Kinigopoulo Udel 006

Home , Campau family, Fanny Eaton, Levi Cook, The Rainbow (painting), William Sidney Mount

THE GROTESQUE VISIONS OF A GENTEEL ROGUE:

FREDERICK E. COHEN’S DETROIT PAINTINGS, 1845 - 1853

Anastasia Kinigopoulo

A thesis submitted to the Faculty of the University of Delaware in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in American Material Culture

Spring 2020

THE GROTESQUE VISIONS OF A GENTEEL ROGUE:

FREDERICK E. COHEN’S DETROIT PAINTINGS, 1845 - 1853

Anastasia Kinigopoulo

Approved: ______Marie-Stephanie Delamaire, Ph.D. Professor in charge of thesis on behalf of the Advisory Committee

Approved: ______Martin Brückner, Ph.D. Interim Director of the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture

Approved: ______John A. Pelesko, Ph.D. Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences

Approved: ______Douglas J. Doren, Ph.D. Interim Vice Provost for Graduate and Professional Education and Dean of the Graduate College

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I extend my deepest gratitude to my advisor, Stephanie Delamaire, for her support and suggestions from the inception of this project to its completion. This study would not have been possible were it not for her unfailing encouragement and input throughout my time at Winterthur. I am so grateful for the many wonderful scholars and curators whom I had the pleasure to meet and work with over the past two years at Winterthur and at the University of Delaware. Numerous individuals were especially helpful throughout my research and writing. Early on, Wendy Bellion’s recommendations for how to approach Great Lakes scholarship were enormously valuable. Ritchie Garrison’s suggestions and thoughts were integral to my early research into Fredeick E. Cohen.

Linda Eaton offered invaluable input as I grappled with what I was seeing in Cohen’s work. Zara Anishanslin provided key criticism on parts of this draft and on how to frame the larger questions I was wrestling with. At the Winterthur Library, my thanks go out to Emily Guthrie for her astute suggestions for tracking down design sources and the many excellent talks between the long bouts of research. My thanks, as well, to Sarah Lewis and Linda Magner for their good humor and patience with my endless ILL requests. In their willingness to listen and provide feedback, Catharine Dann

Roeber and Tom Guiler never faltered in their kindness, responsiveness, and helpful insight. Tom and Catherine, as well as Emily, Ritchie, Greg Landrey, Josh Lane, and Martin Brückner were the best trip leaders and travel companions one could hope for on the class’s peregrinations to England, the American South, New England, and New

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York City. I am so thankful to have had my classmates, Erin Anderson, Olivia Armandroff, James Kelleher, Joseph Litts, Bethany McGlyn, Elizabeth Palms, and Emily Whitted, with me on these trips and throughout my time at Winterthur. Thank you, too, to Chase Markee and Laura Olds Schmidt for all your assistance throughout these two years in navigating both Winterthur and the University of Delaware.

I extend my deepest gratitude for incredible support provided by the Leopold Schepp Foundation during my studies. Their backing made my time here possible, and my visits to say hello to SuzanneClair Guard and Kathy Smith over the course of the past two years were never short of wonderful. My research in Michigan, Ohio, and Chicago would not have been feasible were it not for the support provided by the Delaware Public Humanities Institute, by the College of Arts and Sciences, and by the Winterthur Development Fund. Thank you for believing in this project. WPEAC ‘03 alum Andrew Richmond was key in connecting me with contacts in Ohio early in my research. In Mount Vernon, Ohio, Lois Hanson of Paragraph Books was so kind to share her files on Cohen with me and to introduce me to Marilyn Nagy, who graciously invited me into her home to look at a work by Cohen in her collection. Marilyn was also kind enough to connect me with

Mead Weil, at the First Presbyterian Church in Mount Vernon, who generously showed me a portrait in the Church’s collection by Cohen. At Kenyon College, Austin

Porter and Robin Goodman took me into the museum’s storage to look at two canvases by the painter. Jim Gibson at the Knox County Historical Society discussed the history of the region and showed me the society’s holdings. In Mansfield, I am

iv grateful to Alan Wigton and Jeffrey Mandeville for opening the doors to Oak Hill Cottage and to the Richmond County Museum. At the Detroit Institute of Art, I’d like to thank Benjamin Colman (WPAMC, ‘12) for opening the museum’s curatorial files and for showing me the Cohen paintings in storage. At the Detroit Historical Museum, Jeffrey Demick was instrumental in pulling out the important works held there. Laura Williams, curator at

