历史学家亨利·亚当斯(Henry Adams)说过,美国的画家们“用性感表达情绪,而不表达力量。”他的论点几乎可以用来解释一切美国艺术,这和法国艺术成了鲜明对比。亚当斯所处的时代盛行对“爱”与“美”的崇拜,在分明是男性的、具体的、物质的时代里去崇拜女性的、阴郁的、昙花一现的东西。诗人拉尼尔(1842——1881)写了下面一首诗恰当地表 Historian Henry Adams said that American painters “express their emotions” without expressing their power. “His argument can be used almost exclusively to explain all American art, in stark contrast to French art. The advent of Adams prevalent in the worship of ”love“ and ”beauty", in the distinctly male, concrete, material age worship women, gloomy, short-lived things. Poet Lanier (1842-1881) wrote a poem on the following table