Professional Documents
Culture Documents
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Th e S¡)(!Il;sh C,.aze: The Disn}lwry of Spanish ArL
and Cultnrc in the UniLed Stat!:'s
Richard L. Kagan
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out the United States during the 1920s - was actually a blend
of Spanish design elements with others, elaborately decorated
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¡"ss than transparenl effort to cash in on the anti-Spanish fervor
,,1" the rnoment, the translation appear under the sensationalist
I itle of An Historical and True Account o/ the Cruel Massacre and
Slaughter 0/20,000,000 People in the West lndies by the Spaniards.
'l'hen there was the famous historian of the Spanish Inquisition,
llenry Charles Lea, who attributed Spain's defeat by the United
Slates to a defective national character distinguished by a "blind
nnd impenetrable pride" and a " spirit of conservatism which
rcjected all innovation - especially modern industrialism - in a
world of incessant change."2 .The juxtaposition between this kind
01" inflammatory criticism and the pro-Spanish sentiments of Chase
on the other is striking. One of the aims of this essay is to address
this apparent contradiction, and in doing so attempt explain the
connection between the "Spanish Craze" and the war of 1898.
most striking feature of the new Garden was not its main building
, 1
doorways for example, thal are more properly defined as Spanish - designed in ltalian Renaissance style - but its soaring, three-
Colonial, or Mexican. hundred [001 tower, then the second tallest in a city already famous
lor its skyscrapers. Most early sky scrapers, in New York and other
But whatever one calls it, the discovery of Spanish art and North American cities, were generally built in neo-classical design
culture in the United States began at precisely that moment when, and intended to emulate the glory and the power associated with
as Stanley Payne has explained in the previous text, was marked the ernpires of ancient Greece and Rome. When it came lo the
by growing political tensions between Spain and the United States Carden, however, White wanted something different, a real crowd
over Cuba and which culminated in that short but decisive Spanish- Iileaser, anel to do this he modeled its tower upon the Giralda in
American War of 1898. In the years leading up to this conflict, Seville. Built by the Almoravicls n the 12,h Century, the Giralda
anti-Spanish rhetoric ran high in the United States, especially in originally served as the minaret of that city's greal mosque, That
the newspapers controlled by William Randolph Hearst (1863- mosque was demolished following Seville's capture by Christians
1951). These papers, stating with the New York [oumal, drew in 1248, but the Giralda, somewhat miraculously, survived, and
upon that deep-well spring of anti-Spanish sentiment known as was soon transformed into a bell tower attached to the sprawling
the Black Legend in order to headline the inhumanity, the cruelty, Gothic cathedral erected on the site where the mosque once stood.
backwardness, and other failings of the Spanish regime in Cuba In the sixteenth century the Giralda acquired a new spire topped
along with those of the Spanish nation as a whole. Such criticism hy an angel, called the Giraldillo and symbolically intended to
was also reflected in the 1898 publication of a new English edition demonstrate the triumph of Christianity over Islam. In his version
of Bartolomé de las Casas, Brief Relation on the Destructiori o/ the ul the Giralda, White, a notorious womanizer, replaced the angel
lndies, one of the texts that initially helped the Black Legend. In with a gilded statue of the naked Diana, the Roman goddess of the
~() ,.."Ift,," L J...a;:{/Il
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TI1(~Country Cluh P!uZi.l in Kan-as Cil.y is an mal! with fourleen oren squares
~~n()rIl10US
inspired in Sevilliallurehileclure. 11was nne of Ihe Iirst american rnalls conceived hy .J.C.
"Giralda" built hy the well-knwon architect A. Pagl' Brown rinished in 1898 for the San Frallci""" Forry Ternrinal.
Nichols in rhe lweeruies. loIlO\'1tin~the idea 01' huying around the romantic ami Ilowered
squares olthe Sevilla «ourtyanls that he rell"'lIlberecl Irorn his travels around Andalucia.
