Art and Environmental Embodiment in Early National Philadelphia

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

Art and Environmental Embodiment in Early National Philadelphia THE OPULENT CITY AND THE SYLVAN STATE: ART AND ENVIRONMENTAL EMBODIMENT IN EARLY NATIONAL PHILADELPHIA A Dissertation Submitted to the Temple University Graduate Board In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY by Laura Turner Igoe August 2014 Examining Committee Members: Ashley West, Advisory Chair, Art History, Temple University Therese Dolan, Art History, Temple University Andrew Isenberg, History, Temple University Alan C. Braddock, Art History and American Studies, The College of William & Mary Wendy Bellion, External Member, Art History, University of Delaware © Copyright 2014 by Laura Turner Igoe All Rights Reserved ii ABSTRACT This dissertation investigates the ways in which Philadelphia artists and architects visualized, comprehended, and reformed the city’s rapidly changing urban environment in the early republic, prior to the modern articulation of “ecology” as a scientific concept by late nineteenth-century naturalists such as Ernst Haeckel. I consider a variety of different media—including popular depictions and manifestations of Penn’s Treaty Elm, fireplace and stove models by Charles Willson Peale, architectural designs for the Philadelphia Waterworks by Benjamin Henry Latrobe, and a self-portrait bust by the sculptor William Rush—in order to demonstrate that the human body served as a powerful creative metaphor in Philadelphia circa 1800, not only for understanding and representing natural processes in political or aesthetic terms, but also for framing critical public discourse about the city’s actual environmental conditions. Specifically, I reveal how this metaphorical framework produced a variety of effects in art and architecture of the period, sometimes facilitating and at other times obscuring an understanding about the natural world as an arena of dynamic transformation. I use the emerging discourse of ecocriticism to reframe complex embodied perceptions of the urban environment in early national Philadelphia. Briefly summarized, ecocriticism expands the scope of scholarly inquiry by recovering lost or neglected evidence of environmental conditions that bear on politics, society, and culture. Ecocritical art history offers a more self-critical approach to visual and material culture, questioning the prevailing anthropocentrism of art history by recognizing the agency of the environments and nonhuman entities with which artworks engage. Through an investigation of my case study objects’ previously overlooked engagement with their iii physical surroundings, I challenge the traditional separation of culture and nature, art and environment, in the interpretation of nineteenth-century art history. By revealing the previously unexplored environmental significance of the objects in question, my dissertation asserts that ecological change played an instrumental role in shaping artistic production and urban development in the decades following United States independence. iv For my grandparents v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation has benefitted immensely from the advice, feedback, and assistance of many individuals and institutions and I am indebted to them for their generous support. I owe a great deal to the art history department at the Tyler School of Art, Temple University, which encouraged and accommodated my research throughout my graduate career. I am very lucky to have had two excellent advisors during my tenure at Temple. Alan Braddock introduced me to the exciting possibilities of ecocriticism and new materialism, which allowed me to view nineteenth-century American art history in a new—and I believe, necessary—light. Alan continued to serve as my advisor after leaving Temple for a prestigious position at the College of William & Mary and this dissertation would only be a shell of its current state without his insightful prompts and provocations. Ashley West graciously stepped in as my primary advisor at Temple after Alan’s departure and her deep knowledge of the historical intersections of art, science, and intellectual discourse became invaluable to this project. Both Alan and Ashley have helped me become a more rigorous and thoughtful scholar and for that I am extremely grateful. Many other faculty members have also supported this project by offering advice at various stages, attending and evaluating practice conference talks, writing letters of recommendation, and assisting with applications. Thank you especially to Elizabeth Bolman, Tracy Cooper, Therese Dolan, Susanna Gold, Marcia Hall, Adele Nelson, and Gerald Silk for their involvement in this regard. Particular gratitude is due to my external committee members, Andrew Isenberg and Wendy Bellion, for the expertise on environmental history, urban studies, and art history of the early republic that they bring vi to this project. I hope the fruitful discussions I’ve had with Drew and Wendy in the past will continue in the future. I was fortunate to have had the opportunity to present an early version of my chapter on Charles Willson Peale’s fireplace and stove designs at the Anatomy/Academy Graduate Student Symposium at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 2011, where I received valuable feedback from Wendy, Rachel DeLue, Kathy Foster, Michael Leja, Anna Marley, and Tanya Sheehan that informed my dissertation going forward. I wish to also thank the members of the now defunct Temple University Americanist Reading Group (TUAReG), whose regular meetings from 2009- 2011 inspired stimulating interdisciplinary debate and proved an excellent venue to test