Jamesian Connoisseurial Gaze and Communicability of Art in The Portrait of a Lady

Abstract

This paper interprets Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady with the openness toward aesthetic experience of a connoisseurial observer recommended by John Dewey’s aesthetics. Specifically, Ralph Touchett’s perception of Isabel Archer as a Titian will be examined as a case of Deweyan creation of art that eventually brings in enjoyment and communication through connoisseurial gaze between humans. In Titian’s painting, there exists sensuality that is belittled and virtually ignored as debased and disgusting by John Ruskin, and such an aspect naturally works to concretize an artistic vision when James brings Titian into his own artwork, The Portrait of a Lady. As a connoisseur, Ralph perceives Isabel embodied in the sensory world as a Titian, and at the same time he recognizes her meanings and vision which are in fact not separate from her sensory appearance embodied pictorially by Titian. It will be a rare attempt to prepare a new way of verifying the practicality of James’s literature inspired by Deweyan pragmatist ideas. Through art as an experience, the objectified object’s meanings are perceived and shared by the connoisseur as another creator. Furthermore, the connoisseur’s experience guides the direction of his future experience, and in the process communication between the connoisseur and the object of the experience progresses, ultimately expanding the possibilities of communication between humans.