Boca Raton, Coral Gables and other cities in south Florida. This MI,rollaand Ignacio Zuloaga, two contemporaries whose artistic
same style soon arrived in Maryland, New York, and other parts of lulcnls he was the hrst North American to promete."
the United States, and in doing so sparked a growing demand for It is easy to exaggerate Chase's influence on America's
Spanish iron work, tiles, and furnishings of various kinds. urtistic tastes, but his enthusiasm for the glories of Spanish art
Architecture alone, however, was not enough to contain ,,¡-••ved infectious. It also helped lo change US attitudes about the
America's growing enthusiasm for Spanish culture and arto In f\ignificance of Spanish art. For most of the nineteenth century
1890, the same year in which Manhattan inaugurated its version 111'I:-;l US critics agreed with Iackson Jarves, whose opinion of
of the Giralda, a Flamenco dancer known as La Cannencita "Spanish school of art,' was decidedly low, as the following quole
became something of a celebrity in New York following her ·1'1'0111 his 1874 book, Art- Thoughts, readily attest:
performance at a private party in the studio of the artist, William We !le,," nol look for the poetical or imaginative in Spanish art;
Merritt Chase. That Chase served as a Carmencita's New York seldom Ior very refined treuunent, and never for any intellectual
sponsor was no accident. He was part of generation of American elevalion above íhe actual life out of which it drew its restricted
stock-motives. Whal could be expected of painting in a. country
artists who, starting in the 1860s, journeyed to Spain in search
where masked inquisitors visited every sludio and either destroyed
of themes defined as picturesque, the name given that genre of
and dauberl over any details thal did not accord with their Ianatical
painting that had its roots in the Romantic movement of the early scruples .. .There are admirable points in Spanish painting, but il is
ninteenth century and which, as it developed, embraced crumbing nol a school of popular value or interest. l3esides its two chicf names
ruins, peasants garbed in traditional dress, and in the case 01 [Velazquez and MurilloJ it has no repulation beyond its own locality,
Spain, gypsies, bullfighters, and the like. The the British artists The fixed purpose of its priesl-ridden work was lo stultily the human
intellect ami make life a burden instead of a blessing."
David Roberts (1796-1864) who created the US market Ior the
Spanish picturesque with his large portfolio volumes featuring Such beliefs, inspired by the anti-Spanish beliefs altached
views of the Alhambra, and scenes of bullfights set against the !o the Black Legend, only began to change in the 1890s, as a
backdrop of the Giralda.s Such were the images of Spain that US series of art critics, picking up on the ideas of Chase and other
artists, starting in the 1850s, would emulate. One of the first was urtists who had discovered the glories of Spanish Old Master
the New York artist Samuel Colman, whose paintings of "sunny" nrt, detected a similarity between the freedom of expression and
Spain met with favorable critical reviews. Soon, other more uaturalistic style of Velázquez and El Greco and that of Manet,
famous artists - Thomas Eakins, Iohn Singer Sargent, and Mary 1legas and the French Impressionists, that is, the artists whose
Cassatt- followed in Colman's tracks." As for Chase, his initial work American collectors were especially eager to acquire.
visits to Spain in 1881 and 1882 also led to drawings and pictures
featuring picturesque themes. But Chase also took advantage of The rapid diffusion of ideas about the supposed "modernity"
these visits to discover the work of Velázquez, an artist whose 01" Spanish Old Master art unleashed the artistic equivalent of the
:11
:~o/(¡'·"III~II .. ¡":lIg(U/
N.·w York, however, the demand Ior Spanish pictures did not
~4,c "'lIl1y begin until the 1890s, the moment at which Spanish art
\VIISrapidly coming into vogue. One sign of change carne in 1897
wllt'lI Henry and Louisine Havemeyer, a wealthy couple who had
liI't'viously specialized in collecting pictures by contemporary
Vr¡,nch artists, decided to purchase two portraits by Goya-
hollt are today in the National Gallery, in Washington, De. The
l luvemeyers would subsequently acquire another ten works
1IIIributed to Goya, in addition to two notable works by El Greco
The Cardenal seated in a Chair and View ofToledo. These and
111 lier acquisitions allowed Louisine to boast that "We were, so to
"peak, Loopen the market for Greco's and Goya's, at least in the
l lnited States.?" Mrs. Havemeyer was right, as it did nol take long
holore other NeIVYork co11ectors- a graup that included Benjamin
Altrnan, Philip Lehman, and Henry Clay Frick - clamo red to add
In 1890, the flamenco dancer Carmen Dausel, Carmencua beca me a celebrity in New wurks by El Greco, Velázquez, and Goya to what were arguably
York City aíter a performance in MerriL Chase studio. On Ihe left, \Villia", Merrit Chase,
IIIClargest and most important private art collections in the
Carmencua, 1890, oil on canvass, The Metropolitan Museum 01' Arl. Gift ofSir \Villiam
Van !-lorne, 1906. On the right: .lohn Singer Sargent, Carmencua, 1890, oil on canvass, IJ nited States.
