Sentimental genre prints documented the social image of Victorian virtue through domestic scenes of courtship, family, home life, and images of the “genteel female.” Children are depicted studying nature or caring for their obedient pets as they learn their place in the greater world. Romantic scenes picture devoted husbands with their contented, dutiful wives. In these prints, young women educated in reading, music, needlework, the arts, the language of flowers, basic math and science are subjugated to their family’s needs.
These prints became popular as lithography was introduced to 19th Century Americans. As a new art form, it was affordable for the masses and provided a means to share visual information by crossing the barriers of race, class and language. Sentimental prints encouraged the artistic endeavors of schoolgirls and promoted the ambitions of amateur artists, while serving as both moral instruction and home or business decoration. They are a pictorial record of our romanticized past.
This colored print is a three-quarter length portrait of a man standing behind a seated woman. Each are holding the other's portrait miniatures. The man is in full dress, black tie and tails, while the woman is in a simple white dress with blue sash and gold jewelry. A patterned drapery and window blind with tasseled pull are in the background.
This print was produced by James S Baillie, was active in New York from 1838 to 1855. James Baillie started as a framer in 1838, and then became an artist and lithographer in 1843 or 1844. He discovered how to color lithographs while working as an independent contractor for Currier & Ives in the mid 1840’s. A prolific lithographer and colorist for Currier & Ives; his prints were extremely popular with a wide distribution. J. Baillie spent his later years concentrating on painting instead of lithography.
Black and white comic print of a boy with a fishing pole and a young girl are standing on the beach, watching the sunset. This is one of over 100 in a series of comic parodies of popular songs.
Camp meetings were a popular form of Protestant worship throughout the 19th century. Lasting several days, these open-air events often involved ecstatic communal prayer. Hundreds and even thousands came from miles around for preaching and worship, and to enjoy the festival-like atmosphere. In this hand colored print a large crowd in a clearing in the woods. The foreground scene depicts a quiet, peaceful group of men, women, and in this print two boys. A Black couple are depicted in the lower right near the two children. There is a muzzled dog depicted in the lower left. Some sedately sit on benches, while others kneel on the ground in prayer, stroll about in conversation, or stand listening to a minister. The minister with five men standing behind him is preaching from a covered platform on the left side of the print. This platform is a wood box-like structure, open halfway from the men's waists to the roof to form a commanding pulpit. In the background under a copse of tall trees and a jewel toned teal blue sky are several white tents with numbers and letters listed on them, and one lists Brooklyn No. 5, another A.R. No2. These presumably correspond with congregations from various locations.
The print was drawn by artist/lithographer Edward Williams Clay and printed and published in 1836 by Henry R. Robinson. Edward Williams Clay (1799-1857) came from a large, well off Philadelphia family. He began working as a political caricaturist in 1828 and was throughout his artistic career an engraver, lithographer, etcher, and portrait painter. Before his career as an artist began in earest Clay was admitted to the Philadelphia Bar, but quickly left to pursue art, first in Philadelphia starting in 1819 and then in in New York City. His step-father, who was a jeweler and silversmith appears to have fostered his artistic nature in design.Clay and Robinson specialized in political caricatures particularly Major Jack Downing,.in theater portraits, and sheet music. By the mid 1830's he was working in New York and partnering frequently with Henry R. Pobinson, who published much of his work through 1838 and then from 1843-1856. He worked with John Childs from 1838-1844. After losing his eyesight, he retired from art and held minor office in Delaware before his death in December of 1857.
Henry R. Robinson, was a caricaturist and lithographer in New York City. He was listed as a carver and gilder from 1833-34, as a caricaturist from 1836-43 and as a lithographer and print publisher from 1843-51, though he published Edward Williams Clay's work often from 1834-1856. Henry Robinson was known for political prints that championed the causes of the Whig Party (which later merged with the Republican Party) and satirized the opposing Democratic Party. New York state historian Peter C. Welsh has called Henry Robinson the "Printmaker to the Whig Party".
This colored print is an oval bust portrait of actress Maggie Mitchell on a banner. She is wearing a white hat and white dress. The caption stamped at the top of the poster announces the location and date of the performance as “Park Theatre, Tuesday, March 14.”