Temple Beth El in Birmingham, assisted me as I looked through Irvine Katz’s files, one of the most important archival sources of biographical information on Cohen. Charles Sable and Aimee Burpee at the Henry Ford Museum generously showed me a work attributed to Cohen by previous scholars as well as the museum’s outstanding collection of American folk art. My profound thanks, too, to Romie Minor at the Burton Historical Collection of the Detroit Public Library for his patience and assistance as I examined Cohen’s Reading of the Premiums.

Former colleagues and friends from the Columbus Museum of Art have been wonderful in their moral support over these past two years. My sincere gratitude goes out to former chief curator of the Columbus Museum of Art, Dominique H. Vasseur, for his kindness and friendship throughout the years. For their willingness to share their love of objects from saltshakers to model totem poles, I’d like to thank Pat

Glascock and Michael D. Hall. Many thanks, too, to Drew Sawyer and Clay Flynn, whose company always make my return to New York City a happy one. Finally, I am so thankful for M. Melissa Wolfe’s mentorship, which made all this possible to begin with. My sincere thanks go to Bernard Paniccia, who read an early draft of this project this past fall.

I am so lucky to have had my family behind me during my time at Winterthur. I am deeply appreciative of Judy and Craig Burchett for their help and support through all the years I’ve known them. My love goes out to Tricia and Scott St. Clair and to my wonderful nephews, Nolan and Jude St. Clair. Jude’s arrival into this world has been the silver lining in the historically eventful last months of this project. Finally, words fail to convey my profound gratitude for John J. Burchett, who is my font of strength and inspiration. His wisdom, companionship, humor, advice, patience, encouragement, and love inextricably shaped the scholar I am today. John, thank you for sharing your world with me.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF FIGURES ...... viii ABSTRACT ...... xii

Chapter

1 INTRODUCTION ...... 1

2 THE POST OFFICE ...... 13

3 THE MAYFLOWER ...... 33

4 THE FIRE DEPARTMENT AND THE STATE FAIR ...... 59

5 EPILOGUE ...... 86

REFERENCES ...... 91

Appendix

A COHEN’S SITTERS AND ORIGINAL WORKS ...... 97 B SELECTED POEMS AND PROSE BY FREDERICK E. COHEN ...... 111 C CORRESPONDENCE FROM COHEN TO HIS WIFE, MARIA LOUISA COHEN, 1850s ...... 126 D IMAGE PERMISSIONS ...... 135

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LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1 Frederick E. Cohen, Sketches from Original Paintings by F.E. Cohen, c. 1850s, Ink on paper, approx. H. 8”, 11 ½”. From Frederick E. Cohen album. (Newberry Library, Chicago. Special Collections.) ...... 6

Figure 2 Frederick E. Cohen and unknown maker. Untitled portrait, c. 1850s. Newspaper clippings and graphite on paper, approx. H. 8”, 11 ½”. From Frederick E. Cohen album. (Newberry Library, Chicago. Special Collections.) ...... 7

Figure 3 Frederick E. Cohen, The Home of My Youth. Ink on paper. From Frederick E. Cohen album. (Newberry Library, Chicago. Special Collections.) ...... 8

Figure 4 Frederick E. Cohen, Near Old Post Office, Detroit. c. 1852. Oil on canvas mounted on board; H.19 ¾”, W. 23 ¾”. (Detroit Historical Museum.) ...... 13

Figure 5 First National Bank and location of Detroit Post Office. From Silas Farmer, The History of Detroit and Michigan: Or, The Metropolis Illustrated (Detroit: S. Farmer and Company, 1889)...... 14

Figure 6 Bagg’s Block, northeast corner of Jefferson Avenue and Griswold Street, c. 1937. From Silas Farmer, The History of Detroit and Michigan: Or, The Metropolis Illustrated (Detroit: S. Farmer and Company, 1889)...... 16

Figure 7 Frederick E. Cohen, Untitled painting, c. 1849, Oil paint on paper mounted to board; approx. H. 8”. W. 11 1/2". From Frederick E. Cohen album. (Newberry Library, Chicago. Special Collections.) ...... 22