Musee Quai D'Orsay, Paris.
Yet this interest, novel for its time, in Spanish pictures
was one simply one, admittedly pricey, aspect of America's
Alaska gold rush of 1897. Across the country wealthy collectors p;rowingfascination with the artistic and cultural patrimony of
competed with one another in a seemingly no-holds-barred ~pain. In 1903, for example, William Randolph Hearst made
competition to span up choice examples of works then attributed to head line news, in both Spain and the United States, when he
El Greco, Goya, Velázquez, etc. 1 have written elsewhere about the uuempted to purchase an en tire Spanish patio of Renaissance
growing demand for Spanish Old Master art,!' but the key players rlesign - that of the Casa de Miranda in Burgos -, dismantle
in this particular (and expensive) game included Isabella Stewart it, and then have it shipped and re-assembled in New York. A
Gardner in Boston; Charles Deering in Chicago; John W Johnson, popular outcry in Burgos prevented this particular sale, although
P.A. B. Widener, and William Wilstach in Philadelphia; Charles in later years Hearst successfully managed lo export to the United
Taft in Cincinnati; and William Van Horne, an American living States a11manner of Spanish artefacts, including two monastery
in Toronto and one whose predilection Ior Spanish Old Masters e o$e r.loisters and the elaborate choir screen from the cathedral 01'
merited an extensive article in the New York Times in 1915.12 Valladolid which now can be seen on the main floor of New York's
The Times' s decision to run an article on Van Horne's Metropolitan Museum."
Spanish pictures speaks directly to that city's growing fascination Another New Yorker with similar interests was Archer
with Spanish art. Just as the New York architect Stanford White Milton Huntington (1870-1955). To be sure, Huntington's
helped establish the fashion for Spanish style building, the collecting career was markedly different than Hearst's. The latter
nation's grawing taste for Spanish pictures can be traced to hought mainly for personal enjoyment; the former to enrich the
William H. Aspinwall (1807-1875), who, starting already in collections of the Hispanic Society of America, an institution
1857, made it business to add works then attributed to Murillo
that he founded in 1904 in order to promote Hispanic culture in
and Velázquez to his growing collection of Old Master. Even in
the United States. Huntington's particular passion was Spanish
:~2 U¡"/¡"nf 1" !\lIg(1I/
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literature, especially that of medieval and Renaissance. In 1897, :-;I'"nish American War of 1898 and America's enthusiastic
for example, just turned twenty six, he translated and published I,,,dlrace of a culture it previously held at arms length. 1 do not
the Poem o/ El Cid, and in the course of the following years prctend at this point lo be able to answer this query, but it in and
financed the publication of facsimile editions of another forty uround the year 1890, various factors united to help change the
important works of Spanish literature in the belief that they were i\ merican attitudes about Spain and its culture.
relatively unknown and underappreciated in the United States He Arnong these Iactors the lasting influence of the Iamous
also sponsored the teaching of Spanish in New York schools as NI~wYork author, Washington Irving (1783-1859) was key.
