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The S¡)(!Il;sh C,.aze: The Disn}lwry of Spanish ArLand Cultnrc in the UniLed Stat!:'s

Richard L. Kagan

"But you know what Spaniards are- hospitality itself =andthat grand airl By Jovel 1 don't tbink any nation in Europe canapproach it."! Such was the opinion of William Merritt Chase,tbe New York artist whose sympathy for Spain, its people, andespecially its art epitornizes what can be caUed "The SpanishCraze" in the United States. The term relers to a particular erain US hislory when seemingly everything Spanish- art, music,language, literature, architecture, and more- was in vogue.This particular "craze" began in 1890s, and lasted, with fewinterruptions until the early 1930s, when a combination of factorsassociatee! with the Creat Depression, the victory of GeneralFrancisco Franco ane! his Falange Party in Spain's bloody civilwar (1936-1939), and changing tastes and fashions in the UnitedState brought it to an abrupt enel.

This craze, 1 should add, was not exclusively Spanishin the peninsular sense of the tenn. Rather it intermingled withvarious elements of Mexican culture, in part because of racialistterminology that era tended to confíate Spanish and Mexicanunder the rubric Hispanic, or simply Spanish. Thus Zorro, playedby Douglas Fairbanks Sr. in several Hollywood films of the early1920s, was interchangeably Mexican and Spanish, whereas isknown Spanish Reviva! architecture - a style popularized throughout the United States during the 1920s - was actually a blendof Spanish design elements with others, elaborately decorated

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On the [en: the first "Giralda" in the Uniied Staies (1890). Jt was designed by the Iarnous New Yorker architectStanford While for a new Madison Square Garden. Unlil it was demolished in 1920 it was the seeond lall",1 buildingin the eity. On the right: The "Giralda" that was built up in 1901 Ior the Pan-American Exhibilion in Buílalo (NY).

doorways for example, thal are more properly defined as SpanishColonial, or Mexican.

But whatever one calls it, the discovery of Spanish art andculture in the United States began at precisely that moment when,as Stanley Payne has explained in the previous text, was markedby growing political tensions between Spain and the United Statesover Cuba and which culminated in that short but decisive Spanish-American War of 1898. In the years leading up to this conflict,anti-Spanish rhetoric ran high in the United States, especially inthe newspapers controlled by William Randolph Hearst (1863-1951). These papers, stating with the New York [oumal, drewupon that deep-well spring of anti-Spanish sentiment known asthe Black Legend in order to headline the inhumanity, the cruelty,backwardness, and other failings of the Spanish regime in Cubaalong with those of the Spanish nation as a whole. Such criticismwas also reflected in the 1898 publication of a new English editionof Bartolomé de las Casas, Brief Relation on the Destructiori o/ thelndies, one of the texts that initially helped the Black Legend. In

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¡"ss than transparenl effort to cash in on the anti-Spanish fervor,,1" the rnoment, the translation appear under the sensationalistIitle of An Historical and True Account o/ the Cruel Massacre andSlaughter 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 UnitedSlates to a defective national character distinguished by a "blindnnd impenetrable pride" and a " spirit of conservatism whichrcjected all innovation - especially modern industrialism - in aworld of incessant change."2 .The juxtaposition between this kind01" inflammatory criticism and the pro-Spanish sentiments of Chaseon the other is striking. One of the aims of this essay is to addressthis apparent contradiction, and in doing so attempt explain theconnection between the "Spanish Craze" and the war of 1898.

First the "Spanish Craze." What were its dimensions andwhat form did it take? Its beginnings are ill-defined, but a possibleslarting point is 1890, ayear marked by the inauguration, in thelieart of Manhattan, of a new Madison Square Garden, the secondI of four] such amphitheaters known by that name. Designed byIhe farnous New York architect, Stanford White (1853-1906), themost striking feature of the new Garden was not its main building- designed in ltalian Renaissance style - but its soaring, three-hundred [001 tower, then the second tallest in a city already famouslor its skyscrapers. Most early sky scrapers, in New York and otherNorth American cities, were generally built in neo-classical designand intended to emulate the glory and the power associated withthe ernpires of ancient Greece and Rome. When it came lo theCarden, however, White wanted something different, a real crowdIileaser, anel to do this he modeled its tower upon the Giralda inSeville. Built by the Almoravicls n the 12,h Century, the Giraldaoriginally served as the minaret of that city's greal mosque, Thatmosque was demolished following Seville's capture by Christiansin 1248, but the Giralda, somewhat miraculously, survived, andwas soon transformed into a bell tower attached to the sprawlingGothic cathedral erected on the site where the mosque once stood.In the sixteenth century the Giralda acquired a new spire toppedhy an angel, called the Giraldillo and symbolically intended todemonstrate the triumph of Christianity over Islam. In his versionul the Giralda, White, a notorious womanizer, replaced the angelwith a gilded statue of the naked Diana, the Roman goddess of the

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"Giralda" built hy the well-knwon architect A. Pagl' Brown rinished in 1898 for the San Frallci""" Forry Ternrinal.

hunt. From the outset, however, White's Giralda elicited nothingbut praise. "So big and so beauiiful," one critic wrote. "Nothingelse in NY has done so much lo clignify, adorn, and enliven itsneighborhood"." An<.1 even though the original Giralda was arguablymore "Moorish" than "Spanish," critics generally refcrred lo thisslriking new landrnark as a building of Spanish baroque design.