out early chapter ideas. Several institutions have provided important material support for this dissertation. I am extremely grateful to the American Council of Learned Societies and the Henry Luce Foundation for funding a final year of research and writing with a Dissertation Fellowship in American Art. Thanks to an Ailsa Mellon Bruce Predoctoral Fellowship for Historians of American Art to Travel Abroad from the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, I spent four weeks in the summer of 2011 viewing art and science collections and Wunderkammern in the Netherlands, Germany, and Austria, which helped situate my project within a broader transatlantic framework. Residential fellowships have also been instrumental to this project’s development by facilitating invigorating scholarly exchange and access to important resources. I spent an incredibly productive and rewarding year as a predoctoral fellow at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) from 2012-13. Amelia Goerlitz, Amanda Rothstein, and Elizabeth Willson worked tirelessly to arrange seminars, talks, and tours during my vii fellowship term and made the Fellowship Office a very welcome and comfortable environment in which to work. I am also indebted to librarian Anne Evenhaugen for humoring my excessive use of the Smithsonian’s interlibrary loan system. While at SAAM, my dissertation benefitted greatly from thought-provoking conversations with curators and staff, especially Karen Lemmey, Emily Shapiro, Bill Truettner, and David Ward. SAAM’s fellowship program truly supports a remarkable group of perceptive and intelligent scholars and it was a privilege to work among a cohort of peers who engaged critically and creatively with American art. I am incredibly grateful to my fellow fellows—Susanneh Bieber, Emily Burns, Agathe Cabau, Katelyn Crawford, Catherine Holochworst, Miri Kim, Shana Klein, Nicholas Miller, Erin Pauwels, Berit Potter, Adam Thomas, Luis Vargas-Santiago, and Gregory Zinman—who encouraged me to clarify and more forcefully articulate the larger stakes of my dissertation. A dissertation research fellowship from the Pennsylvania Area Center for the History of Science funded a month of intense archival research at the American Philosophical Society, Historical Medical Library at the College of Physicians, Historical Society of Philadelphia, Franklin Institute, and Library Company of Philadelphia. Thank you especially to Babak Ashrafi and Simon Joseph for facilitating introductions and organizing networking events during this fellowship term. This past year, the McNeil Center for Early American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania welcomed my affiliation as a research associate and I am obliged to Dan Richter for the opportunity to participate in that interdisciplinary community of early American scholars. I also wish to thank the Terra Foundation for American Art for supporting a summer residency in viii Giverny, France and fostering a lively exchange of ideas and discussion of interpretive models with other doctoral candidates, senior scholars, and artists. The assistance and guidance of the knowledgeable library, archive, and museum staff I contacted and visited these past few years have been essential to this project’s realization. These individuals fielded numerous inquiries and facilitated the viewing of countless objects, archives, and books that became integral components of my dissertation. Kathy Foster and Mark Mitchell at the Center for American Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where I had a summer fellowship in 2008, became important resources and mentors to me throughout my graduate career. I spent a year cataloging the museum collection of the American Philosophical Society from 2009-2010 and this dissertation was inspired by that institution’s unique, and at times, baffling, collection of fine art and scientific objects. Thank you especially to Sue Ann Prince, Merrill Mason, Mary Grace Wahl, and the library staff for their guidance and support. My many hours
Recommended publications
  • Canova's George Washington
    CANOVA’S GEORGE WASHINGTON EXHIBITION ADDRESSES CANOVA’S ONLY WORK FOR UNITED STATES May 23 through September 23, 2018 In 1816, the General Assembly of North Carolina commissioned a full-length statue of George Washington to stand in the rotunda of the State Capitol, in Raleigh. Thomas Jefferson, believing that no American sculptor was up to the task, recommended Antonio Canova (1757– 1822), then one of Europe’s most celebrated artists. The first and only work Canova created for the United States, the statue depicted the nation’s first president in ancient Roman garb—all’antica armor—per Jefferson’s urging, drafting his farewell address to the states. It was unveiled to great acclaim in 1821. Tragically, a decade later, a fire swept through the State Capitol, reducing the statue to a few charred fragments. On May 23, The Frick Collection presents Canova’s George Washington, an exhibition that examines the history of the artist’s lost masterpiece. The show brings together for the first time all of the objects connected to the creation of the sculpture— including a remarkable life-sized Antonio Canova, Modello for George Washington (detail), 1818, modello that has never before left Italy—and tells the extraordinary plaster, Gypsotheca e Museo Antonio Canova, Possagno, Italy; photo Fabio Zonta, Fondazione Canova onlus, Possagno transatlantic story of this monumental work. The life-size modello, above, provides the closest idea of what the destroyed marble would have looked like. It is shown in the Frick’s Oval Room—alone—to replicate the effect it would have had in the rotunda of North Carolina’s State Capitol.
