Description

50. Hughston, Milan R. “The Print Collection of the Amon Carter Museum.” Vol. 7, no. 2 (Autumn 1982), 17-27.

Hughston begins his survey by describing works by “historian/artists” who documented the American West. Included in this group are works by James Otto Lewis and James Hall, Thomas L. McKenney, Karl Bodmer, George Catlin, and Alfred Jacob Miller. The holdings of Mexican War prints and prints of California are also described. Landscapes and city views are also an important category for the Museum. Other areas of interest are prints after Bingham’s paintings, Currier & Ives, chromolithography, and illustrated books of the West.

51. Wick, Wendy C. “American Icon: The Eighteenth Century Image of George Washington.” Vol. 7, no. 2 (Autumn 1982), 1-9.

This article is based on Wick’s book, George Washington, An American Icon: The Eighteenth Century Graphic Portraits, published in 1982 by the Smithsonian in conjunction with a traveling exhibition. The exhibition included prints of Washington issued from 1775 through 1800, the year after his death. Artists who produced the portraits had two challenges: the need to create a likeness and the symbolic context for it. A range of portraits has survived–from naive woodcuts to elegant mezzotints by Peale and Savage.

52. Yarnell, James L. “Tennyson Illustration in Boston, 1864- 1872.” Vol. 7, no. 2 (Autumn 1982), 10-16.

Yarnell describes the illustrations that resulted when two rival publishing houses “engaged in what can be considered a Tennysonian publishing war.” In 1864 the firms of Ticknor and Fields and J.E. Tilton and Company each published editions of Enoch Arden. The Tilton edition contained six full-page anonymous wood engravings; Ticknor and Fields commissioned nineteen illustrations from Felix O.C. Darley, William John Hennessey, Elihu Vedder, and John LaFarge. It is to the works of the latter two artists that Yarnell directs his attention. Ironically, Ticknor and Fields did not continue to publish such distinctive illustrations in subsequent editions of Tennyson’s works. J.E. Tilton’s publications were more successful.