Al the same time, the novelty of White's " Spanish"Giralda was not slow to wear oIL In the decade that followedNew York City acquired two other buildings rnodeled on Giraldatogether with the famous "Spanish flats," a slring of luxuryapartment buildings - each named after a diíferent city in Spain- constructed on the southern edge Central Park South. Wh ite'sGiralda also led to a series of copy cat structures in variouscities across the United States. First in line was San Francisco,wbere the New York trained architect A. Page Brown aclded astriking Giralda-like tower to the city's new ferry terminal thatwas completed in 1898. Next came Buffalo, NY, where anotherGiralda replica, feslooned with 1000s of electric lights, stoodas the center piece of the Pan-American Exposition that washeld there in 1901. Miami and Kansas City came next, and thenfinally Cleveland, where construction of yet another replica of the

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TI1(~Country Cluh P!uZi.l in Kan-as Cil.y is an ~~n()rIl10USmal! with fourleen oren squaresinspired in Sevilliallurehileclure. 11was nne of Ihe Iirst american rnalls conceived hy .J.C.Nichols in rhe lweeruies. loIlO\'1tin~the idea 01' huying around the romantic ami Iloweredsquares olthe Sevilla «ourtyanls that he rell"'lIlberecl Irorn his travels around Andalucia.

Giralda, in the guise of the soaring Terminal Tower, was completedin 1928. By Ibis dale, the United States boastecl no fewer thanI welve replicas 01' Seville's famous landrnark.'

But the interest of American developers in buildings ofSpanish design did not end with the Giralda. In 1926, for example,ihe budding resort town of SI. Pelersburg, Florida added to itsgrowing array of luxury botels one called the Royalat, the centralpart of which was modeled after the Seville's Torre de Oro, anotherbuilding thal dated from the era in rnuch of Spain was subject toMuslim rule. The H.oyalat, however, was only one among manyFlorida hotels anel houses built in tbe so-called "Spanish Revival"style of architecture. Dating Irorn around 1912, this style firstmade its appearance in southern California where it representedthe outgrowth of the earlier "Mission Style," with its roots in thechurches and other buildings built by Spanish friars in Californiaand other parts of hat is now the American southwest. The firstsuch buildings, simple and relatively unadorned dated fromthe 1890s, but it did not take belong before the Mission Stylemetamorpbosed into él more eleganl mixture of Spanish andSpanish colonial architecture in the hands of Bertram Grosvenor

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Goodhue, the New York architect primarily responsible for theSpanish style buildings erected in San Diego in conjunction withthe Panama-California Exposition of 1915. Within the course ofthe next decade different iterations of this new Spanish style foundits way into domestic architecture across southern California.Notable examples include the Casa de Herrero, in Montecito, CA,designed by George Washington Smith in 1924, and the complexof bungalow and houses Julia Morgan designed for WilliamRandolph Hearst in San Simeon, CA. Meanwhile, Addison Miznerbrought Spanish Revival domes tic architecture to Palm Beach,Boca Raton, Coral Gables and other cities in south Florida. Thissame style soon arrived in Maryland, New York, and other parts ofthe United States, and in doing so sparked a growing demand forSpanish iron work, tiles, and furnishings of various kinds.

Architecture alone, however, was not enough to containAmerica's growing enthusiasm for Spanish culture and arto In1890, the same year in which Manhattan inaugurated its versionof the Giralda, a Flamenco dancer known as La Cannencitabecame something of a celebrity in New York following herperformance at a private party in the studio of the artist, WilliamMerritt Chase. That Chase served as a Carmencita's New Yorksponsor was no accident. He was part of generation of Americanartists who, starting in the 1860s, journeyed to Spain in searchof themes defined as picturesque, the name given that genre ofpainting that had its roots in the Romantic movement of the earlyninteenth century and which, as it developed, embraced crumbingruins, peasants garbed in traditional dress, and in the case 01Spain, gypsies, bullfighters, and the like. The the British artistsDavid Roberts (1796-1864) who created the US market Ior theSpanish picturesque with his large portfolio volumes featuringviews of the Alhambra, and scenes of bullfights set against thebackdrop of the Giralda.s Such were the images of Spain that USartists, starting in the 1850s, would emulate. One of the first wasthe New York artist Samuel Colman, whose paintings of "sunny"Spain met with favorable critical reviews. Soon, other morefamous artists - Thomas Eakins, Iohn Singer Sargent, and MaryCassatt- followed in Colman's tracks." As for Chase, his initialvisits to Spain in 1881 and 1882 also led to drawings and picturesfeaturing picturesque themes. But Chase also took advantage ofthese visits to discover the work of Velázquez, an artist whose

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'111111ralistic style of painting he endeavored to emula te, especiaUyI11 portraiture. Chase in fact was so smitten with Velázquez that he

. j1IlI,1 ically announced that this Spanish master a as "the greatestIltl inter that ever lived."? He also went as far to dress up hisIlallghter in dresses modeled after those depicted in Velázquez's

.Iwknowledged masterpiece, Las Meninas.8 Starting in the 1890s,IlIon·,over,Chase led groups of art students to the museum so thatJltey, too, could have the opportunity to - and here 1 quote him

. rlircctly - "revel in Velázquez ...not forgetting Greco, Goya, and11 f<:wmore [Spanish artists ]," a list that included both JoaquínMI,rollaand Ignacio Zuloaga, two contemporaries whose artisticlulcnls he was the hrst North American to promete."

