19th-century American Women: Winslow Homer 1836-1910 paints dogs in a boat...

Friday, February 22, 2013

Winslow Homer 1836-1910 paints dogs in a boat...

Winslow Homer (American artist, 1836-1910) Dogs in a Boat (also called Waiting for the Start) 1889

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How this blog works

President John Adams declared, “History is not the Province of the Ladies.” Oh well, I'll give it a try. Images & essays cluster around some chronological, social, cultural, or academic theme. Because I am a boring, old historian, I am interested in comparing & contrasting & looking at change over time. I try to choose images that justify their inclusion on aesthetic grounds. I do not offer complete image credit lines or footnotes, as my goal is to entice blog visitors to begin researching for themselves. (Graded enough papers as a TA to know that some undergrads are tempted to borrow.)

About history & the 19th-century

This blog will focus on how the lives of American women changed over the 19th century. It will use first-hand accounts whenever possible; so that the reader can compare & contrast those changes over time. Because there is an explosion of visual evidence across classes from print & photographic advances, this blog will use photos, prints, & paintings extensively.

History is certainly not a science. It is not the absolute truth. It is constantly changing as fresh evidence & new interpretations flash into view. As those looking at history peel away the tired, old suppositions, they add new (but already growing old) assumptions of their own.

History reflects not just the prejudices of the period under study, but also the biases of those studying it. Since each person focusing on a historical period brings a different perspective & goal to the task, historians often interpret the same period of the past in vastly different ways.

History before 1800 is often skewed; because only the few, the powerful, & the wealthy kept written records of events.

This bias begins to change during the 19th century, when more people begin to read & write and the government begins to keep more records about citizens, especially census data.

And yet, events only advance & take a particular shape, because of the everyday actions of the nameless many who give them the energy to move forward.

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Using Primary Sources

This blog will use as much original evidence as possible to allow the reader to draw conclusions.

Primary sources can give us a sense of the real differences between the past and the present; a context for understanding how ideas came about at a certain place in time; a realization that there are few neat linear narratives; a recognition of how our concept of the past has been shaped by people who have written about it.

Primary sources are documents and artifacts created during the time being studied or shortly after by a participant as a memoir. They are infused with the spirit of the time in which they were created. First-hand accounts bring a human voice to history, but they surely do not speak for themselves, they must be interpreted.

Primary sources force us to ask what those who created these surviving records must have believed or desired or deemed valuable in order to understand their ideas and actions.

Primary sources do not allow us to passively accept the historical conclusions of others. For a study of 19th century America, surviving manuscripts, letters, diaries, & journals; newpaper accounts; court, church & land records; and artifacts such as photos, portraits, & archaelogical finds, are the original evidence needed to compile good history. Good history results from the examination of countless primary sources to reach a general conclusion about a time period or event.

Good history is not deciding a conclusion in advance and then picking only those sources which support that foregone interpretation. The least/best theory of collecting the least amount of the best evidence to construct a convincing argument about an issue or period under study may be expedient in mathematics, but it does not work well in any serious study of history. Without gathering a hefty quantity of primary source evidence, how can a historian determine which is the best evidence? Good history is not based on one or two anecdotal incidents or descriptions manipulated into a generalized conclusion about the whole.

In this blog we will be looking at snippets of history. Exploring individual anecdotal incidents may be fun; but they are not good history, until they are woven into the whole.

Portraits, Prints, & Photos of American Women

In the 17th, 18th, and early 19th centuries, only the relatively wealthy had the means to hire a painter for portraits of their loved ones.

However, with the advent of photography in the middle of the 19th century, most could afford family photos, thereby giving us a larger window to view all segments of society.

The date of early photographs can often be identified by the process. Most early photographic portraits are either daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, tintypes, or paper prints.

Daguerreotype (1839-1860s): metal photograph with a reflective surface, sometimes found in a case.

Ambrotype (invented 1854): Negative image on glass that appears as a positive due to being backed with a dark material. Usually found in a case because of their fragility.

Ferreotype or tintype (invented 1856): Usually dark metal images on thin sheets of iron either in cases, with paper mats, or alone.

Paper Print (commonly available 1860): Photographs usually mounted on cardboard.

This blog will feature painted portraits of women (mostly from the 1st half of the century) plus prints & photos (mostly from the 2nd half of the 19th century) along with written primary source documents, because all yield valid information about the period.

The purpose of sharing art in the context of history on this blog is to promote knowledge of & interest in art. All a blog can do is present images. An image simply cannot replace seeing an art object in person, in context. The 3rd dimension is missing in an image, as is the emotional experience of confronting a work just as its creator did. If you can see a work in person, do. The difference between an image & a painting can take your breath away.