Aesthetic Transcendentalism and its legacy: Margaret Fuller, William Wetmore Story, and Henry James

Through her promulgation of European high art, Margaret Fuller exerted a unique influence on antebellum American culture that had profound consequences not only for her immediate circle but for her cultural descendents in the Gilded Age. Establishing rigorous critical standards for American painting, sculpture, and literature, Fuller looked to art for the truth and meaning she found in politics and religion. Through her teaching, writing, and "Conversations," Fuller influenced a circle of young devotees in Boston, many of whom followed careers in art criticism, painting, and sculpture based on her fusion of art, politics, and religion that constituted her own aesthetic Transcendentalism. Among her acolytes, Fuller's influence was most strongly discernible in the sculpture of William Wetmore Story who was recognized as one the most important members of the second generation of American antebellum Neoclassical sculptors. Story and others embarked on Fuller's Transcendental version of the important nineteenth century cultural excursion called the Grand Tour. As an American critic and artist equally concerned with the fate of art in America, Henry James joined Fuller's debate over the form and content of American literature and art. James participated in a one-sided transgenerational "Conversation" with Fuller based on his fascination with her antebellum persona, his involvement with surviving members of Fuller's circle, and his own efforts to establish higher standards for American art. James cultivated his own circle in the postbellum era that included many of Fuller's closest associates, including Fuller's close friend, famous "bluestocking" Caroline Sturgis Tappan, as well as others intimately involved with Fuller such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Wetmore Story, and Clover Adams. James's recognition of Fuller's significance to antebellum American culture as well as the similarity of their interests required him to explain her significance and situate himself in relation to her aesthetic vision for America. In particular, James recognized Fuller's approach to the Grand Tour as a quest for subjective engagement as opposed to objective commodification. Bracketing either side of the Civil War, Fuller and James each represented ways of elevating American art by incorporating European prototypes and avoiding sentimentalism.