It is easy to exaggerate Chase's influence on America'surtistic tastes, but his enthusiasm for the glories of Spanish art,,¡-••ved infectious. It also helped lo change US attitudes about thef\ignificance of Spanish art. For most of the nineteenth century111'I:-;l US critics agreed with Iackson Jarves, whose opinion of"Spanish school of art,' was decidedly low, as the following quole

·1'1'0111 his 1874 book, Art- Thoughts, readily attest:

We !le,," nol look for the poetical or imaginative in Spanish art;seldom Ior very refined treuunent, and never for any intellectualelevalion above íhe actual life out of which it drew its restrictedstock-motives. Whal could be expected of painting in a. countrywhere masked inquisitors visited every sludio and either destroyedand dauberl over any details thal did not accord with their Ianaticalscruples .. .There are admirable points in Spanish painting, but il isnol a school of popular value or interest. l3esides its two chicf names[Velazquez and MurilloJ it has no repulation beyond its own locality,The fixed purpose of its priesl-ridden work was lo stultily the humanintellect ami make life a burden instead of a blessing."

Such beliefs, inspired by the anti-Spanish beliefs altached!o the Black Legend, only began to change in the 1890s, as aseries of art critics, picking up on the ideas of Chase and otherurtists who had discovered the glories of Spanish Old Masternrt, detected a similarity between the freedom of expression anduaturalistic style of Velázquez and El Greco and that of Manet,1legas and the French Impressionists, that is, the artists whosework American collectors were especially eager to acquire.

The rapid diffusion of ideas about the supposed "modernity"01" Spanish Old Master art unleashed the artistic equivalent of the

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In 1890, the flamenco dancer Carmen Dausel, Carmencua beca me a celebrity in NewYork City aíter a performance in MerriL Chase studio. On Ihe left, \Villia", Merrit Chase,Carmencua, 1890, oil on canvass, The Metropolitan Museum 01' Arl. Gift ofSir \VilliamVan !-lorne, 1906. On the right: .lohn Singer Sargent, Carmencua, 1890, oil on canvass,Musee Quai D'Orsay, Paris.

Alaska gold rush of 1897. Across the country wealthy collectorscompeted with one another in a seemingly no-holds-barredcompetition to span up choice examples of works then attributed toEl Greco, Goya, Velázquez, etc. 1 have written elsewhere about thegrowing demand for Spanish Old Master art,!' but the key playersin this particular (and expensive) game included Isabella StewartGardner in Boston; Charles Deering in Chicago; John W Johnson,P.A. B. Widener, and William Wilstach in Philadelphia; CharlesTaft in Cincinnati; and William Van Horne, an American livingin Toronto and one whose predilection Ior Spanish Old Mastersmerited an extensive article in the New York Times in 1915.12

The Times' s decision to run an article on Van Horne'sSpanish pictures speaks directly to that city's growing fascinationwith Spanish art. Just as the New York architect Stanford Whitehelped establish the fashion for Spanish style building, thenation's grawing taste for Spanish pictures can be traced toWilliam H. Aspinwall (1807-1875), who, starting already in1857, made it business to add works then attributed to Murilloand Velázquez to his growing collection of Old Master. Even in

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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 1897wllt'lIHenry and Louisine Havemeyer, a wealthy couple who hadliI't'viously specialized in collecting pictures by contemporaryVr¡,nch artists, decided to purchase two portraits by Goya-hollt are today in the National Gallery, in Washington, De. Thel luvemeyers would subsequently acquire another ten works1IIIributed to Goya, in addition to two notable works by El Greco

The Cardenal seated in a Chair and View ofToledo. These and111 lier acquisitions allowed Louisine to boast that "We were, so to"peak, Loopen the market for Greco's and Goya's, at least in thel lnited States.?" Mrs. Havemeyer was right, as it did nol take longholore other NeIVYork co11ectors- a graup that included BenjaminAltrnan, Philip Lehman, and Henry Clay Frick - clamo red to addwurks by El Greco, Velázquez, and Goya to what were arguablyIIIClargest and most important private art collections in theIJ nited States.

