Concluding with some shared resources

[djaffee]

As we move towards concluding this forum, it might be very helpful if we shared some of our favorite resources for teaching the Jacksonian era with visual evidence. Please send along any suggestions even a prized book reference if you like!

Thanks, David Jaffee

[SBurns]

I have pretty good results with Elizabeth Johns's first couple of
chapters in her American Genre Painting: The Politics of Everyday Life,
which deal with identity, democracy, and typing during the Jacksonian
period -- she does some wonderful analysis of political cartoons.

cheers,

Sarah

Quoting djaffee <pushforum@gc.cuny.edu>:

[jbrown]

I would like to offer a prized book reference on the visualization of Jacksonian America--but my quest for a good study has been long and frustrating. I've assigned a number of books in graduate classes, but each in its own way has proved inadequate; generally, the book is often too limited in documentation to support its argument or it fails to provide enough context to gauge the importance of the visual realm. I've tried alternative routes, such as assigning Constance Rourke's American Humor: A Study of the National Character (1931), which does not tackle, let alone display, images, but is seminal in its delineation of the sort of social types that formed the cast of characters in Jacksonian illustration, cartoons, and paintings. Similarly, I've turned to Karen Halttunen's Confidence Men and Painted Women: A Study of Middle-Class Culture in America, 1830-1870 (1982) because the study discusses the era's shaky, inchoate social milieu and, consequently, illuminates some of the purposes contemporary popular images served. There are good sources online--such as Bernard F. Reilly, Jr., American Political Prints, 1776-1876: Catalog of the Collection of the Library of Congress (until recently available gratis on the HarpWeek website)--but they are really huge compendia of data with little analysis or evaluative information.

I'm prepared to be proven wrong, though! Has anyone had success finding that prized book?

Josh Brown

[djaffee]

Josh Brown's comment about our difficulty in coming up with an exemplary study of the visualization of Jacksonian America does raise some interesting issues. Why does such a study elude us? I can think (and have mentioned in the Forum) some richly contextualized studies by art historians. But historians have utilized visual material in this era but not foregrounded it - why not?

Historians' interest in making the visual record central comes later in the nineteenth century - writing about the new visuality of urban culture and looking at photography and the built environment for example.

I would want to point out that there are exceptions for this earlier era. Most significantly I would suggest Dell Upton's new Another City: Urban Life and Urban Spaces in the New American Republic. Upton used the visual record to help us understand how the early nineteenth century city operated as a public space by using the visual record of the time in an exemplary way. This book makes us look carefully at prints and paintings and plans along with a wealth of textual material. The chapter on daguerreotypes in Alan Trachtenberg's Reading American Photographs: Images as History, Mathew Brady to Walker Evans (1990) provides a richly historical view of how the "industrialized" image became an integral part of American culture in the 1840s and 1850s.

I want to thank the contributors to this initial forum, the first of six to be hosted on the Picturing U.S. History. Our discussion has brought out some key issues that we need to keep in mind as we move ahead: looking at different visual genres, the need for contextual materials and context in general, paying attention to reception and audience, and the significance of race, class, region and gender among other structures of identity and experience.

Looking forward to continuing these discussions in the Early American forum that will be lead by Peter Mancall.

[PJ Brownlee]

Apologies for another late post, but I would second Sarah's suggestion of Elizabeth Johns, as well as the mention of Dell Upton's Another City for the study of this period. To the general discussion, but particularly to the recent thread that included a reference to Edmonds, I'll add my article, "Francis Edmonds and the Speculative Economy of Painting," published Fall 2007 in American Art. In it I analyze his painting The Speculator in relation to Clay's 1837 lithograph The Times as well as period banknotes, the art market formed by the American Art Union--an institution in which Edmonds was deeply involved at its inception and dissolution--and issues related to the "speculative" aspects of visual perception during this period.

All best, PJ

On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 11:41 AM, SBurns <pushforum@gc.cuny.edu (pushforum@gc.cuny.edu)> wrote: