Books Received

by M.A.D. Staff

These are brief reviews of books recently sent to us. We have included ordering information for publishers that accept mail, phone, or on-line orders. For other publishers, your local bookstore or mail-order house is the place to look.

Picturing Victorian America: Prints by the Kellogg Brothers of Hartford, Connecticut, 1830-1880, edited by Nancy Finlay (The Connecticut Historical Society, distributed by Wesleyan University Press, 2009, 233 pp., hardbound, $65 from The Connecticut Historical Society, [www.chs.org] or [860] 236-5621).

As I thought about writing this review of the first book-length account of the Kelloggs, Hartford's Currier and Ives, I witnessed an event in my husband's clock shop that canceled my intended lead. I'd planned to contrast the printmakers' idyllic (saccharine, some would say) view of life in mid-19th-century America to the realities of today, but then a little girl came into the shop with her parents. As the grownups browsed, she sat on the floor beside our big German shepherd, took out the book she'd brought along, and began to read to him. There it was, a Kellogg moment, in this edgy age of ours.

Picturing Victorian America, a culmination of more than a century of collecting and more than 50 years of research and documentation at the Connecticut Historical Society, was designed as a reference tool. Its checklist contains thumbnail images of all 1158 Kellogg lithographs in the society's collection as of June 1, 2007. There, in addition to all the children with dogs and puppies and with cats and kittens, one will find multiple portraits of Abraham Lincoln and many other U.S. presidents; significant buildings such as the Colt firearms factory; battle scenes, including those of the Mexican-American War of 1846-48; women's portraits; religious scenes; amazing hairstyles, corkscrewed and coiled; bizarre fashions, among them women's dress sleeves the size of small zeppelins; deathbed scenes of the not so rich but famous, where everyone dies with dignity; and picturesque mourning tableaux, where the widows are suitably weepy but never out of control.

Some of it is fiction, to be sure, such as the scene of the Newfoundland dog saving a child from drowning, but as Nancy Finlay's introductory essay states, these lithographs can and should be used as documentary evidence, providing firsthand knowledge of virtually every aspect of Victorian life in America, from interior decorating to interior monologues ("I Know that My Redeemer Liveth").

The prints not only reflected their broad, popular audience, they caused those people to model themselves after them, Kate Steinway writes in one of the book's seven scholarly essays. The Kelloggs' happy families and children "actively transmitted social values," Steinway asserts. For example, the images of children shown caring for animals, "both wild and tamed," clearly were meant to connect that care with "natural training for parenthood," while scenes of mothers reading to children would, it was hoped, disseminate that worthy educational idea.

Those who collect Kellogg prints will welcome the Finlay essay about the complicated history of the company and its successors, along with the book's guide to dating Kellogg prints based on published imprints, which began with D.W. Kellogg & Co. and went on to become Kellogg & Comstock, Kellogg & Thayer, and so on. There is also a compendium of brief biographies of all the players. These highly detailed, labor-intensive undertakings are alone worth the book's price. A discussion of the industry's toleration of copying (our era calls it plagiarism) will be enlightening too.

In contrast to their better-known competitors in New York and Boston, the Kellogg firms made much more of the Gothic Revivalism of the period, inserting churches with spires into their backgrounds and putting elaborate arches around portraits. Sally Pierce's essay speculates about the reasons why. She notes that the brothers and their successors were surrounded by architectural examples of the style in Hartford. "There is also the possibility that Gothic style resonated with their own religious beliefs and romantic philosophy," she writes. In any case, the look was a successful "branding."

The family registers, family trees, and memorial prints that the Kellogg firms printed are another great source of documentary evidence when their blank spaces are filled in, Georgia B. Barnhill writes in her essay. Aside from providing evidence of such phenomena as western migration, the place names "demonstrate that these prints reached a truly national market," Barnhill notes.

Although the thumbnails are reproduced in black and white, numerous illustrations that accompany the essays in this large-format book show off the lithographs' vibrant hand coloring. A beautifully produced volume, it aims to pique other scholars' interest in the nearly limitless topics that the images suggest. A study of temperance advocacy comes to mind, as does a full-scale exploration of their ingenious Civil War cartoons. Picturing Victorian America may even cause some of us to reflect on our own age, our lives, our children, our pets, and how much or how little they differ from those in the past.

Jeanne Schinto

The Hudson River School: Nature and the American Vision by Linda S. Ferber (Skira Rizzoli, 2009, 220 pp., hardbound, $50).