Yet this interest, novel for its time, in Spanish pictureswas one simply one, admittedly pricey, aspect of America'sp;rowingfascination with the artistic and cultural patrimony of~pain. In 1903, for example, William Randolph Hearst madehead line news, in both Spain and the United States, when heuuempted to purchase an en tire Spanish patio of Renaissancerlesign - that of the Casa de Miranda in Burgos -, dismantleit, and then have it shipped and re-assembled in New York. Apopular outcry in Burgos prevented this particular sale, althoughin later years Hearst successfully managed lo export to the UnitedStates a11manner of Spanish artefacts, including two monastery

e o$e r.loisters and the elaborate choir screen from the cathedral 01'Valladolid which now can be seen on the main floor of New York'sMetropolitan Museum."

Another New Yorker with similar interests was ArcherMilton Huntington (1870-1955). To be sure, Huntington'scollecting career was markedly different than Hearst's. The latterhought mainly for personal enjoyment; the former to enrich thecollections of the Hispanic Society of America, an institutionthat he founded in 1904 in order to promote Hispanic culture inthe United States. Huntington's particular passion was Spanish

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literature, especially that of medieval and Renaissance. In 1897,for example, just turned twenty six, he translated and publishedthe Poem o/ El Cid, and in the course of the following yearsfinanced the publication of facsimile editions of another fortyimportant works of Spanish literature in the belief that they wererelatively unknown and underappreciated in the United States Healso sponsored the teaching of Spanish in New York schools aswell as to support the activities of the famed Casa Hispánica thatFrederco de Onís established at Columbia University in 1920.15

Huntington, however, is best remember for the HispanicSociety of America was he dedicated to "the advancement ofthe study of the Spanish and Portuguese languages, literature,and history." Originally conceived as a "Spanish museurn,"Huntington envisioned an institution similar to that of London'sBritish Library to the extent that it combined a library withselected works of art. But whereas the collections of the BritishLibrary were universal in scope, those the Hispanic Society, asits name suggests, were to be focused exclusively on the Iberianworld, Spain in particular, His goal: the preservation of thatnation's cultural patrimony and to make that patrimony known toan American audience.

With these aims in rnind, Huntington purchased (in 1902)one of Spain's finest private libraries - that of Marqués de Ierez delos Caballeros - and shipped it to New York, where it constitutedthe nucleus of Hispanic Society. In addition to books andmanuscripts, the Hispanic Society housed paintings, ceramics,sculpture and other artefacts that Huntington and his agentspurchased in Europe with an eye towards creating a collectionthat would demonstrate what he once referred to as "the soul ofSpain.?" Opened to the public in 1908, the Hispanic Societyattracted vast crowds to its Neo-Classical building in uptownNew York, and the crowds returned in the following years forexhibitions of paintings by Joaquín Sorolla and Ignacio Zuloaga,the first of Spain's "rnodern" artists to acquire a large followingin the United States. Their success, in fact, led one New York artdealer to comrnent that "Spain sank low in our defeat of her, shehas repliedwith the lightnings of art."!"

The comment is apt, and directly relevant to the questionposed at the outset of this essay: the relationship between the

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:-;I'"nish American War of 1898 and America's enthusiasticI,,,dlrace of a culture it previously held at arms length. 1 do notprctend at this point lo be able to answer this query, but it in anduround the year 1890, various factors united to help change thei\ merican attitudes about Spain and its culture.

Arnong these Iactors the lasting influence of the IamousNI~wYork author, Washington Irving (1783-1859) was key.Irving's interest in Spain began with Columbus, and began withlIis decision to write a biography of the famous mariner usingI.ooks and manuscripts that were only available in Madrid andSoville. Irving embarked on this particular emission duringIII{~winter of 1825, but it was only a mater of months beforeiuterest in Columbus broadened to include the whole of Spain's«ornplex history, especially that of the MiddIe Ages when much,,1' the country was subject to Muslim rule, Irving's best-sellingl.iography of Columbus appeared in 1829, and was followed twoyears latter by his Tales o/ the Alhambra, a book whose romanticvision of Spain arguably did more to alter the image of Spainin the United States than any other.!" Previously, the Americanimage of Spain was Spain of the Black Legend: dark, sad, auation weakened by ignorant priests, malevolent inquisitors, cruelund tyrannical kings. Irving conjured up another Spain: sunny,happy, brimrning with adventure. Most importantly, Iriving'sSpain was iredeerningly picturesque, owing to the Alhambra andoiher Muslim monuments, its gypsies, valient toreros, and dark-eyed wornen whose beauty mantillas were unable to hide. Theresult - and to be honest, Irving was by no means the 0111)' writerwho created this image of sunny Spain - was that of an quasi-exotic yet accessible country, one that any American interestedin the picturesque - a magic word for many nineteenth-centuryIravellers, - needed to experience first hand.

