James Abbott McNeill Whistler
James Abbott McNeill Whistler was an American artist, active during the American Gilded Age and based in the United Kingdom. He was averse to sentimentality and moral allusion in painting, was a leading proponent of the credo "art for art's sake", his famous signature for his paintings was in the shape of a stylized butterfly possessing a long stinger for a tail. The symbol was apt, for it combined both aspects of his personality: his art is characterized by a subtle delicacy, while his public persona was combative, he found a parallel between painting and music and entitled many of his paintings "arrangements", "harmonies", "nocturnes", emphasizing the primacy of tonal harmony. His most famous painting is Arrangement in Black No. 1 known as Whistler's Mother, the revered and parodied portrait of motherhood. Whistler influenced the art world and the broader culture of his time with his artistic theories and his friendships with leading artists and writers. James Abbott Whistler was born in Lowell, Massachusetts on July 11, 1834, the first child of Anna McNeill Whistler and George Washington Whistler, the brother of Confederate surgeon Dr. William McNeill Whistler.
His father was a railroad engineer, Anna was his second wife. James lived the first three years of his life in a modest house at 243 Worthen Street in Lowell; the house is now the Whistler House Museum of a museum dedicated to him. He claimed St. Petersburg, Russia as his birthplace during the Ruskin trial: "I shall be born when and where I want, I do not choose to be born in Lowell."The family moved from Lowell to Stonington, Connecticut in 1837, where his father worked for the Stonington Railroad. Three of the couple's children died in infancy during this period, their fortunes improved in 1839 when his father became chief engineer for the Boston & Albany Railroad, the family built a mansion in Springfield, Massachusetts where the Wood Museum of History now stands.) They lived in Springfield until they left the United States in late 1842. Nicholas I of Russia learned of George Whistler's ingenuity in engineering the Boston & Albany Railroad, he offered him a position in 1842 engineering a railroad from St. Petersburg to Moscow, the family moved from to St. Petersburg in the winter of 1842/43.
Whistler was a moody child prone to fits of temper and insolence, he drifted into periods of laziness after bouts of illness. His parents discovered that drawing settled him down and helped focus his attention. In years, he played up his mother's connection to the American South and its roots, he presented himself as an impoverished Southern aristocrat, although it remains unclear to what extent he sympathized with the Southern cause during the American Civil War, he adopted his mother's maiden name. Beginning in 1842, his father was employed to work on a railroad in Russia. After moving to St. Petersburg to join his father a year the young Whistler took private art lessons enrolled in the Imperial Academy of Arts at age eleven; the young artist followed the traditional curriculum of drawing from plaster casts and occasional live models, reveled in the atmosphere of art talk with older peers, pleased his parents with a first-class mark in anatomy. In 1844, he met the noted artist Sir William Allan, who came to Russia with a commission to paint a history of the life of Peter the Great.
Whistler's mother noted in her diary, "the great artist remarked to me'Your little boy has uncommon genius, but do not urge him beyond his inclination.'"In 1847-48, his family spent some time in London with relatives, while his father stayed in Russia. Whistler's brother-in-law Francis Haden, a physician, an artist, spurred his interest in art and photography. Haden took Whistler to visit collectors and to lectures, gave him a watercolor set with instruction. Whistler was imagining an art career, he began to collect books on art and he studied other artists' techniques. When his portrait was painted by Sir William Boxall in 1848, the young Whistler exclaimed that the portrait was "very much like me and a fine picture. Mr. Boxall is a beautiful colourist... It is a beautiful creamy surface, looks so rich." In his blossoming enthusiasm for art, at fifteen, he informed his father by letter of his future direction, "I hope, dear father, you will not object to my choice." His father, died from cholera at the age of forty-nine, the Whistler family moved back to his mother's hometown of Pomfret, Connecticut.
His art plans remained vague and his future uncertain. The family managed to get by on a limited income, his cousin reported that Whistler at that time was "slight, with a pensive, delicate face, shaded by soft brown curls... he had a somewhat foreign appearance and manner, aided by natural abilities, made him charming at that age." Whistler was sent to Christ Church Hall School with his mother's hopes that he would become a minister. Whistler was without his sketchbook and was popular with his classmates for his caricatures. However, it became clear that a career in religion did not suit him, so he applied to the United States Military Academy at West Point, where his father had taught drawing and other relatives had attended, he was admitted to the selective institution in July 1851 on the strength of his family name, despite his extreme nearsightedness and poor health history. However, during his three years there, his grades were satisfactory, he was a sorry sight at drill and dress, known as "Curly" for his hair length which exceeded regulations.