    [Show full text]
  • The History of Bryn Mawr, 1683-1900
    Bryn Mawr College Scholarship, Research, and Creative Work at Bryn Mawr College Bryn Mawr College Publications, Special Books, pamphlets, catalogues, and scrapbooks Collections, Digitized Books 1962 The History of Bryn Mawr, 1683-1900 Barbara Alyce Farrow Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.brynmawr.edu/bmc_books Part of the Liberal Studies Commons, and the Women's History Commons No evidence was found that the copyright was renewed in the 28th year from the date of publication, as required for books published between 1923 and 1963 (see Library of Congress Copyright Office, How To Investigate the Copyright Status of a Work [Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, Copyright Office, 2004]). The book is therefore believed to be in the public domain. Let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Custom Citation Farrow, Barbara Alyce. The History of Bryn Mawr, 1683-1900. Bryn Mawr, PA: Committee of Residents and Bryn Mawr Civic Association, 1962. This paper is posted at Scholarship, Research, and Creative Work at Bryn Mawr College. https://repository.brynmawr.edu/bmc_books/14 For more information, please contact [email protected]. The HISTORY OF BRYN MAWR 1683-1900 Barbara Alyce Farrow THE HISTORY OF BRYN MAWR 1683 - 1900 Barbara Alyce Farrow Foreword by Catherine Drinker Bowen Pub lished by A Committee of Residents and The Bryn Mawr Civic Association Bryn M.:lw r, Pe nn sylvania 1962 This work is based on a thesis submitted in 1957 to Westminster College New Wilmington, Pennsylvania. Copyright © Barbara Alyce Farrow 1962 library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 62-13436 II To my grandmother, Mrs.
    [Show full text]
  • American Agents: FRIENDS' BOOK & TRACT COMMITTEE, 144 East 20Th Street, New York, N.Y
    Price per number 2/- (50 cents); 5/- ($1.25) for the year, payable in advance THE JOURNAL OF THE FRIENDS HISTORICAL SOCIETY VOLUME FOURTEEN, NUMBER ONE, 1917 London: HEADLEY BROTHERS, KINGSWAY HOUSE, KINGSWAY, W.C. American Agents: FRIENDS' BOOK & TRACT COMMITTEE, 144 East 20th Street, New York, N.Y. GRACE W. BLAIR, Media, Pa. CONTENTS Page Hew Wood, Gardener to the Duke of Hamilton. By William Frederick Miller Note on some early Records of Quakers near Harro- gate. By Walter J. Kaye, Jr., B.A., F.S.A. .. 12 A Quaker Idyll, 1693 14 Richard Smith and his Journal. IV. Compiled by John Dymond Crosfield .. .. .. • • 19 Two Letters from David Livingstone .. 26 Ann Whitall and the Battle of Red Bank, 1777 29 Meeting Records—Warwickshire South 30 Notes on the Travels of Aaron Atkinson in America, 1698-1699 .. 31 Mary Whitall and her Bonnet 32 Joseph Rickman and his Poems 33 An Adventure on the Delaware River .. 34 Friends and Current Literature 35 Recent Accessions to D 39 American Notes. By Ella K. Barnard • • 41 Notes and Queries:— Journal of Margaret Woods—Meeting ersaries—Tones in Preaching—Buried like a Dog—Breaking up Meetings—Baron Dimsdale— Removals to Pennsylvania—Martyrdom of Mary Dyer—Baptism—Mabel Wigham's Journals- Daniel Quare and the Barometer—Bel lows's French Dictionary—A Friend and a War Song— Robert Proud, the Historian—Liberation of Slaves—Payable at Marriage—William Jackson Palmer 42 Vol. XIV. No. \ 1917 THE JOURNAL OF THE FRIENDS HISTORICAL SOCIETY For Table of Contents see page two of cover to <£>u8* of gamiffon MONGST the members of the Society of Friends dwelling in the West of Scotland during the latter part of the seventeenth century, Hew Wood seems worthy of special notice.1 He was for many years the leading Friend at Hamilton, the Meeting there being held at his house.