During lrving's life time - he died in 1859 - the number ofArnericans who visited Spain were relatively few. But what began¡IS a trickIe SOOI1 developed into a steady stream. The turningpoint was the 1870s, the decade in which marked the opening01' direct raillink between Paris and Madrid together with aprolonged period of political stability that was ushered in by therestoration of the Bourbon monarchy in 1875. This increase isreflected in the visitor books of the Prado Museum, a mecca for

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foreigners visiting Spain, many of whom identified themselves inthese registers as tourists, a neo-logism that suggested travelerswhose primarily concerns were artistic and cultural. Increases inthe number of Arnericans visiting the Prado and other Spanishsites - the standard itinerary - was París to Madrid, then southtoward Toledo, Granada, Córdoba and Seville-also reflectedthe start of America's fabled Gilded Age - un era of drama ticeconomc growth and one that increased the number of Americanswith the wealth - and the inclination - to visit Europe. It isdifficult to know the percentage of these travellers includedSpain on their itineraries, but apart frorn the treasures to beseen in the Prado, what seems clear is that they visited Spain inseaerch of the picturesque, a term that also embraced the ideaof authentieity, naturalness, along with a society and a culturestill relatively untouched by the twin forces of industrializationand modernization. Such was one of the concepts that apparentlyattracted Huntington to Spain, and his diary he freely admittedthat the Spanish "back country" preserved the "true [Spanish]type."!? Spain in this sense appeared "authentic" in ways thatother European cultures were not. Spain, of course, was not as achanging as rnost Americans and other foreigners imagined, norwas it ever isolated from influenees from abroad. Nevertheless,US publishers, capitalizing on the success of Irving's romanticvision of the country, seemingly could not get enough of booksand articles that conjured up images of a country caught in a timewarp and where scenes straight out of the Middle Ages could stillbe seen in its streets. The list of these publications is far too longto ennumerate here, but faidy typical is the essay, "Street Life inSpain" that appeared in Ceruury Magazine in 1889 accompaniedby illustrations by William Merritt Chase. The author, SusanCarter, Director of Painting at New York's Cooper Union, drewupon well-established racial tropes to describe what she wed asthe timeless, unchanging character of the "Spanish type." "One isconstantly amused and surprised, "she wrote," to see that habitsand manners of the Spanish people, as well as their faces, areprecisely the same to-day as when Velázquez painted his sharpwiry faces in the " Buveurs" or Murillo his dark children." 20

Similar ideas could be found in a host of travel books, amongthem H.C Chatfield-Taylor's Spain: Land ofthe Castanet (1896),a book that prompted one irate Spanish reviewer to comment that

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The

Land of the CastanetSpanish Sketches

H .. C. Ch~tficld- Taylor

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¡1. C. Chatfiel-Taylor wrote The Larui o/Custanet (1896) alter he was invited by

11", ¡níanta Doña Eulalia de Borbon lo thelr-ria de Sevilla in 1896 and slayed with

lu-r al the Palacio San Telmo. The book is11 f'IO'"pilation of lexts that where published

lu-Iore in The Cosmopoliuui journal: Herecalled the hampa setullana 01' Triana

\\'I,i,'" he related to the Gangs 01' New York.

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CHICAGOHERBERT S. STONE é!f CO.

1896

~itch a title was the equivalent of calling the United States "the'1llflelof bacon."?'

The reviewer is correct, but Spain: Land of the Castanetund similar books both reflected and helped to construct a culturaltll.ereotype that ignored the nation's emergent industries in theBusque Country and Catalonia, let alone the nascent anarchistmovernent that culminated in Barcelona's Tragic Week in 1900,111113 Iocused on romanticized descriptions of gypsy dancers,ilushing matadors, and picturesque peasants stretched for a siestain the aftemoon sun. That stereotype was, of course, just that,hut it also served to generate new interest in both Spain and itsculture.

Equally important was the emergence, starting again in ther-losing decades of the nineteenth century, of the idea of Spain asIl country that contributed enormously to the march of civilization

. in the New World. The seeds of this idea can be traced back to theíumed Boston historian William Hickling Prescott (1796-1859),«specially his best-selling History of the Conquest of Mexico(1.843) which credited Spain with the overthrow of the semi-iivilized Aztecs anel advancing the cause of progre ss and religion

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in the Americas. The next major writer to address this partrculartheme was Charles Lummis (1859-1928), another New Englanderwho, following his education at Harvard, moved to California inthe 1880s and who soon became known as the "apostle of theSouth- West" on account of books and essays the devoted to historyand culture of that part of the United States. Of key importancewas his The Spanisli Pioneers (1st edition, 1893), which argued thatthe culture and civilization of the United States owed as much, ifnot more, to Spain's conquistadors and missionaries who settledhe south wesl than the English men and women who settled theEast. Turning his back on the Black Legend, Lummis went so faras lo characterize what he termed Spanish "pioneering" in theAmericas the "human and progressive spirit which marked it firstto last" in addition to describing it as nothing less than "the mostmarvelous feaL in manhood in a11history."22

Similar sentiments emerged, not coincidentally, at thegreat Colurnbian Exposition celebrated in Chicago duringthe surnrner of 1893. Attended by hundreds of thousands ofAmericans from all parLs of the United States, the Iair aimed atclemonstrating the wealth, power and importance of the UnitesStates. At Yet it also represented the country, and its manyachievement, as the direct heirs of the Colurnbus and the otherSpaniards who settled the New World, and did so s throughmonumental sculptures featuring the famous mariner togeLherwith a commemorative quarter featuring a likeness of QueenIsabella, the Spanish monarch who sponsored the fabled mariner'smomenLous voyage across the Ocean Sea.