Figure 8 Reproduction of Robert Hopkin’s painting of a fireman. From Silas Farmer, The History of Detroit and Michigan: Or, The Metropolis Illustrated… (Detroit: S. Farmer and Company, 1889)...... 24

Figure 9 John Kane, Scene in the Northwest: Portrait of John Henry Lefroy, 1845-6. Oil on canvas; H 20”, W 31”. (Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto.) ...... 25

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Figure 10 Anonymous French Canadian, Sash (ceinture fléchée), 1830-1840, English wool, H. 7”, W. 68 ½”. (McCord Museum, Gift of Mrs. J. B. Learmont, M543. Image © McCord Museum.) ...... 26

Figure 11 Detail of Frederick E. Cohen, Near Old Post Office, Detroit (fig. 4). (Detroit Historical Museum.) ...... 28

Figure 12 Playbill for Elizabeth T. Greenfield's concert at Metropolitan Hall, New York City, Thursday, March 31, 1853. (Harvard Theatre Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University.) ...... 29

Figure 13 Frederick E. Cohen, The Mayflower, 1850. Oil on canvas; H. 34”, W. 29”. (Detroit Historical Museum.) ...... 33

Figure 14 James Smillie after Thomas Cole, The Voyage of Life—Youth, 1849, Engraving on wove paper; H. 15 ¼”, W. 22 ¾”. (Library of Congress.) ...... 37

Figure 15 Detail of barge in Cole, The Voyage of Life—Youth (fig. 14). (Library of Congress.) ...... 37

Figure 16 Detail showing Temple of Man’s Ambitions in Cole, The Voyage of Life—Youth (fig. 14). (Library of Congress.) ...... 38

Figure 17 Detail showing the “Temple of Plenty” in Cohen, The Mayflower (fig. 13). (Detroit Historical Museum.) ...... 38

Figure 18 Detail of foliage in Thomas Cole, The Voyage of Life: Childhood, 1842, Oil on canvas; H. 52 7/8”. W. 76 7/8”. (The National Gallery, Washington, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund.) ...... 40

Figure 19 Detail of cornucopia in Cohen, The Mayflower (fig. 13)...... 40

Figure 20 Detail of Cohen’s self-portrait in The Mayflower (fig. 13)...... 41

Figure 21 Frederick E. Cohen, The Sabbath Breaking, 1849. Ink and graphite on paper; approx. H. 8”. W. 11 ½”. From Frederick E. Cohen album. (Newberry Library, Chicago. Special Collections.) ...... 47

Figure 22 Detail of Frederick E. Cohen, The Sabbath Breaking (fig. 21). (Newberry Library, Chicago. Special Collections.) ...... 48

Figure 23 Frederick E. Cohen, untitled drawing. Ink and graphite on paper; approx. H. 8”. W. 11 ½”. From Frederick E. Cohen album. (Newberry Library, Chicago. Special Collections.) ...... 49

Figure 24 Jacobean armorial bookplate for the Reverend William Talbot, c. 1682-1699. Engraving on paper. H. 3 ½”. W. 2 3/8”. (The British Museum.) ...... 51

Figure 25 Unknown artist, Allegory of the Nile, Piazza del Campidoglio, Rome. . 51

Figure 26 Frederick E. Cohen, Self-Portrait, c. 1850. Ink and graphite on paper; H. 8”. W. 11 1/2". From Frederick E. Cohen album. (Newberry Library, Chicago. Special Collections.) ...... 53

Figure 27 Domenico Zenoi, Emblem for Pope Clement VII. Engraving on paper. From Le Imprese Illustri Con Espositioni, et Discorsi del Sor. Ieronimo Ruscelli, (In Venetia: Appersso Comina da Trino di Monserrato, 1572.) (Courtesy of the Emblematica Online Digital Collection and the Rare Book and Manuscript Library of the University of Illinois)...... 54

Figure 28 Frederick E. Cohen, Cholera, c. 1849. Ink on paper; approx. H. 8”. W. 11 1/2". From Frederick E. Cohen album. (Newberry Library, Chicago. Special Collections.) ...... 56

Figure 29 Drawing of Frederick E. Cohen’s banner for Lafayette Co. No. 4. From Silas Farmer, The History of Detroit and Michigan, 1884...... 59