    [Show full text]
  • Maryland Historical Magazine, 1941, Volume 36, Issue No. 1
    ma SC 5Z2I~]~J41 MARYLAND HISTORICAL MAGAZINE PUBLISHED UNDER THE AUTHORITY OF THE MARYLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY VOLUME XXXVI BALTIMORE 1941 CONTENTS OF VOLUME XXXVI PAGE THE SUSQUEHANNOCK FORT ON PISCATAWAY CREEK. By Alice L. L. Ferguson, 1 ELIZA GODBFROY: DESTINY'S FOOTBALL. By William D. Hoyt, Jr., ... 10 BLUE AND GRAY: I. A BALTIMORE VOLUNTEER OF 1864. By William H. fames, 22 II. THE CONFEDERATE RAID ON CUMBERLAND, 1865. By Basil William Spalding, 33 THE " NARRATIVE " OF COLONEL JAMES RIGBIE. By Henry Chandlee Vorman, . 39 A WEDDING OF 1841, 50 THE LIFE OF RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON IN MARYLAND, 1867-1898. By Prawds Taylor Long, concluded, 54 LETTERS OF CHARLES CARROLL, BARRISTER, continued, 70, 336 BOOK REVIEWS, 74, 223, 345, 440 NOTES AND QUERIES, 88, 231, 354, 451 PROCEEDINGS OF THE SOCIETY, 90, 237, 455 LIST OF MEMBERS, 101 THE REVOLUTIONARY IMPULSE IN MARYLAND. By Charles A. Barker, . 125 WILLIAM GODDARD'S VICTORY FOR THE FREEDOM OF THE PRESS. By W. Bird Terwilliger, 139 CONTROL OF THE BALTIMORE PRESS DURING THE CIVIL WAR. By Sidney T. Matthews, 150 SHIP-BUILDING ON THE CHESAPEAKE: RECOLLECTIONS OF ROBERT DAWSON LAMBDIN, 171 READING INTERESTS OF THE PROFESSIONAL CLASSES IN COLONIAL MARYLAND, 1700-1776. By Joseph Towne Wheeler, 184, 281 THE HAYNIE LETTERS 202 BALTIMORE COUNTY LAND RECORDS OF 1687. By Louis Dow Scisco, . 215 A LETTER FROM THE SPRINGS, 220 POLITICS IN MARYLAND DURING THE CIVIL WAR. By Charles Branch Clark, . 239 THE ORIGIN OF THE RING TOURNAMENT IN THE UNITED STATES. By G. Harrison Orians, 263 RECOLLECTIONS OF BROOKLANDWOOD TOURNAMENTS. By D. Sterett Gittings, 278 THE WARDEN PAPERS.