To be sure, not everything went in Spain's favor. To beginwith, the Colurnbian quarter did not sell well; many copies hadLobe returned to Philadelphia where it was originally minted.Another setback occurred in 1992 when a nurnber of Spaniardsliving in New York were outmaneuverecl that city's larger and morepowerful Italian community when they attempted to erect a replicaof Jerónimo Suñol's Madrid statue of Columbus at the 591h Streetentrance to Central Park. In the end the Spanish communityfinally persuaded the local park commission to erect the statueto be in another Iocation, but when it was finally unveiled inFebruary, 1894, critic's not only attacked Suñol's artistry butclaimed that the statue drew unnecessary and unwanted attention

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1:,1). Arnold, photographer, Chicago Exposition 1893, Avery Plate no, 8. Columbiat luivcrsity Libraries.'1'1,,:world's Columbian Exposilion celebrating the 400'10 anniversary 01' Chrislopheri;plombus landing in America wus allended by 716.881 people. Spain senl more than1,,,,, hundred works of L86 artists lo the Palace of Fine Arts.

lo the spiritual dimension of the Columbus's enterprise. The New\'(Irk Times article read: "In America Columbus is rememberedos the discoverer, not the introducer of that horrible phase ofChristianity which destroyed in Spain the Moors and the Jews...and wiped out whole populations of our brethren redskin inSouth America and [he West Indies in circumstances of atrocitywhich the world can never forgive or forget."23

In contrast, Spain and its memory fared considerablyhctter in Los Angeles, which, starting in 1895, that city launchedla Fiesta, a celebration designed to demonstrate that city's -lilld California's - Hispanic roots. Spain came off equally well[n Buffalo, New York, which, starting early in the 1890s, laidplans for a Pan American Exposition designed to "celebrate thesupremacy of the United States in the Western hernisphere" as\Vdl as to promote the essential unity of the Western hemisphere."This to be an American Exposition-North, South and Middle ..."us one of its organizers wrote. When it carne, however, to the fair'surchitectural scheme, the organizers decided upon a Spanishíheme in the belief that this particular style best embodied theidea of "America." The war of 1898 postponed the opening of this

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exposition until190l, but the anti-Spanish rhetoric occasionedby this conflict did nothing to alter this architectural schemewhich, as noted earlier, centered a brightly-illuminated replicaof the Giralda As for the fair's Spanish Renaissance design, onecommentator welcomed that particular style in the belief that "itsymbolizes our welcome to the genius of the Latins to mingle theirstrains with the genius of the Anglo-Saxons .... "24 One can readilyobject to the racialist terminology this commentator employed, butthe observation is important to the extent that it suggests that thewar of 1898 did little to arrest the momentum of the Spanish craze.

Now, 1 think, is the time to return to the question posed atthe outset of this essay, namely, the nature of relationship betweenthe 1898 war - "a splendid little war" in the words of the then USSecretary of State (and former US ambassador to Spain) John Hay- and what 1 have described here as the nearly contemporaneous"Spanish Craze" the United States. What is that partisans of thewar viewed the victory of the United States primarily in moral,political and religious, even racialist terms. Some, for example,regarded it as victory for democracy over monarchy. Others sawit as a victory for Christianity, defined in wholly Protestant termsover Catholicism, as well as a powerful demonstration of thesuperiority of the Anglo-Saxon race, as embodied in the UnitedStates, over that of the Latins, as symbolized by Spain. To behonest not all Americans agreed with this view, and the voices ofthe so-called anti-expansionists echoed through Congress prior tothe vote ratifying the Treaty of París, the accorded that officiallyended the conflict and obliged Spain to cede its overseas coloniesto the United States. This vote, however, was wholly in keepingwith then President McKinley's notion that Arnerica's overseasexpansion was "divinely-ordained."

Such ideas were of course consistent with ideas aboutAmerica's "Manifest Destiny," the idea that America was obligedto increase its territorial holdings and in doing so bring thebenefits of what it understood as civilization to other parts of theworld. Manifest Destiny, however, also harbored notions of whatcan be termed cultural entitlement, or the idea that America,as it expanded, not only had a need for culture but also heright, possibly even the obligation to enrich its own culture andtraditions with that of other nations. Such ideas can be found in

40 Ricíuud L Kago¡¡ Id

111(\writings Henry Iames (1843-1916), who work is synonymousWilll the late nineteenth century that era of American expansionknown as the Gilded Age. A New Yorker who lived much of his[il« in Europe, Iames wrestled with the idea of what it meant111 he an American, a topie he addressed in both in his private1'(1I·1:(~spondenceas well as his novels. As early 1867, for example,[iI· «onfessed that "1 think lo be an American is al1 excellentproparation for culture ... we can deal freely with forms ofuivilisation not out"own; we can pick and choose and assimilate!l1I.! in short (aesthetically etc) claim our property wherever we

.. tiud it."25He suhsequently cleveloped this theme in his first major

.. novel, Roderick Hiulson (1875) where he created an he helped alsolO «stablish an agenda that many collectors would adapt, namely111<:idea that collecting, whatever its aesthetic pleasures, was not!lllly socia11y useful bul also patriotic, something, in other words,in which every red-blooded American with the means to do sot1hould engage. james's novel centers on the character of RolandMallet, who, as [ames describes him, "was extremely fond of allIh(~arts and had an almosl passionate enjoyment of pictures't."As a good citizen, Mallel believecl he should go abroad andI'li'cretly purchase valuahle specimens of European art thenprcsent them to an American city. To be sure, not a11collectorswere so altruisíic, but in creating Mallet as the central eharacterIlr his novel, Iames hel ped popularize the idea - call it "art Ior¡he nation"---that collecting, more than an individual caprice,wus also a patriotic act lo the extent that it served to enrich thenrtistic and cultural patrimony of America as a wbole. From thereil was only a short step to the attendant idea that collectors hadIh(-~responsibility to bequeath their private collections to publicmuseums, a practice that quickly emerged as one of the defmingolements of American society in the course of the Gilded Age.

From this perspective, the victory of the United States. ill the war of 1898, more than a simple affirmation of American

power, also represented a golden opportunity - one that invited¡\ rnericans to appropriate the patrirnony of a country whose artuud whose architecture that were just learning to appreciate. InIhe wake of defeat, Spain was viewed as weak and impoverished,11.11(1 from the perspective of avid collectors such as Hearst,hurdly in a position to adequately maintain, let alone appreciate,ils artistic and architectural treasures. Even, Huntington, the

Arthur Byne wrotc- with hiswife Mildrer] Stapley ""dliplebooks: Rejerúi (~r¡Jle Sf'OIl;""Renaissancc (l91~.) arulSpanish Iroti WíJl-ks(1') I S),Decomted lf00dell Ccaling»in Spaui (1920), SpulI;shCardens arul Patios ([')24)und Sfmnish lnterinrs andFurnuure [Three vol limes)in 1925,

selí-proclaimed champion of Spain in the United States, wasseemingly of the opinion that Americans interested in Europe,rather than reside there, should rather "Go there and get theirculture if possible.v" Huntington's use of the verb "get" intbis context is somewhat vague, but at the start of the twentiethcentury many Americas believed thatit was their obligation toacquire - rescue might be another word -Europe's art objects,restore and display them, and in doing so, enrich their countryand culture as a whole. For this reason, just as the United Stateswas discussing the terms of the Treaty of Paris with Spain, articlesin the Neio York Times suggested that the government, in lieuof territorial concessions, ought to have contents of the PradoMuseum shipped to New York. In the end the treaty tha't was soonto be signed contained no such provision, but the suggestion itselfwas in line with contemporary ideas about cultural entitlementtogether with the notion tbat United States would do much betterjob of preserving Spain's cultural patrimony than Spain itself. It

42 Ni.duml L KaKfw.

is also worth noting that the Neio York Times adopted asimila¡'pfJsition in 1910 when it reported on Hearst's frustrated attempt1', export the patio of the Casa de Miranda to the United States.~I ri king a decidedly nationalist note, the newspaper reportedtlrat: "It is good for the people ofBurgos to be alive to the worth ofils treasures '" foreign folk ought to be grateful to the American«ollectors oo. for stirring up their pridc."

In the end, such ideas were consistent with those ofIlIany US collectors with interests in Spanish art, and it certainlyí:oi ncided with those of the art and antiques dealers whospecialized in the export of Spain's treasures abroad. Notable inIhis regard was Arthur Byne (1884-1935), an American arc.hitectwho initially travelecl to Spain in 1910 uncler the auspices ofI1u·: Hispanic Society in order to photograph and catalogue itsmedieval monuments. Byne soon emerged as one of the leaclingcxperts in this particular field, and his expertise was evenrecognized by the Spanish government, which honorecl him withIhe title of Knight Grand Cross in the Order of Alfonso XII in1<)27. At the same time, Byne capitalized on his expertise to1iccome anirnportant antiques dealer, exporting all manner ofobjects - furniture, iron work, choir stalls, inlaid wooden ceilings,uud more - to numerous clients in the Unitecl States. Such wasiuterest in ancl passion for this particular enterprise that in 1934,in a letter to the architect Julia Morgan frankly admittecl that "Myuuly role in life is taking clown old works of art, conserving thernlo the best of my ability ancl shipping them to America.t"? Anisolated statement, perhaps, but one that also unclerlies much ofIlu~ Spanish Craze, especially in the years following the victory oflhe United States in the war of 1898.

'1<\

1 As cited in Donald G. Pisano, ALending Spiru in American Art:William Merriu. Chose, 1849-1916(SeaLLI,,: Henry ArL Gallery, 1983),157. Me rr ;IL was also one of ther.rst US painrers Loadmire ElCrece, ac.lvising both New York'sMetropoliLan Museum of Art andthe Philadelphia Museurn of Art LOpurchase paintings by this artist, SeeKatherine Meicalf Roof, Life and ArtDI lVilLiarn Merritt Chase (New York:Charles Scribners and Sons, 1917).290.

2 As r-ited in Kagan, Spain in America,256.

3 Marianna Criswald Van Rennselaer,"Madison Square Carden," CenturyMagazine 47 n. 5 (March, 1894):732-47.

4· [ am currently preparing a sLudy ofthese American "Ciraldas."