well as to support the activities of the famed Casa Hispánica that Irving's interest in Spain began with Columbus, and began with
Frederco de Onís established at Columbia University in 1920.15 lIis decision to write a biography of the famous mariner using
Huntington, however, is best remember for the Hispanic I.ooks and manuscripts that were only available in Madrid and
Society of America was he dedicated to "the advancement of Soville. Irving embarked on this particular emission during
the study of the Spanish and Portuguese languages, literature, III{~winter of 1825, but it was only a mater of months before
and history." Originally conceived as a "Spanish museurn," iuterest in Columbus broadened to include the whole of Spain's
Huntington envisioned an institution similar to that of London's «ornplex history, especially that of the MiddIe Ages when much
British Library to the extent that it combined a library with ,,1' the country was subject to Muslim rule, Irving's best-selling
selected works of art. But whereas the collections of the British l.iography of Columbus appeared in 1829, and was followed two
Library were universal in scope, those the Hispanic Society, as years latter by his Tales o/ the Alhambra, a book whose romantic
its name suggests, were to be focused exclusively on the Iberian vision of Spain arguably did more to alter the image of Spain
world, Spain in particular, His goal: the preservation of that in the United States than any other.!" Previously, the American
nation's cultural patrimony and to make that patrimony known to image of Spain was Spain of the Black Legend: dark, sad, a
an American audience. uation weakened by ignorant priests, malevolent inquisitors, cruel
und tyrannical kings. Irving conjured up another Spain: sunny,
With these aims in rnind, Huntington purchased (in 1902)
happy, brimrning with adventure. Most importantly, Iriving's
one of Spain's finest private libraries - that of Marqués de Ierez de
Spain was iredeerningly picturesque, owing to the Alhambra and
los Caballeros - and shipped it to New York, where it constituted
oiher Muslim monuments, its gypsies, valient toreros, and dark-
the nucleus of Hispanic Society. In addition to books and
eyed wornen whose beauty mantillas were unable to hide. The
manuscripts, the Hispanic Society housed paintings, ceramics,
result - and to be honest, Irving was by no means the 0111)' writer
sculpture and other artefacts that Huntington and his agents
who created this image of sunny Spain - was that of an quasi-
purchased in Europe with an eye towards creating a collection
exotic yet accessible country, one that any American interested
that would demonstrate what he once referred to as "the soul of
in the picturesque - a magic word for many nineteenth-century
Spain.?" Opened to the public in 1908, the Hispanic Society
attracted vast crowds to its Neo-Classical building in uptown Iravellers, - needed to experience first hand.
New York, and the crowds returned in the following years for During lrving's life time - he died in 1859 - the number of
exhibitions of paintings by Joaquín Sorolla and Ignacio Zuloaga, Arnericans who visited Spain were relatively few. But what began
the first of Spain's "rnodern" artists to acquire a large following ¡IS a trickIe SOOI1 developed into a steady stream. The turning
in the United States. Their success, in fact, led one New York art point was the 1870s, the decade in which marked the opening
dealer to comrnent that "Spain sank low in our defeat of her, she 01' direct raillink between Paris and Madrid together with a
has repliedwith the lightnings of art."!" prolonged period of political stability that was ushered in by the
The comment is apt, and directly relevant to the question restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in 1875. This increase is
reflected in the visitor books of the Prado Museum, a mecca for
posed at the outset of this essay: the relationship between the
precisely the same to-day as when Velázquez painted his sharp . in the New World. The seeds of this idea can be traced back to the
wiry faces in the " Buveurs" or Murillo his dark children." 20 íumed Boston historian William Hickling Prescott (1796-1859),
\ Similar ideas could be found in a host of travel books, among «specially his best-selling History of the Conquest of Mexico
I :~(INil'IIII/I/ L
them H.C Chatfield-Taylor's Spain: Land ofthe Castanet (1896),
a book that prompted one irate Spanish reviewer to comment that
A."gtlll
(1.843) which credited Spain with the overthrow of the semi-
iivilized Aztecs anel advancing the cause of progre ss and religion
:1'1
in the Americas. The next major writer to address this partrcular
theme was Charles Lummis (1859-1928), another New Englander
who, following his education at Harvard, moved to California in
the 1880s and who soon became known as the "apostle of the
South- West" on account of books and essays the devoted to history
and culture of that part of the United States. Of key importance
was his The Spanisli Pioneers (1st edition, 1893), which argued that
the culture and civilization of the United States owed as much, if
not more, to Spain's conquistadors and missionaries who settled
he south wesl than the English men and women who settled the
East. Turning his back on the Black Legend, Lummis went so far
as lo characterize what he termed Spanish "pioneering" in the
Americas the "human and progressive spirit which marked it first
to last" in addition to describing it as nothing less than "the most
marvelous feaL in manhood in a11history."22
1:,1). Arnold, photographer, Chicago Exposition 1893, Avery Plate no, 8. Columbia
t luivcrsity Libraries.
Similar sentiments emerged, not coincidentally, at the '1'1,,:world's Columbian Exposilion celebrating the 400'10 anniversary 01' Chrislopher
great Colurnbian Exposition celebrated in Chicago during i;plombus landing in America wus allended by 716.881 people. Spain senl more than
the surnrner of 1893. Attended by hundreds of thousands of 1,,,,, hundred works of L86 artists lo the Palace of Fine Arts.