    [Show full text]
  • Philadelphia in Philadelphia, Your STEM Students Can Explore a City Filled with Robotics, Fossils, Butterflies, VR Experiences, Flight Simulators, and So Much More
    TOP STEM DESTINATIONS: Philadelphia In Philadelphia, your STEM students can explore a city filled with robotics, fossils, butterflies, VR experiences, flight simulators, and so much more. If your students are ready to become detectives and examining skeletal remains, explore the “heart” of the Franklin Institute, or take lessons have been developed to meet Educational Standards, including Pennsylvania State Standards and the Next Generation Science Standards, Educational Destinations can make your Philadelphia history trip rewarding and memorable. EDUCATIONAL STEM OPPORTUNITIES: • Meet Pennsylvania Academic Standards • Discovery Camps • Interactive School Tours • Museum Sleepovers • Be a Forensic Anthropologist • Philadelphia Science Festival (Spring) • Scavenger Hunts • Live Science Shows • Animal Encounters • Tech Studios • Amazing Adaptations • Robotics Workshops • Escape Rooms • Movie-Making Workshops • Virtual Reality Experiences • Drone Workshops • Flight Simulators • Game Design Workshops • Planetarium Exhibits • Lego Robotics • Survivial Experiences • Engineering for Kids STEM ATTRACTIONS: • University of Pennsylvania • Garden State Discovery Museum • Penn Museum • Greener Partners’ Longview Farm • The Franklin Institute • Independence Seaport Museum • Mütter Museum at The College of Physicians of Philadelphia • John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge at Tinicum • Pennsylvania Hospital Physic Garden • John James Audubon Center at Mill Grove • Philadelphia Insectarium and Butterfly Pavilion • Linvilla Orchards • Academy of Natural Sciences
    [Show full text]
  • The First Design for Fairmount Park
    The First Design for Fairmount Park AIRMOUNT PARK IN PHILADELPHIA is one of the great urban parks of America, its importance in landscape history exceeded only by FNew York’s Central Park. Its name derives from the “Faire Mount” shown on William Penn’s plan of 1682, where the Philadelphia Museum of Art now perches, and where the gridded Quaker city suddenly gives way to an undulating scenery of river and park. Measuring over 3,900 acres, it is one of the world’s largest municipal parks. Nonetheless, for all its national importance, the origin of the park, its philosophical founda- tions, and its authorship have been misunderstood in the literature.1 About the principal dates there is no dispute: in 1812–15 a municipal waterworks was built on the banks of the Schuylkill, the site of which soon became a popular resort location and a subject of picturesque paintings; in 1843 the city began to acquire tracts of land along the river to safeguard the water supply; in 1859 the city held a competition for the design of a picturesque park; finally, in 1867, the Fairmount Park Commission was established to oversee a much larger park, whose layout was eventually entrusted to the German landscape architect Hermann J. Schwarzmann. This is the version rehearsed in all modern accounts of the park. All texts agree that 1867 marks the origin of the park, in conception and execution. They depict the pre–Civil War events as abortive and inconclusive; in particular, they dismiss the 1859 competition. According to George B. Tatum, writing in 1961, a series of “plans were prepared,” I am indebted to five generous colleagues who read this manuscript and contributed suggestions: Therese O’Malley of CASVA; Sheafe Satterthwaite and E.
    [Show full text]
  • Philadelphia and the Southern Elite: Class, Kinship, and Culture in Antebellum America
    PHILADELPHIA AND THE SOUTHERN ELITE: CLASS, KINSHIP, AND CULTURE IN ANTEBELLUM AMERICA BY DANIEL KILBRIDE A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 1997 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS In seeing this dissertation to completion I have accumulated a host of debts and obligation it is now my privilege to acknowledge. In Philadelphia I must thank the staff of the American Philosophical Society library for patiently walking out box after box of Society archives and miscellaneous manuscripts. In particular I must thank Beth Carroll- Horrocks and Rita Dockery in the manuscript room. Roy Goodman in the Library’s reference room provided invaluable assistance in tracking down secondary material and biographical information. Roy is also a matchless authority on college football nicknames. From the Society’s historian, Whitfield Bell, Jr., I received encouragement, suggestions, and great leads. At the Library Company of Philadelphia, Jim Green and Phil Lapansky deserve special thanks for the suggestions and support. Most of the research for this study took place in southern archives where the region’s traditions of hospitality still live on. The staff of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History provided cheerful assistance in my first stages of manuscript research. The staffs of the Filson Club Historical Library in Louisville and the Special Collections room at the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond were also accommodating. Special thanks go out to the men and women at the three repositories at which the bulk of my research was conducted: the Special Collections Library at Duke University, the Southern Historical Collection of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and the Virginia Historical Society.