5 See. Ior exarnple, David Roberts,Picturesque sketclies in Spain takeritluring the yea.rs 1832 and 1833(London: Hodgson and Graves,ls:n).

6 For more on these artists, see MaryElizabeth Boone, Vista.s de España:American Views oJ the Ar¡ and DifeofSpain, /860-1914 (New Havenand London, Yale University Press,2007).

7 As ci ted i11 H. Barbara Wei 11berg,"William Merriu Chase and theAmerican Taste for Painting,"M"gaúne Anuques (163.4, April,2003),2.

8 For Chase and Spanish Art, seePisano,.4 Lending Spirit in AmericanArt, and Boone, Vistas de Espana,147-158.

9 For ihese remarks, see the article"GeL Together, Says Mr. Chase loFellow-Artists," New York Times, May21,1\105.

10 James Jackson Jarves, Ar¡ Thoughts.The Experiences arul Obseruauons oIal'/, American Amateur in Europa (NewYork, Hurd and Houghton, 1871),75.

44 Richurd 1_ A:crgrl11

11 See Richard 1. Kagan, "The SpanishTum": The Discovery of Spanish Artin the United States, 1887-1920,"in Esmee Quodboch , ed .. CollectingSpanisli Art in the Unued States(ColJege Par, PA, Pennsylvania StateUniversity Press, 2010, Iorthcoming).

12 Pictures in Sir William van Horne'sCollection," Neui York Times, 19 Sept.1915.

13 As cited in Frances WeiLzenhoffer,The Hauemeyers. ImpressionismComes to America ( Henry N.Abrams, New York, 1986), 111. Seealso Lousine H. Haverneyer, Scaeenlo SÚ;I)'.· Menwirs of a Collector ( NewYork, (New York, Privately printed forthe family of Mrs. H.O. Haverneyerand The Metropolitan M useurn ofArl, 1961), and Spleiulul Legacy TheHaoemeyer Collectioii ( New York,Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1993).

14 For Hearst's collections, see Mar)' L.Levkoff, Hearst the Collector (NewYork, Abrams, 1908).

15 The best introduction to Huntington,as collector and philanthropist,is Mitchell Codding, "ArcherHunlington. Champion 01"Spain inthe United States," in Richard L.Kagan, Spain in. Americ". The OriginsofHispanism in the Uniied SuuesChampagne-Urbana, TLL, Universityof lllinois Press, 2002),142-170.Mitchell Codding is the currentdirector of the Hispanic Society ofAmerica.

16 Codding, "Archer Huruington," 154.

17 Ibid. 161.

18 lrving and other nineteenth centuryUS hispanists may be approacheclthrough the essays gather in Kagan,Spain. in America, and [van [aksic,The Hispanic World arul AmericanIniellccuuil Life, 1820-1880 (London,Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).

19 Codding, "Archer Huntington," 157.

20 Su san Carter, "Street Life in Spain,"Cetuury Magazine 39 (No v 1889): 32-41, as cited in Boone, 170.

"1 1 •.•·I""r to H. C. Chatford-Taylor,'''I/I! of the Castanet (New York,11\(6). For the Spanish response, seelIara"l Sánchez Mantera, 'La imagend,· España en los Estados Unidos',in la imagen. de España en América,IHC)B-1931, ed. Rafael SánchezM"lIlero, José Manuel Macarro Vero,)' l.candro Al várez Rey (Sevilla,1 ')\1/1.),38-39.

y,~Charles Lurnmis, The SpauisliPioneers (Chicago, 1912),23.

'J:I '·N" excuse for the statue. AnuHrout to art as well as the artists ofAmérica." Neto Jork Times, Feb. 13.11)<)4.

. ,H (:. D. Arnold, The Pan-American!lx!iOsition. Illustroied: (Buífalo.I'J01),28-30.

2S H(~lIl'yJanu::-; In '1'1 ICtllI'-IS Sargc'l1l

P"rry. 20 St:ptc·IIII,,·r 1He,7. "Sp"\.li,I",d in n", C"III"II'/" !"IIIT.' I!/Hellrr lonu-s. l~t1. l'i¡'ITI' A, Walkt'1'alld Crq.~W, Za('lllIl'ias (I.i tll'ol 11.

UlliV''I',,,,iIY nI' Ndll'U."kll 1'1'1':':s. :!()()()).

1: 17'J.

2(. l h.nry .l.unos, !úu/t:,.¡/'k I/IIt/SOIl (NI'\\'

York: .I.S. ()sgllod. IB7:'). ("1."1'.1. ·1·.

'27 As f:il(~d in CoddillJ,!;. "An,111'!'l luruingron," 16:3-

28 "Pride 01' Burgos," The Ni-in };,rkTimes, 3 Novemher ] 91 o, a.

29 As cited in Sara Holmes 130Illl·II,·,[ulia Morgan Archiiect (New York,Abbeville, 1988),247. Letter ofArthur Byne to Julia Morgan, Jan 15,1934.

'I,~~