Whistler bucked authority, spouted sarcastic comments, racked up deme
Jean-Léon Gérôme
Jean-Léon Gérôme was a French painter and sculptor in the style now known as academicism. The range of his oeuvre included historical painting, Greek mythology, Orientalism and other subjects, bringing the academic painting tradition to an artistic climax, he is considered one of the most important painters from this academic period. He was a teacher with a long list of students. Jean-Léon Gérôme was born at Haute-Saône, he went to Paris in 1840. He visited Florence, the Vatican and Pompeii, but he was more attracted to the world of nature. Taken by a fever, he was forced to return to Paris in 1844. On his return, he followed, like many other students of Delaroche, into the atelier of Charles Gleyre and studied there for a brief time, he attended the École des Beaux-Arts. In 1846 he tried to enter the prestigious Prix de Rome, but failed in the final stage because his figure drawing was inadequate, his painting, The Cock Fight, is an academic exercise, depicting a nude young man and a draped young woman with two fighting cocks, the Bay of Naples in the background.
He sent this painting to the Salon of 1847. This work was seen as the epitome of the Neo-Grec movement that had formed out of Gleyre's studio, was championed by the influential French critic Théophile Gautier. Gérôme took advantage of his sudden success, his paintings The Virgin, the Infant Jesus and St John and Anacreon and Cupid took a second-class medal in 1848. In 1849, he produced A portrait of a Lady. In 1851, he decorated a vase offered by Emperor Napoleon III of France to Prince Albert, now part of the Royal Collection at St. James's Palace, London, he exhibited Bacchus and Love, Drunk, a Greek Interior and Souvenir d'Italie, in 1851. In 1852, Gérôme received a commission by Alfred Emilien Comte de Nieuwerkerke, Surintendant des Beaux-Arts to the court of Napoleon III, for the painting of a large historical canvas, the Age of Augustus. In this canvas he combines the birth of Christ with conquered nations paying homage to Augustus. Thanks to a considerable down payment, he was able to travel in 1853 to Constantinople, together with the actor Edmond Got.
This would be the first of several travels to the East: in 1854 he made another journey to Greece and Turkey and the shores of the Danube, where he was present at a concert of Russian conscripts, making music under the threat of a lash. In 1853, Gérôme moved to the Boîte à Thé, a group of studios in the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, Paris; this would become a meeting place for other artists and actors. George Sand entertained in the small theatre of the studio the great artists of her time such as the composers Hector Berlioz, Johannes Brahms and Gioachino Rossini and the novelists Théophile Gautier and Ivan Turgenev. In 1854, he completed another important commission of decorating the Chapel of St. Jerome in the church of St. Séverin in Paris, his Last communion of St. Jerome in this chapel reflects the influence of the school of Ingres on his religious works. To the exhibition of 1855 he contributed a Pifferaro, a Shepherd, A Russian Concert, The Age of Augustus, the Birth of Christ; the last was somewhat confused in effect, but in recognition of its consummate rendering the State purchased it.
However the modest painting, A Russian Concert was more appreciated than his huge canvases. In 1856, he visited Egypt for the first time. Gérôme's recurrent itinerary followed the classic grand tour of most occidental visitors to the Orient; this would herald the start of many orientalist paintings depicting Arab religion, genre scenes and North African landscapes. In an autobiographical essay of 1878, Gérôme described how important oil sketches made on the spot were for him: "even when worn out after long marched under the bright sun, as soon as our camping spot was reached I got down to work with concentration, but Oh! How many things were left behind of which I carried only the memory away! And I prefer three touches of colour on a piece of canvas to the most vivid memory, but one had to continue on with some regret." He did not only gather themes and costumes for his oriental scenes, but made oil studies from nature for their backgrounds. Several of these quick sketches are filled with details that exceed his wished for three touches of colour.
Gérôme's reputation was enhanced at the Salon of 1857 by a collection of works of a more popular kind: the Duel: after the Masked Ball, Egyptian Recruits crossing the Desert and Sesostris and Camels Watering, the drawing of, criticized by Edmond About. In 1858, he helped to decorate the Paris house of Prince Napoléon Joseph Charles Paul Bonaparte in the Pompeian style; the prince had bought his Greek Interior, a depiction of a brothel in the Pompeian manner. In Caesar Gérôme tried to return to a more severe class of work, the painting of Classical subjects, but the picture failed to interest the public. Phryne before the Areopagus, King Candaules and Socrates finding Alcibiades in the House of Aspasia gave rise to some scandal by reason of the subject
United States Capitol rotunda
The United States Capitol rotunda is the central rotunda of the United States Capitol in Washington, D. C. built 1818–1824. It is located below the Capitol dome, built 1857–1866, it is the tallest part of the Capitol and has been described as its "symbolic and physical heart." The rotunda is connected by corridors leading south to the House of Representatives and north to the Senate chambers. To the immediate south is the semi-circular National Statuary Hall, the House of Representatives chamber until 1857. To the northeast is the Old Senate Chamber, used by the Senate until 1859 and by the Supreme Court until 1935; the rotunda is 96 feet in diameter, rises 48 feet to the top of its original walls and 180 feet 3 inches to the canopy of the dome, is visited by thousands of people each day. It is used for ceremonial events authorized by concurrent resolution, including the lying in state of honored dead; the doctor and architect William Thornton was the winner of the contest to design the Capitol in 1793.
Thornton had first conceived the idea of a central rotunda. However, due to lack of funds or resources, oft-interrupted construction, the British attack on Washington during the War of 1812, work on the rotunda did not begin until 1818; the rotunda was completed in 1824 under Architect of the Capitol Charles Bulfinch, as part of a series of new buildings and projects in preparation for the final visit of Marquis de Lafayette in 1824. The rotunda was designed in the neoclassical style and was intended to evoke the design of the Pantheon; the sandstone rotunda walls rise 48 feet above the floor. Walter, the fourth Architect of the Capitol. Walter had designed the Capitol's north and south extensions. Work on the dome began in 1856, in 1859, Walter redesigned the rotunda to consist of an inner and outer dome, with a canopy suspended between them that would be visible through an oculus at the top of the inner dome. In 1862, Walter asked painter Constantino Brumidi to design "a picture 65 feet in diameter, painted in fresco, on the concave canopy over the eye of the New Dome of the U.
S. Capitol." At this time, Brumidi may have added a watercolor canopy design over Walter's tentative 1859 sketch. The dome was being finished in the middle of the American Civil War and was constructed from fireproof cast iron. During the Civil War, the rotunda was used as a military hospital for Union soldiers; the dome was completed in 1866. The crypt had an open ceiling into the rotunda. Visitors can still see the holes in the stone circle that marked the rim of the open space in the rotunda floor. Underneath the floor of the crypt lies a tomb, the intended burial place for George Washington but after a lengthy battle with his estate and the state of Virginia the plans for him to be buried in the crypt were abandoned. In January 2013, the Architect of the Capitol announced a four-year, $10 million project to repair and conserve the Capitol Dome's exterior and the Capitol rotunda; the proposal required the stripping of lead paint from the interior of the dome, repair to the ironwork, repainting of the interior of the dome, rehabilitation of the interstitial space between the dome and rotunda, installation of new lighting in the interstitial space and the rotunda.
The dome and rotunda, which were last conserved in 1960, were showing significant signs of rust and disrepair. There was a danger that decorative ironwork could have fallen from the rotunda to the space below, that weather-related problems could damage the artwork in the rotunda. Without immediate repair, safety netting was installed, temporarily blocking the rotunda's artwork from view. Eight niches in the rotunda hold framed historical paintings. All measure 12 by 18 feet. Four of these are scenes from the American Revolution, painted by John Trumbull, commissioned by Congress to do the work in 1817; these are Declaration of Independence, Surrender of General Burgoyne, Surrender of Lord Cornwallis, General George Washington Resigning His Commission. These were placed between 1819 and 1824. Between 1840 and 1855, four more paintings were added; these were all done by different artists. These paintings are Landing of Columbus by John Vanderlyn, Discovery of the Mississippi by William Henry Powell, Baptism of Pocahontas by John Gadsby Chapman, Embarkation of the Pilgrims by Robert Walter Weir.