    [Show full text]
  • Litigating the Lash: Quaker Emancipator Robert Pleasants, the Law
    LITIGATING THE LASH: QUAKER EMANCIPATOR ROBERT PLEASANTS, THE LAW OF SLAVERY, AND THE MEANING OF MANUMISSION IN REVOLUTIONARY AND EARLY NATIONAL VIRGINIA By William Fernandez Hardin Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Vanderbilt University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in History May, 2013 Nashville, Tennessee Approved: Richard J.M. Blackett David L. Carlton Daniel J. Sharfstein Daniel H. Usner Copyright © by William Fernandez Hardin All Rights Reserved To Jessica, for loving a grumpy man, and to Ainsley, for making him less grumpy. ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank the Virginia Historical Society and the John D. Rockefeller Jr. Library at Colonial Williamsburg for their support in the research of this dissertation—both collections proved invaluable and the staff helped a fledging graduate student navigate unfamiliar terrain. I would also like to thank the Folger Institute’s Center for the History of British Political Thought in Washington D.C. and my fellow participants in the “Changing Conceptions of Property” seminar for the opportunity to spend a summer discussing the relationship between English property law and colonial governance. I would also like to thank the Vanderbilt history department for its generous support. It has been a pleasure to learn the craft from such a distinguished group of historians. Professors Michael Bess, Bill Caferro, Katie Crawford, Dennis Dickerson, and Elizabeth Lunbeck, each—in vastly different ways—helped me discover new ways of considering the past and the people who lived there and I thank them for it. I would also like to thank the Vanderbilt Americanist Works-in-Progress Seminar for graciously allowing me to present my work and the invaluable comments and critiques provided.
    [Show full text]
  • Naturalizing Sustainability Discourse: Paradigm, Practices and Pedagogy of Thoreau, Leopold, Carson and Wilson
    Naturalizing Sustainability Discourse: Paradigm, Practices and Pedagogy of Thoreau, Leopold, Carson and Wilson by Craig F. Thomas A Dissertation Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy Approved April 2015 by the Graduate Supervisory Committee: Ben A. Minteer, Chair Christopher Boone Paul W. Hirt K. David Pijawka ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY May 2015 © 2015 Craig F. Thomas All Rights Reserved ABSTRACT Understanding complex and adaptive socio-ecological systems (SES) to deal with our most challenging and overlapping problems such as global climate change, biodiversity loss, and rising consumption rates requires sustainability theory that is commensurate with these problems’ size and complexity. The received United Nations- based sustainability framework aims to achieve a balance among three pillars— economics, environment, and social equity—for today and for future generations. Yet, despite applying this sustainability framework for over a quarter of a century, the Earth is less sustainable, not more. Theoretical trade-offs between environmental conservation and economic growth have often reinforced business-as-usual practices and educational paradigms, and emphasized economic values over ecological limits. How can the principles of foundational naturalists help clarify, enhance, and advance sustainability discourse? I propose that the principles of Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), Aldo Leopold (1887-1948), Rachel Carson (1907-1964), and Edward O. Wilson (1927-), express a worldview that captures and integrates a range and depth of historical, normative, economic, ecological, scientific, and social values for a viable and applicable discourse of sustainability. This analytical study relies on (i.) textual analysis and interpretation of four key naturalists and humanists, (ii.) analysis of secondary sources that illuminate their proto- ecological and sustainability principles, and (iii.) interviews with leading sustainability scholars.