The Park Theater was built in 1798 on Park Row in Manhattan and was New York City’s premiere performance space in the early 19th Century. It attracted a diverse audience with each class sitting in its preferred section. Working class men sat in the pit; members of the upper class and women in the boxes; the least affluent sat or stood in the balcony. These included immigrants, people of color, and prostitutes.
Maggie Mitchell (1832-1918) has been described as a pioneering example of "the personality actress," a performer whose onstage persona was almost indistinguishable from her image offstage. ( The History of North American Theater). She was born Margaret Julia Mitchell in New York City. As a young girl, she performed in silent roles before making her speaking debut as Julia in The Soldier's Daughter in 1851. Petite and curly haired, with a childlike energy, she was often cast in sentimental comedies and in male or “tomboy” roles, including the title role in a stage adaptation of Oliver Twist. Mitchell's sprightly charm sparked what would later be called a "Maggie Mitchell craze" in Cleveland, Ohio, and she eventually became one of the most celebrated actresses of her era. She appeared in Jane Eyre, Little Barefoot, The Pearl of Savoy, and other dramas, but her best-known role was as a simple country girl in a comedy called Fanchon, the Cricket, adapted from George Sand's story "La Petite Fadette." She made her debut as Fanchon in the early 1860s and continued to perform the part, along with her trademark “shadow dance,” until she was in her fifties. Abraham Lincoln, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow were said to be among her admirers. Maggie Mitchell retired from the theater in 1892.
This chromolithograph was produced by Henry Atwell Thomas. Henry Atwell Thomas (1834-1904) was an artist, portrait painter, and lithographer especially well known for his theatrical portraits. His New York firm was called H. A. Thomas Lith. Studio until 1887, when it became H. A. Thomas & Wylie Lithographic (sometimes cited as Lithography or Lithographing) Company.
The collection contains a duplicate of this same print (DL.60.3049)
Black and white comic print of an Indian holding a rifle behind his back in one hand and a bottle in the other. The bottle is tipped and liquid is pouring down from it. He is dressed in bedraddled shirt, torn pants, and has three feathers in his hair. This is one of over 100 in a series of comic parodies of popular songs.
A color print of granstands of race track decorated with banners and flags. The horses begin the race driven hard by jockeys. The jockeys wear white breeches, red, green, yellow, and pink jackets. The judges and owners stand in octagonal stands with striped awning.
Jerome Park Racetrack opened on September 25, 1866 in Fordham, Westchester County, New York, which now forms part of the Bronx. The American Jockey Club operated this facility on what was once the Bathgate estate. It was owned by Leonard W. Jerome, who helped found the Jockey Club, and August Belmont, Sr. The course was known as “The Bluff” and hosted the first Belmont Stakes in honor of its owner and President of the Jockey Club in 1867. It ran there until 1890 until it was moved to the Morris Park Racetrack. Visits to Jerome Park were integral to New York City social life. In 1894, Jerome Park was scheduled to be turned into a reservoir for the city because the popularity of racing had begun to decline and “bookmaking” was introduced, lowering the class of the facility to the chagrin of the American Jockey Club, which later banned the activity. The prohibition of betting was the final factor in the downfall of Jerome Park.
Heinrich or Henry Schile’s was a lithographer and publisher in New York in the 1870’s, listed on Division Street. Though his works often were German in source or character, and often bore titles in foreign languages, it was for the convenience of immigrants and invariably and outrageously were crude in conception, composition, and drawing; yet, Schile’s prints are undoubtedly American in spirit. Schile vividly represented the melting pot mentality of the US. Schile played to his audiences’ desires for history of the new country they had immigrated to; from personifications of America, to the races in Saratoga. Schile’s patrons were mostly immigrants and he created specific works from them, from German inspired to Jewish religious prints. His most frequent and popular works were his gaudy sentimentals which were to the New York tenements what the Kellogg sentimentals were to the white New Englanders.
Schile’s works were often large in quantity and were often on heavy black paper; though the paper often ranged from the thinnest to the very thickest. Notable to Peter’s was that the coloring was very crude in many of the prints.
Sentimental genre prints documented the social image of Victorian virtue through domestic scenes of courtship, family, home life, and images of the “genteel female.” Children are depicted studying nature or caring for their obedient pets as they learn their place in the greater world. Romantic scenes picture devoted husbands with their contented, dutiful wives. In these prints, young women educated in reading, music, needlework, the arts, the language of flowers, basic math and science are subjugated to their family’s needs.