Figure 30 Frederick E. Cohen, Portrait of William Barclay, c. 1847. Oil on canvas; H. 28”. W. 26”. (Detroit Historical Museum.) ...... 64

Figure 31 Nicolino Calyo. The Head Fireman, c. 1840. Watercolor on paper; H. 11”. W. 9 1/12”. (Yale University Art Gallery.) ...... 66

Figure 32 Currier and Ives, The American Fireman, Rushing to the Conflict, 1858. Lithograph. (Yale University Art Gallery.) ...... 67

Figure 33 Fredrick E. Cohen, The Meeting of the Michigan State Agricultural Society: Reading the List of Premiums at the Michigan State Fair, Detroit, 1853. Oil on canvas mounted on board; H. 30”. W. 24 ½”. (Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library.) ...... 69

Figure 34 Frederick E. Cohen, Reading the Reports at the Michigan State Fair, c. 1849. Ink on paper; approx. H. 8”, W. 11 1/2”. From Frederick E. Cohen album. (Newberry Library, Chicago. Special Collections.) ...... 73

Figure 35 Francis D’Avignon. Distribution of the American Art-Union Prizes, 1848. Lithograph on paper; H. 15 7/8”. W. 20 ¾”. (The National Gallery, Corcoran Collection, Museum Purchase, Mary E. Maxwell Fund, 2015.19.973.) ...... 75

Figure 36 Thomas Doney after J. Whitehorne, United States Senate Chamber, 1849. Mezzotint on paper; H. 30 1/2”. W. 39 ½”. (Library of Congress.) ...... 75

Figure 37 Detail of Frederick E. Cohen, Reading of the Premiums (fig. 33)...... 77

Figure 38 Detail of Frederick E. Cohen, Reading of the Premiums (fig. 33)...... 77

Figure 39 Photograph of Levi Cook. From Jefferson S. Conover, Freemasonry in Michigan, 1896...... 77

Figure 40 Detail of Frederick E. Cohen, Reading of the Premiums (fig. 33)...... 79

Figure 41 Detail of Frederick E. Cohen, Reading of the Reports (fig. 34). (Newberry Library, Chicago. Special Collections.) ...... 80

Figure 42 George Caleb Bingham, The Jolly Flatboatmen at Port, 1857. Oil on canvas; H. 77 ¼”. W. 69 5/8”. (Saint Louis Art Museum. Museum Purchase, 123.1944.) ...... 84

Figure 43 Detail showing Cohen’s self-portrait in Reading of the Premiums (fig. 33)...... 86

Figure 44 Frederick E. Cohen, Flower Piece. Oil on canvas, H. 24”, W. 18”. Current location unknown. (Image from the Frederick E. Cohen artist file. Detroit Institute of Art, Curatorial Files. Photograph by Harry Howe, 1960.) ...... 89

Figure 45 Frederick E. Cohen, Day of Judgement, 1849. Ink and graphite on paper, Approx. H. 8”, W. 11”. From Frederick E. Cohen album. (Newberry Library, Chicago, Special Collections.) ...... 112

Figure 46 Frederick E. Cohen, “Pittfull spectacle…,” c. 1850. Ink on wove paper, approx. H. 7”, W. 9”. (Newberry Library, Chicago, Special Collections.) ...... 113

Figure 47 Frederick E. Cohen, diagram of Sower’s scull operation. From Frederick E. Cohen Letters. (Irvine Katz files, Rabbi Leo M. Franklin Archives, Temple Beth El, Bloomfield Hills, MI.) ...... 128

ABSTRACT

Following a stint in the British army during the Upper Canada Rebellion and a failed elopement, English-born painter Frederick E. Cohen set up studio in 1840s

Detroit. There, he painted allegorical fantasies, landscapes, genre scenes, and dozens of lapidary-hued portraits of the region’s wealthy denizens while the region witnessed dizzying levels of transformation. Accounts about the artist written after his death remember him as a “handsome, genial, witty, and kindly man,” as well as a dandy.

Looking at paintings and drawings created by the artist in the late 1840s and early

1850s, this thesis examines the ways in which these early characterizations belie the grotesque, violent, and darkly subversive undercurrents in Cohen’s work.