The New-York Historical Society recast its venerable art holdings into an ongoing scholarly exhibition in 2005, according to its president Louise Mirrer, with the guidance of Linda Ferber as curator (Ferber is now the museum's director). To make the paintings and commentary available to a wider audience is the mission of this book. The volume has large, full-color reproductions of the paintings, ordered according to themes in five chapters: "River Views and Rural Retreats"; "America's Favorite River, on Canvas"; "The American Grand Tour"; "American Artists Afield"; and "The Old World, Europe and the Course of Empire."

The relative dominance of Thomas Cole is expected, but many artists, some of whom are relatively unknown to most of us, are presented with verve. Before mentioning the artists, Luman Reed needs a mention. His name appears throughout the book, and at first I did not realize how much this merchant and art patron influenced the preservation, and even instigation, of artworks associated with the New-York Historical Society. For instance, Reed commissioned Thomas Cole's masterwork, the five-canvas allegory The Course of Empire, which became the cornerstone of the American landscape holdings of the society.

American landscape painters of the "Manifest Destiny" period in our history "shared in the popular excitement of a mid-century era of exploration and expansion that would accelerate after the Civil War." Many artists were aware that they were making visual records of quickly disappearing vistas. Their works encouraged tourism but also preservation efforts in some places.

Near the end of the first chapter are several works by William Rickarby Miller, who trained in his native England but "charted in detailed watercolors and some oils of many of the soon-to-vanish early farmhouses, cottages, and estates in and around New York City." A page from Miller's sketchbook of 1858 shows a vista of the bay of New York from Hudson City, New Jersey, where Miller sat beside the carriage road and captured the feel of the stretching edge of urban and rural living.

Most of the artists represented in this book had studios and patrons in New York City. They belonged to a cultural network that is explicated throughout the book. Sometimes the web's intricacies reveal new perspectives. For instance, "[Asher B.] Durand had left a successful career as an engraver and portrait painter with Cole's encouragement and turned his attention to landscape around 1837. Years before, Durand had been one of Cole's discoverers." Using the society's trove of letters, sketches, and paintings by Durand, many threads loop and link. "On one visit [to the Catskill Mountain House] in 1848, Durand reported the presence of nine other artists in the Clove still working there in October." As representative artworks are presented, these connections begin to reverberate, just as intended. Historical societies are charged with bringing us into a closer understanding of our collective past.

Acutely aware that our American art traditions are founded upon European tradition, Ferber thoroughly explores interrelationships of the "American Tour" and the "Grand Tour" of the era. "This dilemma was critical for American landscape painters, who were specially primed to appreciate the striking differences between Europe's 'cultivated antiquity' and the 'raw antiquity of the American wilderness.'" It makes fascinating reading, for instance in an 1838 letter of Cole in Italy to Durand, who made his single trip abroad two years later in 1840.

In this vein, I discovered Thomas Hiram Hotchkiss (1833-1869), who had painted Catskill Mountains, Shandaken, N.Y. in 1856 and a bit later Catskill Mountains, Haying and a beautiful Catskill Winter Landscape in 1858. Hotchkiss was deeply influenced by Durand, but unlike his mentor, Hotchkiss loved Italy, as his almost abstract, luminous views of Italy reveal. Their intimate and yet classic quality impress, even in reproduction. "Hotchkiss was greatly admired by fellow artists and by the prominent critics of the time…The Durand family oversaw the artist's estate and so came to possess the largest collection of Hotchkiss's paintings and works on paper, which were later given to the New-York Historical Society."

This fact encourages appreciators of sensitive landscape paintings to put on their itinerary a trip to the society's museum.

A.C.V.

The Dictionary of Signature Cane Inclusions; Paperweights, Beads, Buttons, Marbles: Identification and Dating, Volume II by Andrew H. Dohan (Andrew H. Dohan, 2007, CD-ROM, $9.99 plus S/H from Andrew H. Dohan, <addg@juno.com>).

A signature cane is a glass rod or strip with a pattern (visible in cross section) identifying an artist or factory. Included on this CD-ROM are 850 PDF pages with more than 1650 full-color illustrations of signature and date canes used by 363 paperweight, bead, button, and marble artists and factories from 1843 through 2007. The text includes short biographies of each artist and brief histories of the factories.

One big advantage of having this book printed on a CD is that it is much less expensive to produce than a comparable book on paper. A disadvantage of this format is that it requires that the user be comfortable navigating through PDF files. The text comes in six sections, and the six files are clearly labeled. According to the author, the pages are programmed as "read only." They can be copied onto your computer's hard drive, but printing any section will require using screen copy software.

There's a wealth of information contained in the disc, including an extensive bibliography, an explanation of how glass paperweights are made, and a helpful guide to distinguishing between run-of-the-mill old paperweights and those that are truly rare.

