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The Urban Scene: Race, Reginald Marsh, and American Art Carmenita Higginbotham. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2015.
One of the most difficult tasks in evaluating any cultural production of the past is that it is hard to put ourselves in that place and time, rather than seeing that production through the filters of our own time, values, and social norms. Indeed, trying to reconcile the two worlds has led to a great deal of interesting and compelling scholarship, especially in the area of American art and, specifically, in addressing the issue of race. Much recent analysis of the paintings of William Sidney Mount, Winslow Homer, and Eastman Johnson has been devoted to trying to coax attitudes and meanings out of the portrayal of African Americans, some pointing out how noble and heroic the black subjects have been portrayed; others making the case that there is condescension and patronizing in the images of those same figures. Given the legal and the social aspects of American life until very recently [at the earliest] the ambiguities and contradictions attending the representations relating to race...