Cohen’s work captures Detroit’s street life and the events that shaped its history as a growing, diverse population center, a vital stop on the Underground

Railroad, and a porous border town between Canada and the United States. Focusing on paintings such as Near Old Post Office, Detroit (1852), The Mayflower (1851), and

The Reading of the Premiums at the Michigan State Fair (1853), as well as a newly donated book of drawings and poetry at the Newbery Library, Chicago, this thesis situates the artist’s work within the tumultuous cultural, political, and social atmosphere in which it was produced. An idiosyncratic contribution to American art history, Cohen’s paintings are an important, if deeply biased, record of the fluid culture and aesthetics of the nineteenth century Great Lakes.

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Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION

Active in Michigan, Ohio, and Western New York during the 1840s and 50s, Frederick Elmour Cohen (c. 1816 – 1857) painted allegorical fantasies, landscapes, genre scenes, and dozens of lapidary-hued portraits of the region’s wealthy denizens— its mayors, fire brigade leaders, merchants, college founders, and children—during a time when the region witnessed dizzying levels of growth and transformation.1 Well- regarded during his lifetime, Cohen since been dismissed as a local artist or even a folk painter. Perhaps because of his early death, most of Cohen’s more ambitious works are now lost and surviving examples suffer from significant condition issues. The artist’s erudite visual range implies that he drew inspiration from a variety of sources, including Italian emblems, classical statuary, and early modern prints. He appears to have been aware of and looked to the paintings of canonical American painters such as Thomas Cole and Rembrandt Peale, though his violent, sexually charged, and darkly humorous work cannot be reduced to the mere emulation of canonical American artists. That he worked in a decorative firm during the mid-1840s is also not insignificant for Cohen’s oeuvre, which is often in dialogue with the highly decorative style of painting popular in the mid-nineteenth century. Yet the peculiarity of his work did not make Cohen an outlier. Cohen’s Detroit audiences, a diverse mix

1 Cohen was born in Windsor, England and emigrated to the United States sometime in the 1830s.

1 of established families and new arrivals from Europe and the East Coast, approved of and eagerly purchased his work. Despite latent themes of violence, humor, and sexuality, which punctuate almost all of Cohen’s work, he was nonetheless an important chronicler of Detroit culture in the 1840s and 50s. Previous scholarship has characterized Cohen as a colorful, eccentric character, somewhat irascible perhaps, but ultimately a charming fop. Studies of the artist have been largely local to Michigan and Ohio and writing on Cohen is almost entirely absent from canonical art histories of nineteenth century American painters. He appears in directories like Arthur Hopkin Gibson, Artists of Early Michigan and Mary Sayre Haverstock, Artists in Ohio, 1787-1900.2 Three of his works (one likely misattributed) are illustrated, though not discussed, in Robert Bishop, Folk Painters of America.3 Besides directories of Michigan and Ohio artists, secondary-source bibliographical information on Cohen primarily appears in newspaper clippings, many of which are posthumous celebrations of the artist and his impact on Detroit. For many years, Cohen was mistakenly identified as Jewish, and he often features in Jewish histories of Michigan, most notably Irvine Katz, The Beth El Story, with a History of the Jews in Michigan before 1850.4 Katz’s papers in Temple Beth El, Bloomfield Hills, MI are a rich source of material on the artist, including original correspondence

2 Aurthur Hopkin Gibson, Artists of Early Michigan: A Biographical Dictionary of Artists Native to or Active in Michigan, 1701-1900, (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1975), 72. Mary Sayre Haverstock, Artists in Ohio, 1787-1900: A Biographical Dictionary, (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2000), 171.

3 Robert Bishop, Folk Painters of America, (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1979), 188-9.

4 Irvine Katz, The Beth El Story, with a History of the Jews in Michigan before 1850, (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1958).

2 from Cohen to his wife.5 Ironically, the wrongful attribution of Cohen’s religion was fortunate, as it saved the artist’s records from complete obscurity. A standout treatment of Cohen’s work by Allen Memorial Art Museum curator Marcia Goldberg appears in the 1987 exhibition catalogue on early Michigan painters.6 A mere four pages, this is the most complete biography to date. Secondary source material on Cohen is often compromised by the artist’s propensity to fabricate aspects of his own biography, such as his membership in the Royal Academy. In probing the meaning of the artist’s attitudes toward women and African Americans, disturbing aspects of his character, affiliations, and artistic persona come to light. As such, this study seeks to upend previously published notions that Cohen was simply a quirky, artist-equivalent of the town jester. Scholarship on American art has advanced significantly Goldberg’s biography of Cohen was published in 1987, three years before Elizabeth John’s landmark study American Genre Painting: The