The Apotheosis of Washington is a large fresco by Greek-Italian Constantino Brumidi, visible through the oculus of the dome of the rotunda. The fresco depicts George Washington sitting exalted amongst the heavens, it covers an area of 4,664 square feet. The Frieze of American History is painted to appear as a carved stone bas-relief frieze but is a trompe-l'œil fresco cycle depicting 19 scenes from American history; the "frieze" occupies a band below the 36 windows. Brumidi designed the frieze and prepared a sketch in 1859 but did not begin painting until 1878. Brumidi painted seven and a half scenes. While working on William Penn and the Indians, Brumidi fell off the scaffolding and held on to a rail for 15 minutes until he was rescued, he died a few months in 1880. After Brumidi's death, Filippo Costaggini was commissioned to complete the eight and a half remaining scenes in Brumidi's sketches, he left a 31-foot gap due to an error in Brumidi's original design. In 1951, Allyn Cox completed the frieze.
Except for the last three panels named by Allyn Cox, the scenes have no partic
Public domain
The public domain consists of all the creative works to which no exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have been forfeited, expressly waived, or may be inapplicable; the works of William Shakespeare and Beethoven, most early silent films, are in the public domain either by virtue of their having been created before copyright existed, or by their copyright term having expired. Some works are not covered by copyright, are therefore in the public domain—among them the formulae of Newtonian physics, cooking recipes, all computer software created prior to 1974. Other works are dedicated by their authors to the public domain; the term public domain is not applied to situations where the creator of a work retains residual rights, in which case use of the work is referred to as "under license" or "with permission". As rights vary by country and jurisdiction, a work may be subject to rights in one country and be in the public domain in another; some rights depend on registrations on a country-by-country basis, the absence of registration in a particular country, if required, gives rise to public-domain status for a work in that country.
The term public domain may be interchangeably used with other imprecise or undefined terms such as the "public sphere" or "commons", including concepts such as the "commons of the mind", the "intellectual commons", the "information commons". Although the term "domain" did not come into use until the mid-18th century, the concept "can be traced back to the ancient Roman Law, as a preset system included in the property right system." The Romans had a large proprietary rights system where they defined "many things that cannot be owned" as res nullius, res communes, res publicae and res universitatis. The term res nullius was defined as things not yet appropriated; the term res communes was defined as "things that could be enjoyed by mankind, such as air and ocean." The term res publicae referred to things that were shared by all citizens, the term res universitatis meant things that were owned by the municipalities of Rome. When looking at it from a historical perspective, one could say the construction of the idea of "public domain" sprouted from the concepts of res communes, res publicae, res universitatis in early Roman law.
When the first early copyright law was first established in Britain with the Statute of Anne in 1710, public domain did not appear. However, similar concepts were developed by French jurists in the 18th century. Instead of "public domain", they used terms such as publici juris or propriété publique to describe works that were not covered by copyright law; the phrase "fall in the public domain" can be traced to mid-19th century France to describe the end of copyright term. The French poet Alfred de Vigny equated the expiration of copyright with a work falling "into the sink hole of public domain" and if the public domain receives any attention from intellectual property lawyers it is still treated as little more than that, left when intellectual property rights, such as copyright and trademarks, expire or are abandoned. In this historical context Paul Torremans describes copyright as a, "little coral reef of private right jutting up from the ocean of the public domain." Copyright law differs by country, the American legal scholar Pamela Samuelson has described the public domain as being "different sizes at different times in different countries".
Definitions of the boundaries of the public domain in relation to copyright, or intellectual property more regard the public domain as a negative space. According to James Boyle this definition underlines common usage of the term public domain and equates the public domain to public property and works in copyright to private property. However, the usage of the term public domain can be more granular, including for example uses of works in copyright permitted by copyright exceptions; such a definition regards work in copyright as private property subject to fair-use rights and limitation on ownership. A conceptual definition comes from Lange, who focused on what the public domain should be: "it should be a place of sanctuary for individual creative expression, a sanctuary conferring affirmative protection against the forces of private appropriation that threatened such expression". Patterson and Lindberg described the public domain not as a "territory", but rather as a concept: "here are certain materials – the air we breathe, rain, life, thoughts, ideas, numbers – not subject to private ownership.
The materials that compose our cultural heritage must be free for all living to use no less than matter necessary for biological survival." The term public domain may be interchangeably used with other imprecise or undefined terms such as the "public sphere" or "commons", including concepts such as the "commons of the mind", the "intellectual commons", the "information commons". A public-domain book is a book with no copyright, a book, created without a license, or a book where its copyrights expired or have been forfeited. In most countries the term of protection of copyright lasts until January first, 70 years after the death of the latest living author; the longest copyright term is in Mexico, which has life plus 100 years for all deaths since July 1928. A notable exception is the United States, where every book and tale published prior to 1924 is in the public domain.