These prints became popular as lithography was introduced to 19th Century Americans. As a new art form, it was affordable for the masses and provided a means to share visual information by crossing the barriers of race, class and language. Sentimental prints encouraged the artistic endeavors of schoolgirls and promoted the ambitions of amateur artists, while serving as both moral instruction and home or business decoration. They are a pictorial record of our romanticized past.
This colored print is an interior scene of a mother and child looking at the mother's portrait. The portrait is in an ornate, gold frame. Red drapery and a floral wallpaper are in the background. Both mother and daughter are wearing elegant dresses with ribbons, bows and lace ruffles.
This print was produced by James S Baillie, was active in New York from 1838 to 1855. James Baillie started as a framer in 1838, and then became an artist and lithographer in 1843 or 1844. He discovered how to color lithographs while working as an independent contractor for Currier & Ives in the mid 1840’s. A prolific lithographer and colorist for Currier & Ives; his prints were extremely popular with a wide distribution. J. Baillie spent his later years concentrating on painting instead of lithography.
Black and white comic print of farmer pointing to his pig, which the hunter has just shot. The hunter holds his rifle and stares down at the pig. This is one of over 100 in a series of comic parodies of popular songs.
Black and white comic print of a woman with an exaggerated grin stands beside a portrait bust which is labeled "PA". She is holding a fan and in a dress with a large bussle. This is one of over 100 in a series of comic parodies of popular songs.
Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church
maker
Major & Knapp Engraving, Manufacturing & Lithographic Company
ID Number
DL.60.2925
catalog number
60.2925
accession number
228146
Description
This black and white print is of a life membership certificate issued to a Miss Emely Chamberlain by the Black River Conference, an Auxiliary to the Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church. The Black River Conference was organized in Watertown, N. Y. in September 1836, by Bishop Beverly Waugh and later incorporated in 1841. The Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, begun in 1820 and headquartered in New York City, was among the earliest organizations that focused on mission within and outside the United States. Miss Emely Chamberlain could be one of several individuals living in New York with the name of Emely Chamberlin or Chamberlain during this period. The certificate indicates a monetary charge for the membership.
There are three vignettes depicting religious scenes: a large one at the top and two smaller ones in the lower corners. The top of the print proclaims, “Come Over Into Macedonia And Help Us,” while below it appears a figure of Christ motioning to two reclining followers. The scene in the lower left corner appears to represent worshippers from the Old Testament, while the images in the lower right corner portray a figure of Christ preaching to the multitudes.
The region of Macedonia was ruled by the Ottoman Empire from the 14th to the early 20th Centuries. In the latter half of the 19th century, Greece and the neighboring Balkan countries all claimed rights in Ottoman Macedonia on historical, linguistic, and religious grounds. Thus, they all attempted to show the strength of their respective ethnic groups in this geographically ill-defined area. The steady decline of the Ottoman Empire encouraged the Christian population and its supporters in other countries to press their claims. This print was produced by Major & Knapp Engraving, Manufacturing & Lithographic Company. The firm was founded by Napoleon Sarony (1821–1896), who was born in Quebec and trained under several lithography firms, including Currier & Ives and H.R. Robinson. Sarony was also known for his successful experiments in early photography, and he eventually developed a cabinet-sized camera. In 1846, Sarony partnered with another former apprentice of Nathaniel Currier, Henry B. Major, and created Sarony & Major lithography firm. Joseph F. Knapp (1832-1891) joined the firm in 1857. Sarony, Major & Knapp earned a solid reputation for lithography, and the company was especially known for its fine art chromolithography. Sarony left the firm by 1867 and by the 1870s, the firm shifted had focus to the more profitable area of advertising. It also expanded to become the conglomerate known as the American Lithographic Company, successfully producing calendars, advertising cards, and posters. In 1930 it was bought out by Consolidated Graphics.
This is a colored print of the 1856 eleven man United States cricket team. The players are dressed in assorted sports clothing, four holding cricket bats. This is the team that played September 11-12, 1856 when the United States won their match against Canada in Hoboken, New Jersey. The cricket match was attended by over 5,000 and the US won with 9 wickets to spare. The US success and North American interest inspired the All-England XI 6 city tour which occurred in 1859. In this print, umpire George Wheatcroft from Newark, New Jersey, stands dressed in a black suit and top hat. He stands at the one end of the row of players. The name of each man and his club is listed beneath his image. They are identified as Barlow, Marsh, (Henry) Sharpe, (Sam) Wright, Gibbes, Higham, Bingham, Cuyp, Waller, Willey, and Senior. Several were veterans of earlier matches and are from the St. George's Cricket Club in Manhattan, the New York Cricket Club, and the Philadelphia Cricket Club.