Politics of Everyday Life.7 Seminal biographies of antebellum artists published in the long wake of Johns’ book, such as Justin Wolff’s study of Richard Caton Woodville, served as a useful model for this thesis.8 While this study agrees with Cohen’s previous biographers that his work is a critical visual document of Detroit’s early

5 This is reproduced in Appendix C.

6 Marcia Goldberg, “Frederick E. Cohen,” in J. Gray Sweeney, et al. Artists of Michigan from the 19th Century (Muskegon, MI: Muskegon Museum of Art, 1987), 56-61.

7 Elizabeth Johns, American Genre Painting: The Politics of Everyday Life, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990).

8 Justin Wolff, Richard Canton Woodville: American Painter, Artful Dodger. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002).

3 history, unlike earlier scholarship on the artist, it examines the social context of Cohen’s work, pulling from larger cultural analyses of nineteenth century art and culture, such as Sarah Burns’ Painting the Darkside: Art and the Gothic Imagination, Karen Halttunen’s Confidence Men and Painted Women: A Study of Middle-Class Culture in America, and Eric Lott’s Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the White Working Class.9 And, perhaps most importantly for the study of the Great Lakes region, works by Richard White and Jay Gitlin have done much to dispel the notion of American culture (and its attendant visual manifestations) is a strictly east-to-west affair.10 Drawing from these sources, his study looks at Cohen’s output through an deeply interdisciplinary lens, with an aim toward sensitivity to the specificity of the time and place in which he worked. In addition to the expansion of Americanist and trans-national scholarship over the past thirty-three years, a scrapbook donated to the Newberry Library in 2014 also offers a far greater array of writing and drawings by the artist than was previously

9 Sarah Burns, Painting the Darkside: The Gothic Imagination in 19th Century America, (Berkley: University of California Press, 2004). Karen Halttunen, Confidence Men and Painted Women: A Study of Middle-Class Culture in America, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982). Eric Lott, Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995). See, also Christopher J. Smith, The Creolization of American Culture: William Sidney Mount and the Roots of Blackface, (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2013)

10 Jay Gitlin, The Bourgeois Frontier: French Towns, French Traders, and American Expansion, (Yale: Yale University Press, 2010). Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). On the experience of African American and Native enslaved people in Detroit in the period immediately predating that discussed in this essay, see Tiya Miles, The Dawn of Detroit: A Chronicle of Slavery and Freedom in the City of the Straits (New York: The New Press, 2017).

4 available for researchers.11 Cohen compiled the album, possibly in concert with his wife or another family member. It features alternating pages of white, teal, blue, brown, and yellow paper in a variety of weights. The binding of the glue-bound signatures has almost entirely deteriorated, and the book includes numerous laid-in additions, including newspaper clippings (some in multiple) and loose drawings. One page, which features a self-portrait of Cohen holding a scroll with the words “Sketches from Original Paintings by F.E. Cohen,” (fig. 1) implies that he produced many of the drawings in the book as a record of his work. This is corroborated by the inclusion of newspaper clippings describing paintings on which the drawings are based and by notations as to where the works were sold.12 Many drawings feature accompanying poems written in Cohen’s hand describing the allegorical elements of the compositions. Also included is a sitter’s list which notes the number of figures per portrait and their residencies, a useful tool for tracing Cohen’s movements through

England, Scotland, New York, Canada, Michigan, and Ohio.13 One page near the end of the album includes the inscription “Miss Robert’s Album, Detroit 1845.”14 Maria Louisa Roberts was Cohen’s wife’s maiden name, but whether Cohen made the album for her or merely used a blank book that once belonged to her remains unclear.

11 Frederick E. Cohen album, Special Collections, Newberry Library, Chicago. Henceforth, this will be referenced as the Newberry album.

12 Cohen’s correspondence with the American Art Union reveals that a few, though not all, of these notations do not reflect the reality of the works’ fates—i.e. Cohen may have fabricated them.

