Heroic Vision tells the remarkable tale of twelve politicians and twelve fine artists who changed the course of Western history. The politicians patronized the artists, and the artists’ works celebrated the politicians’ achievements. For a few, the artist-politician connection was easy because they were one and the same: four had distinguished careers in politics and fine art.
The politicians believed that America was a unique land, a New World, where fresh ideas about government could flourish. They committed themselves to a novel belief drawn from Roman antiquity—the notion that sovereignty could be located in the whole people. In America, one said, it would be possible to “begin the world over again.”
The New World environment also encouraged fresh artistic thought. New artists found inspiration in a novel idea about the creative wellspring: they claimed that “Nature,” not variants of Old World styles and conventions, should guide creativity in the Western Hemisphere. They used “Nature” as a metaphor to express a compelling link between the American environment and artistic inspiration and aspiration.
At no other place or time in modern Western history have the fine arts behaved as they did during the last four decades of eighteenth century American history. Heroic Vision tells the intriguing story of how art became entwined in the nation’s political drama, and how a New World culture developed to undergird a government based on revolutionary republican ideals.