Black and white print of a man on horseback with a rifle leaping from a precipice into a creek. At right, a band of Indians that had been in pursuit look on in amazement.
Colored print of a man lying barefoot in the snow with his rifle under his arm. His dog stands over him protecting him from a vulture that is about to attack.
Black and white comic print of an extremely thin man with long hair, sitting on a stile, playing a flute. This is one of over 100 in a series of comic parodies of popular songs.
Black and white comic print of a frowning thin, young woman walks down a hill in the moonlight. This is one of over 100 in a series of comic parodies of popular songs.
Sentimental genre prints documented the social image of Victorian virtue through domestic scenes of courtship, family, home life, and images of the “genteel female.” Children are depicted studying nature or caring for their obedient pets as they learn their place in the greater world. Romantic scenes picture devoted husbands with their contented, dutiful wives. In these prints, young women educated in reading, music, needlework, the arts, the language of flowers, basic math and science are subjugated to their family’s needs.
These prints became popular as lithography was introduced to 19th Century Americans. As a new art form, it was affordable for the masses and provided a means to share visual information by crossing the barriers of race, class and language. Sentimental prints encouraged the artistic endeavors of schoolgirls and promoted the ambitions of amateur artists, while serving as both moral instruction and home or business decoration. They are a pictorial record of our romanticized past.
This colored print is a full length portrait of a man and woman standing together, outdoors, holding hands. The man is wearing a long, fitted coat, fancy vest, high collar, bow tie and shirt pin. The woman is wearing a long, floor length dress, with lace around the sleeve, gold bracelet and beaded necklace. The are standing in front of a stone wall topped with a vase or urn. Flowering bushes line the base of the wall.
This print was produced by James S Baillie, was active in New York from 1838 to 1855. James Baillie started as a framer in 1838, and then became an artist and lithographer in 1843 or 1844. He discovered how to color lithographs while working as an independent contractor for Currier & Ives in the mid 1840’s. A prolific lithographer and colorist for Currier & Ives; his prints were extremely popular with a wide distribution. J. Baillie spent his later years concentrating on painting instead of lithography.
Sentimental genre prints documented the social image of Victorian virtue through domestic scenes of courtship, family, home life, and images of the “genteel female.” Children are depicted studying nature or caring for their obedient pets as they learn their place in the greater world. Romantic scenes picture devoted husbands with their contented, dutiful wives. In these prints, young women educated in reading, music, needlework, the arts, the language of flowers, basic math and science are subjugated to their family’s needs.
These prints became popular as lithography was introduced to 19th Century Americans. As a new art form, it was affordable for the masses and provided a means to share visual information by crossing the barriers of race, class and language. Sentimental prints encouraged the artistic endeavors of schoolgirls and promoted the ambitions of amateur artists, while serving as both moral instruction and home or business decoration. They are a pictorial record of our romanticized past.
This hand colored print is an interior scene with a young man seated on an ornately carved and fringed chair warming his feet by the fire and contemplating a lithograph entitled "Married." The background includes: boots under the chair, tongs for the fireplace, smoking pipe and tobacco tin or trade card on the hearth which read Anderson & Co. Honey Dew tobacco... New-York. Also depicted is a glass-enclosed pendulum clock on mantle, a framed picture on wall, a small table with brocade edged table cloth, two books and a small astral lamp. Heavy red drapes at the window and a patterned carpet complete the scene. Prints depicting a bachelor in his quarters and titled Single were common during this period and were often part of a series the included Married.
The print was produced by the lithography firm of Kelloggs & Thayer. Kelloggs and Thayer was the first partnership formed by Elijah Chapman and Edmund Burke Kellogg after they took over the family firm from their brother Daniel Wright Kellogg. Horace Thayer was a map dealer and in 1845 or 1846 the partnetship opened a shop in New York. The partnership appears to have dissolved in 1847. In 1848, he Kellogg brothers formed a new partnership with John Cheneyard Comstock.