Americans from all parLs of the United States, the Iair aimed at
clemonstrating the wealth, power and importance of the Unites
lo the spiritual dimension of the Columbus's enterprise. The New
States. At Yet it also represented the country, and its many
\'(IrkTimes article read: "In America Columbus is remembered
achievement, as the direct heirs of the Colurnbus and the other
os the discoverer, not the introducer of that horrible phase of
Spaniards who settled the New World, and did so s through
Christianity which destroyed in Spain the Moors and the Jews
monumental sculptures featuring the famous mariner togeLher
...and wiped out whole populations of our brethren redskin in
with a commemorative quarter featuring a likeness of Queen
South America and [he West Indies in circumstances of atrocity
Isabella, the Spanish monarch who sponsored the fabled mariner's
which the world can never forgive or forget."23
momenLous voyage across the Ocean Sea.
In contrast, Spain and its memory fared considerably
To be sure, not everything went in Spain's favor. To begin
hctter in Los Angeles, which, starting in 1895, that city launched
with, the Colurnbian quarter did not sell well; many copies had
la Fiesta, a celebration designed to demonstrate that city's -
Lobe returned to Philadelphia where it was originally minted.
lilld California's - Hispanic roots. Spain came off equally well
Another setback occurred in 1992 when a nurnber of Spaniards
[n Buffalo, New York, which, starting early in the 1890s, laid
living in New York were outmaneuverecl that city's larger and more
plans for a Pan American Exposition designed to "celebrate the
powerful Italian community when they attempted to erect a replica
supremacy of the United States in the Western hernisphere" as
of Jerónimo Suñol's Madrid statue of Columbus at the 591h Street
\Vdl as to promote the essential unity of the Western hemisphere.
entrance to Central Park. In the end the Spanish community
"This to be an American Exposition-North, South and Middle ..."
finally persuaded the local park commission to erect the statue us one of its organizers wrote. When it carne, however, to the fair's
to be in another Iocation, but when it was finally unveiled in urchitectural scheme, the organizers decided upon a Spanish
February, 1894, critic's not only attacked Suñol's artistry but íheme in the belief that this particular style best embodied the
claimed that the statue drew unnecessary and unwanted attention idea of "America." The war of 1898 postponed the opening of this
;{H I(;I'/¡(/I'II 1,. AOp:1I1I
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exposition until190l, but the anti-Spanish rhetoric occasioned 111(\writings Henry Iames (1843-1916), who work is synonymous
by this conflict did nothing to alter this architectural scheme Willl the late nineteenth century that era of American expansion
which, as noted earlier, centered a brightly-illuminated replica known as the Gilded Age. A New Yorker who lived much of his
of the Giralda As for the fair's Spanish Renaissance design, one [il« in Europe, Iames wrestled with the idea of what it meant
commentator welcomed that particular style in the belief that "it 111 he an American, a topie he addressed in both in his private
symbolizes our welcome to the genius of the Latins to mingle their 1'(1I·1:(~spondence as well as his novels. As early 1867, for example,
strains with the genius of the Anglo-Saxons .... "24 One can readily [iI· «onfessed that "1 think lo be an American is al1 excellent
object to the racialist terminology this commentator employed, but proparation for culture ... we can deal freely with forms of
the observation is important to the extent that it suggests that the uivilisation not out"own; we can pick and choose and assimilate
war of 1898 did little to arrest the momentum of the Spanish craze. !l1I.! in short (aesthetically etc) claim our property wherever we
right, possibly even the obligation to enrich its own culture and hurdly in a position to adequately maintain, let alone appreciate,
traditions with that of other nations. Such ideas can be found in ils artistic and architectural treasures. Even, Huntington, the
40 Ricíuud L Kago¡¡ Id
is also worth noting that the Neio York Times adopted asimila¡'
pfJsition in 1910 when it reported on Hearst's frustrated attempt
1', export the patio of the Casa de Miranda to the United States.
~I ri king a decidedly nationalist note, the newspaper reported
tlrat: "It is good for the people ofBurgos to be alive to the worth of
ils treasures '" foreign folk ought to be grateful to the American
«ollectors oo. for stirring up their pridc."