Caribbean Houses: History, Style, and Architecture by Michael Connors (Rizzoli, 2009, 272 pp., hardbound, $60).

Michael Connors, who lives part of the year in St. Croix, has written about and photographed historic houses on the islands of the Caribbean for 40 years. His latest book focuses on the region's colonial-era grand town houses and plantation great houses. The majority of these houses stand in ruins today, but a few survive. Connors, who acknowledges that much research remains to be done, writes that this book "represents the beginning of an investigative analysis of historically significant houses and of stylistic development of various designs over time."

The Caribbean was colonized by five European powers (Spain, England, France, the Netherlands, and Denmark), each with its own architectural influences and designs, so "there is no single definitive Caribbean architectural style." Connors devotes a chapter to each of the five colonizers. He delves into history, discusses the people and their lifestyles, and illustrates it all with gorgeous full-color photos.

Connors dedicates this book "to the indigenous Amerindians and enslaved African West Indians who shouldered the labor" of building these magnificent houses.

George Pope Morris: Defining American Culture by Trudie A. Grace and David B. Dearinger, with a contribution by Charlie S. Adams (Putnam County Historical Society & Foundry School Museum, 2009, 68 pp., softbound, $19.95 plus S/H from Putnam County Historical Society; <office@pchs-fsm.org> or [845] 265-4010).

This is the catalog from an exhibition that was at the Putnam County Historical Society in Cold Spring, New York, from April to August and is at the Boston Athenaeum until December 5. The exhibit and book explore George Pope Morris's role as an influential publisher and editor in the 1800's and show how his publications (the New-York Mirror, the Evening Mirror, the Weekly Mirror, and the Home Journal) helped create and promote the "new" American culture.

In the first issue of the New-York Mirror in August 1823 Morris declared that the content would be "literally and emphatically AMERICAN." He also was "self-consciously contributing to the young nation's developing sense of cultural identity and national pride." Three essays give an interesting overview of how Morris promoted art, literature, and the Hudson River. The first of two shorter essays discusses the creation of a uniquely American literary voice and shows how writers from that time found a new outlet in Morris's publications. The second essay emphasizes that while American art was beginning to come into its own, Morris promoted artists, the need for a national art school, and new exhibition venues.

The third and longest essay centers on Morris's love of the Hudson River, which was heralded in poems, songs, stories, articles, and editorials printed alongside engravings of Hudson River scenes. Morris's Hudson River estate, Undercliff, and other historical sites and homes became points of interest to river travelers as a result of descriptions and illustrations of them. The essay also points out that occasional expressions of disappointment were published over the interruption of the beauty and solitude by the unending riverboats carrying hundreds of visitors up the Hudson.

The stories recounted look at an important voice from a time of new milestones in America's cultural history. Engravings, sheet music, and portraits from the exhibit highlight the text. The catalog includes a detailed chronology of Morris's life and an exhibition checklist.

New Discoveries of American Patented Planes: A Calendar for 2010 by Roger K. Smith (Roger K. Smith, 2010, $12.95 from Roger K. Smith, PO Box 177, Athol, MA 01331-0177; [www.rogerksmith.com]; include $3.55 S/H, MA residents add sales tax).

Collectors and admirers of American patented planes will find much to like about this wall calendar. Each month features photos of one or more antique planes, and several months also feature drawings from patent applications. Significant dates in tool history, such as birth and death dates of plane makers and the dates on which patents were granted, are noted along with the standard holidays.

Written and published by Roger K. Smith, author of several books on patented planes, this visually pleasing calendar was designed by Norman R. Forgit.

North Carolina Decorated Stoneware: The Webster School of Folk Potters by Quincy Scarborough and Samuel Scarborough (The Quincy Scarborough Companies, 2009, 118 pp., softbound, $39.95 from Quincy Scarborough, PO Box 67, Fayetteville, NC 28302; [910] 483-2040; include $4 S/H, North Carolina residents add sales tax).

This revised second edition of a book first published in 1986 documents the work of North Carolina's Webster family of folk potters. Decoration previously known as "bird and fish" style had remained unattributed until evidence began emerging to link it with the Webster family. Diligent research uncovered the trail that led the Websters from Connecticut to Fayetteville, bringing with them their distinctive incised flourishes (more common to the North). In 1982 the Gurdon Robins kiln site was located in Fayetteville with "bird and fish" type shards and that, combined with Webster family genealogy and other research on local potters, solidly placed the family as a part of the Robins business.

The book is presented in two parts; the first concerns the potters, while the second focuses on the wares. It is amply illustrated in color and black and white and offers local maps and diagrams of the potters' frequently used motifs. The items pictured are drawn from private and museum collections. A bibliography is included.

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