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the United States. With 6,953,927 visitors to its three locations in 2018, it was the third most visited art museum in the world, its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among seventeen curatorial departments. The main building, on the eastern edge of Central Park along Museum Mile in Manhattan's Upper East Side is by area one of the world's largest art galleries. A much smaller second location, The Cloisters at Fort Tryon Park in Upper Manhattan, contains an extensive collection of art and artifacts from Medieval Europe. On March 18, 2016, the museum opened the Met Breuer museum at Madison Avenue on the Upper East Side; the permanent collection consists of works of art from classical antiquity and ancient Egypt and sculptures from nearly all the European masters, an extensive collection of American and modern art. The Met maintains extensive holdings of African, Oceanian and Islamic art.
The museum is home to encyclopedic collections of musical instruments and accessories, as well as antique weapons and armor from around the world. Several notable interiors, ranging from 1st-century Rome through modern American design, are installed in its galleries; the Metropolitan Museum of Art was founded in 1870 for the purposes of opening a museum to bring art and art education to the American people. It opened on February 20, 1872, was located at 681 Fifth Avenue; the Met's permanent collection is curated by seventeen separate departments, each with a specialized staff of curators and scholars, as well as six dedicated conservation departments and a Department of Scientific Research. The permanent collection includes works of art from classical antiquity and ancient Egypt and sculptures from nearly all the European masters, an extensive collection of American and modern art; the Met maintains extensive holdings of African, Oceanian and Islamic art. The museum is home to encyclopedic collections of musical instruments and accessories, antique weapons and armor from around the world.
A great number of period rooms, ranging from 1st-century Rome through modern American design, are permanently installed in the Met's galleries. In addition to its permanent exhibitions, the Met organizes and hosts large traveling shows throughout the year; the current chairman of the board, Daniel Brodsky, was elected in 2011 and became chairman three years after director Philippe de Montebello retired at the end of 2008. On March 1, 2017, the BBC reported that Daniel Weiss, the Met's president and COO, would temporarily act as CEO for the museum. Following the departure of Thomas P. Campbell as the Met's director and CEO on June 30, 2017, the search for a new director of the museum was assigned to the human resources firm Phillips Oppenheim to present a new candidate for the position "by the end of the fiscal year in June" of 2018; the next director will report to Weiss as the current president of the museum. In April 2018, Max Hollein was named director. Beginning in the late 19th century, the Met started acquiring ancient art and artifacts from the Near East.
From a few cuneiform tablets and seals, the Met's collection of Near Eastern art has grown to more than 7,000 pieces. Representing a history of the region beginning in the Neolithic Period and encompassing the fall of the Sasanian Empire and the end of Late Antiquity, the collection includes works from the Sumerian, Sasanian, Assyrian and Elamite cultures, as well as an extensive collection of unique Bronze Age objects; the highlights of the collection include a set of monumental stone lamassu, or guardian figures, from the Northwest Palace of the Assyrian king Ashurnasirpal II. Though the Met first acquired a group of Peruvian antiquities in 1882, the museum did not begin a concerted effort to collect works from Africa and the Americas until 1969, when American businessman and philanthropist Nelson A. Rockefeller donated his more than 3,000-piece collection to the museum. Today, the Met's collection contains more than 11,000 pieces from sub-Saharan Africa, the Pacific Islands, the Americas and is housed in the 40,000-square-foot Rockefeller Wing on the south end of the museum.
The collection ranges from 40,000-year-old indigenous Australian rock paintings, to a group of 15-foot-tall memorial poles carved by the Asmat people of New Guinea, to a priceless collection of ceremonial and personal objects from the Nigerian Court of Benin donated by Klaus Perls. The range of materials represented in the Africa and Americas collection is undoubtedly the widest of any department at the Met, including everything from precious metals to porcupine quills; the Met's Asian department holds a collection of Asian art, of more than 35,000 pieces, arguably the most comprehensive in the US. The collection dates back to the founding of the museum: many of the philanthropists who made the earliest gifts to the museum included Asian art in their collections. Today, an entire wing of the museum is dedicated to the Asian collection, spans 4,000 years of Asian art; every Asian civilization is represented in the Met's Asian department, the pieces on display include every type of decorative art, from painting and printmaking to sculpture and metalworking.
The department is well known for its comprehensive collection of Chinese calligraphy and painting, as well as for its Indian sculptures and Tibetan works, the arts of Burma and Thailand. All three ancient religions of India – Hinduism and Jainism – are well represented in these s
United States Military Academy
The United States Military Academy known as West Point, Army West Point, The Academy, or The Point, is a four-year federal service academy in West Point, New York. It was established as a fort that sits on strategic high ground overlooking the Hudson River with a scenic view, 50 miles north of New York City, it is one of the five U. S. service academies. The Academy traces its roots to 1801, when President Thomas Jefferson directed, shortly after his inauguration, that plans be set in motion to establish the United States Military Academy at West Point; the entire central campus is a national landmark and home to scores of historic sites and monuments. The majority of the campus's Norman-style buildings are constructed from black granite; the campus is a popular tourist destination, with a visitor center and the oldest museum in the United States Army. Candidates for admission must both apply directly to the academy and receive a nomination from a member of Congress or Delegate/Resident Commissioner in the case of Washington, D.
C. Puerto Rico, Northern Mariana Islands, American Samoa, the Virgin Islands. Other nomination sources include the Vice President of the United States. Students are officers-in-training and are referred to as "cadets" or collectively as the "United States Corps of Cadets". Tuition for cadets is funded by the Army in exchange for an active duty service obligation upon graduation. 1,300 cadets enter the Academy each July, with about 1,000 cadets graduating. The academic program grants a bachelor of science degree with a curriculum that grades cadets' performance upon a broad academic program, military leadership performance, mandatory participation in competitive athletics. Cadets are required to adhere to the Cadet Honor Code, which states that "a cadet will not lie, steal, or tolerate those who do." The academy bases a cadet's leadership experience as a development of all three pillars of performance: academics and military. Most graduates are commissioned as second lieutenants in the Army. Foreign cadets are commissioned into the armies of their home countries.
Since 1959, cadets have been eligible for an interservice commission, a commission in one of the other armed services, provided they meet that service's eligibility standards. Most years, a small number of cadets do this; the academy's traditions have influenced other institutions because of unique mission. It was the first American college to have an accredited civil-engineering program and the first to have class rings, its technical curriculum was a model for engineering schools. West Point's student body has lexicon. All cadets dine together en masse on weekdays for breakfast and lunch; the academy fields fifteen men's and nine women's National Collegiate Athletic Association sports teams. Cadets compete in one sport every fall and spring season at the intramural, club, or intercollegiate level, its football team was a national power in the early and mid-20th century, winning three national championships. Its alumni and students are collectively referred to as "The Long Gray Line" and its ranks include two Presidents of the United States, presidents of Costa Rica and the Philippines, numerous famous generals, seventy-six Medal of Honor recipients.
The Continental Army first occupied West Point, New York, on 27 January 1778, it is the oldest continuously operating Army post in the United States. Between 1778 and 1780, the Polish engineer and military hero Tadeusz Kościuszko oversaw the construction of the garrison defenses; the Great Hudson River Chain and high ground above the narrow "S" curve in the river enabled the Continental Army to prevent British Royal Navy ships from sailing upriver and thus dividing the Colonies. While the fortifications at West Point were known as Fort Arnold during the war, as commander, Benedict Arnold committed his act of treason, attempting to sell the fort to the British. After Arnold betrayed the patriot cause, the Army changed the name of the fortifications at West Point, New York, to Fort Clinton. With the peace after the American Revolutionary War, various ordnance and military stores were left deposited at West Point. After the Continental Army was disbanded 1783, West Point was the only place in the newly formed United States to have active military personel, 80 in total, until Legion of the United States was established in 1792."Cadets" underwent training in artillery and engineering studies at the garrison since 1794.
In 1801, shortly after his inauguration as president, Thomas Jefferson directed that plans be set in motion to establish at West Point the United States Military Academy. He selected Jonathan Williams to serve as its first superintendent. Congress formally authorized the establishment and funding of the school with the Military Peace Establishment Act of 1802, which Jefferson signed on 16 March; the academy commenced operations on 4 July 1802. The academy graduated Joseph Gardner Swift, its first official graduate, in October 1802, he returned as Superintendent from 1812 to 1814. In its tumultuous early years, the academy featured few standards for length of study. Cadets attended between 6 months to 6 years; the impending War of 1812 caused the United States Congress to authorize a more formal system of education at the academy and increased the size of the Corps of Cadets to 250. In 1817, Colonel Sylvanus Thayer became the Superintendent and established the curriculum, elements of which are still in use as of 2015.
