Readers of Walt Whitman have long been aware of the visual qualities of his writing, but no one has systematically searched for the sources of Whitman's visual art, and very little attention has been paid to his influence on American painting, photography, architecture, and sculpture. The contributors to this collection, the first full-length study of this topic, outline the influences of Jean-Francois Millet and Gustave Courbet on Whitman, showing the common purposes shared in their art, in their attention to the working person, and in their internationalist perspective - even in a rough comparability of styles across different media. Other essays discuss the relationships between Whitman and Thomas Eakins (who painted and photographed Whitman and who created the image - or iconography - of Whitman as we know him); Whitman and who Louis Sullivan and the development of a "naturalist" vocabulary of decorative ornament; and Whitman and the realists of the so-called Ashcan School. There is also an essay on Whitman and the sculptor Mahonri Young. What these last essays - especially Matthew Baigell's on progressive artists of the early twentieth century - show us quite clearly is that, like most myths, the myth of Whitman as the lone voice crying in the wilderness will not stand up to scrutiny. No one who reads these essays can come away from them without being convinced that the poet's voice was deeply affected by his familiarity with the imagery of European and American painting and that he, in turn, profoundly altered the definition of what was to constitute the American subject and the American style for artists in a wide variety of media.