identities - concerns which resurface in The American Scene (1907) when James contemplates immigrant populations and in A Small Boy and Others (1913) when a family daguerreotype becomes evidence of his own fidelity.
Recommended Citation
Sonstegard, Adam, "Painting, Photography and Fidelity in The Tragic Muse" (2003). English Faculty Publications. 27.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/cleng_facpub/27
DOI
10.1353/hjr.2003.0010
Version
Publisher's PDF
Publisher's Statement
Copyright © 2005 The Johns Hopkins University Press. This article first appeared in Henry James Review, Volume 24, Issue 1, Winter 2003, 27-44.