Thayer instilled strict disciplinary
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in Europe toward the end of the 18th century, in most areas was at its peak in the approximate period from 1800 to 1850. Romanticism was characterized by its emphasis on emotion and individualism as well as glorification of all the past and nature, preferring the medieval rather than the classical, it was a reaction to the Industrial Revolution, the aristocratic social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment, the scientific rationalization of nature—all components of modernity. It was embodied most in the visual arts and literature, but had a major impact on historiography, the social sciences, the natural sciences, it had a significant and complex effect on politics, with romantic thinkers influencing liberalism, radicalism and nationalism. The movement emphasized intense emotion as an authentic source of aesthetic experience, placing new emphasis on such emotions as apprehension and terror, awe—especially that experienced in confronting the new aesthetic categories of the sublimity and beauty of nature.
It elevated folk art and ancient custom to something noble, but spontaneity as a desirable characteristic. In contrast to the Rationalism and Classicism of the Enlightenment, Romanticism revived medievalism and elements of art and narrative perceived as authentically medieval in an attempt to escape population growth, early urban sprawl, industrialism. Although the movement was rooted in the German Sturm und Drang movement, which preferred intuition and emotion to the rationalism of the Enlightenment, the events and ideologies of the French Revolution were proximate factors. Romanticism assigned a high value to the achievements of "heroic" individualists and artists, whose examples, it maintained, would raise the quality of society, it promoted the individual imagination as a critical authority allowed of freedom from classical notions of form in art. There was a strong recourse to historical and natural inevitability, a Zeitgeist, in the representation of its ideas. In the second half of the 19th century, Realism was offered as a polar opposite to Romanticism.
The decline of Romanticism during this time was associated with multiple processes, including social and political changes and the spread of nationalism. The nature of Romanticism may be approached from the primary importance of the free expression of the feelings of the artist; the importance the Romantics placed on emotion is summed up in the remark of the German painter Caspar David Friedrich, "the artist's feeling is his law". To William Wordsworth, poetry should begin as "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings", which the poet "recollect in tranquility", evoking a new but corresponding emotion the poet can mold into art. To express these feelings, it was considered the content of art had to come from the imagination of the artist, with as little interference as possible from "artificial" rules dictating what a work should consist of. Samuel Taylor Coleridge and others believed there were natural laws the imagination—at least of a good creative artist—would unconsciously follow through artistic inspiration if left alone.
As well as rules, the influence of models from other works was considered to impede the creator's own imagination, so that originality was essential. The concept of the genius, or artist, able to produce his own original work through this process of creation from nothingness, is key to Romanticism, to be derivative was the worst sin; this idea is called "romantic originality". Translator and prominent Romantic August Wilhelm Schlegel argued in his Lectures on Dramatic Arts and Letters that the most phenomenal power of human nature is its capacity to divide and diverge into opposite directions. Not essential to Romanticism, but so widespread as to be normative, was a strong belief and interest in the importance of nature; this in the effect of nature upon the artist when he is surrounded by it, preferably alone. In contrast to the very social art of the Enlightenment, Romantics were distrustful of the human world, tended to believe a close connection with nature was mentally and morally healthy.
Romantic art addressed its audiences with what was intended to be felt as the personal voice of the artist. So, in literature, "much of romantic poetry invited the reader to identify the protagonists with the poets themselves". According to Isaiah Berlin, Romanticism embodied "a new and restless spirit, seeking violently to burst through old and cramping forms, a nervous preoccupation with perpetually changing inner states of consciousness, a longing for the unbounded and the indefinable, for perpetual movement and change, an effort to return to the forgotten sources of life, a passionate effort at self-assertion both individual and collective, a search after means of expressing an unappeasable yearning for unattainable goals"; the group of words with the root "Roman" in the various European languages, such as "romance" and "Romanesque", has a complicated history, but by the middle of the 18th century "romantic" in English and romantique in French were both in common use as adjectives of praise for natural phenomena such as views and sunsets, in a sense close to modern English usage but without the amorous connotation.
The application of the term to literature first became common in Germany, where the circle around the Schlegel brothers, critics August and Friedrich, began to speak of romantische Poesie in the 1790s, contrasting it with "classic" but in terms of spirit rather than dating. Friedrich Schlegel wrote in his Dialogue on Poetry, "I seek and find the romantic among th
One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). . Encyclopædia Britannica. 28 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 496.
One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the 