    [Show full text]
  • "Citizens in the Making": Black Philadelphians, the Republican Party and Urban Reform, 1885-1913
    University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2017 "Citizens In The Making": Black Philadelphians, The Republican Party And Urban Reform, 1885-1913 Julie Davidow University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the United States History Commons Recommended Citation Davidow, Julie, ""Citizens In The Making": Black Philadelphians, The Republican Party And Urban Reform, 1885-1913" (2017). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 2247. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2247 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/2247 For more information, please contact [email protected]. "Citizens In The Making": Black Philadelphians, The Republican Party And Urban Reform, 1885-1913 Abstract “Citizens in the Making” broadens the scope of historical treatments of black politics at the end of the nineteenth century by shifting the focus of electoral battles away from the South, where states wrote disfranchisement into their constitutions. Philadelphia offers a municipal-level perspective on the relationship between African Americans, the Republican Party, and political and social reformers, but the implications of this study reach beyond one city to shed light on a nationwide effort to degrade and diminish black citizenship. I argue that black citizenship was constructed as alien and foreign in the urban North in the last decades of the nineteenth century and that this process operated in tension with and undermined the efforts of black Philadelphians to gain traction on their exercise of the franchise. For black Philadelphians at the end of the nineteenth century, the franchise did not seem doomed or secure anywhere in the nation.
    [Show full text]
  • Download Download
    TEMPERANCE, ABOLITION, OH MY!: JAMES GOODWYN CLONNEY’S PROBLEMS WITH PAINTING THE FOURTH OF JULY Erika Schneider Framingham State College n 1839, James Goodwyn Clonney (1812–1867) began work on a large-scale, multi-figure composition, Militia Training (originally Ititled Fourth of July ), destined to be the most ambitious piece of his career [ Figure 1 ]. British-born and recently naturalized as an American citizen, Clonney wanted the American art world to consider him a major artist, and he chose a subject replete with American tradition and patriotism. Examining the numer- ous preparatory sketches for the painting reveals that Clonney changed key figures from Caucasian to African American—both to make the work more typically American and to exploit the popular humor of the stereotypes. However, critics found fault with the subject’s overall lack of decorum, tellingly with the drunken behavior and not with the African American stereotypes. The Fourth of July had increasingly become a problematic holi- day for many influential political forces such as temperance and abolitionist groups. Perhaps reflecting some of these pressures, when the image was engraved in 1843, the title changed to Militia Training , the title it is known by today. This essay will pennsylvania history: a journal of mid-atlantic studies, vol. 77, no. 3, 2010. Copyright © 2010 The Pennsylvania Historical Association This content downloaded from 128.118.152.206 on Thu, 21 Jan 2016 14:57:03 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions PAH77.3_02Schneider.indd 303 6/29/10 11:00:40 AM pennsylvania history demonstrate how Clonney reflected his time period, attempted to pander to the public, yet failed to achieve critical success.
    [Show full text]
  • BM Tour to View
    08/06/2020 Gods and Heroes The influence of the Classical World on Art in the C17th and C18th The Tour of the British Museum Room 2a the Waddesdon Bequest from Baron Ferdinand Rothschild 1898 Hercules and Achelous c 1650-1675 Austrian 1 2 Limoges enamel tazza with Judith and Holofernes in the bowl, Joseph and Potiphar’s wife on the foot and the Triumph of Neptune and Amphitrite/Venus on the stem (see next slide) attributed to Joseph Limousin c 1600-1630 Omphale by Artus Quellinus the Elder 1640-1668 Flanders 3 4 see previous slide Limoges enamel salt-cellar of piédouche type with Diana in the bowl and a Muse (with triangle), Mercury, Diana (with moon), Mars, Juno (with peacock) and Venus (with flaming heart) attributed to Joseph Limousin c 1600- 1630 (also see next slide) 5 6 1 08/06/2020 Nautilus shell cup mounted with silver with Neptune on horseback on top 1600-1650 probably made in the Netherlands 7 8 Neptune supporting a Nautilus cup dated 1741 Dresden Opal glass beaker representing the Triumph of Neptune c 1680 Bohemia 9 10 Room 2 Marble figure of a girl possibly a nymph of Artemis restored by Angellini as knucklebone player from the Garden of Sallust Rome C1st-2nd AD discovered 1764 and acquired by Charles Townley on his first Grand Tour in 1768. Townley’s collection came to the museum on his death in 1805 11 12 2 08/06/2020 Charles Townley with his collection which he opened to discerning friends and the public, in a painting by Johann Zoffany of 1782.
    [Show full text]