Description

246. Christopher W. Lane, “History of Cincinnati Lithography: The Civil War Years,” Vol. 40, No. 2 (Autumn 2015), 2-20, 17 illus.

This is the concluding article of Christopher W. Lane’s four-part series on lithographic printing in Cincinnati. Focusing on the Civil War years, Lane examines the work of Donaldson & Elmes, Gibson & Co., Middleton, Strobridge & Co., and Ehrgott, Forbriger & Co., all firms that continued to flourish till the end of the century and beyond. Particular notice is given to the soldier-artists Alfred E. Mathews, and John Nepomuck Roesler. Mathews, who signed his work A. E. Mathews, served with the 31^st Ohio Volunteers and had over forty of his war sketches printed by a number of Cincinnati lithographers. Roesler, who styled himself J. Nep Roesler, served with the 47^th Ohio Volunteers and produced an Album of the Campaign of 1861 in Western Virginia, printed and published by Ehrgott, Forbriger & Co. This same firm produced, in Lane’s words, “a notable series of portraits of Union politicians and military officers, each with the rendering of the subject’s face based on a photographic image.” There is considerable discussion of the standard backgrounds devised for each category of sitter, and of the arrangement of the portfolios in which the portraits were typically published.

247. Thomas P. Bruhn, “The Erotic Print in Nineteenth-Century America, 1810 to 1890,” Vol. 40, No. 2 (Autumn 2015), 22-44, 22 illus.

Thomas P. Bruhn offers a survey of erotica developed for the male audience in nineteenth-century America. He characterizes the various presentations of sexual imagery, noting “the imagery can range from the socially acceptable idealized nude to nudity or attitudes that allude to sexual activity. Erotica finds its way into the public sphere and not just the private when it has aesthetic pretensions or, more importantly, meets a threshold of general social acceptance as for example in some forms of advertising.”