13 This list is reproduced in this thesis as Appendix 1.

14 Except for one letter requesting a commission, all the writing in the album is in Cohen’s hand.

5 Regardless, she may have been the person to alter the object after his death, as one page features Cohen’s obituaries pasted over her face so that she appears to stare out from behind them (fig. 2).

Figure 3 Frederick E. Cohen, The Home of My Youth. Ink on paper. From Frederick E. Cohen album. (Newberry Library, Chicago. Special Collections.)

The album clears up several misconceptions about Cohen’s background and offers some insight into his early life. Cohen’s birthplace has been the subject of dispute and occasionally attributed to Windsor, Canada. An ink drawing (fig. 3) and accompanying poem by the artist in the Newberry Album seems to corroborate the artist’s claim that he was born in Windsor, England, though searches for his immediate ancestors in digital databases have been fruitless.15 Goldberg notes that Cohen likely

15 The poem accompanying this drawing by Cohen is included in Appendix B in this thesis.

8 changed his name at some point on entering the United States from the Irish Cowan.16 The Georgian building in the background of the watercolor may have been based on memory. The building is strikingly similar the extant Old Bank House in Windsor, though it lacks the prominently displayed style of chimney specific to nineteenth century English architecture that appears in Cohen’s drawing. The artist’s family was probably middle class and affiliated with the military. “Captain George Cohen,” listed as the first sitter on Cohen’s list, was most likely the artist’s father or grandfather. Cohen was most likely affiliated in some marginal way with Royal Academy, though he certainly did not boast the six years of anatomical drawing his early advertisements claimed.17 William West, a member of the British Royal Academy, is listed as one of the artist’s very early sitters. The artist entered the United States at some point in the late 1830s. His sitter list notes that he lived in New York for a time. Though unspecified, entries titled “New York” probably refer to Canandaigua, New York, a small town in the Finger Lakes region where he had family, rather than New York City. Tracing his movements through the artist’s sitter’s list, shortly after his arrival, Cohen relocated, for a time, to Buffalo, New York, then to Niagara, and finally, Kingston Fort, where he likely joined the British Army as it moved to suppress the Upper Canada Rebellion (also known as the Patriot’s War). Whether the artist was arrested during the war for desertion remains to be confirmed. Goldberg was unable to

16 See Cohen’s entry in 1850 U.S. census, Wayne County, Michigan, Roll: 365; Page: 79A, digital image, Ancestry.com, accessed April 18, 2013, http://ancestry.com. Goldberg, 194n11.

17 An advertisement for his studio claims he had “many years practice in European R. Academies.” Detroit Free Press, April 26, 1846.

9 substantiate the veracity of this event, and the artist likely fabricated the tale to camouflage his involvement in a conflict that was reviled by Americans.18 Shortly after the war, at least according to his sitter’s list, he returned to Buffalo, took a “pleasure trip” to Chicago aboard the steamship St. Louis, and then promptly settled in Detroit. Newspaper accounts witness the artist’s arrest for larceny at some point during this period, and the “pleasure trip,” may have well been Cohen’s flight from a tarnished reputation in Rochester and Buffalo. Detroit papers mentioned nothing of his troubles with the law, and Cohen arrived at time when the city as it was experiencing unprecedented levels of economic and cultural growth. Situating his biography within the larger national and regional forces at play in Detroit during the period, this study examines Cohen’s work through objects produced during his most active period in the city, about 1846 to 1853. Cohen enjoyed a sterling reputation in Detroit and seems to have been happily married when he died at the age of forty. When the city introduced gas light in 1853, its population had doubled to over twenty thousand from a decade before. Cultural offerings, farming, and businesses were expanding, as witnessed by the beginning of the Michigan State Fair in 1849 and in 1851, the opening of the newly erected Firemen’s Hall, which served as a venue for musical performances, lectures, and art exhibitions. The fur trade was entering its decline, as the state’s production shifted from pelts to lumber. Rapidly growing through migration from the Eastern United States and abroad, Detroit, like many cities in antebellum America, boasted a vigorous volunteer firefighting company which produced many of its politicians and businessmen.

18 Robert S. Ross, The Patriot’s War, (Detroit: Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society, 1890), 56. Goldberg, “Frederick E. Cohen,” 194n10.

10 Detroit was a transforming, diverse border town. Long established French families, particularly the powerful Campau family, were still an active presence in its political and business spheres. Immigrants from the East Coast, but also England, Scotland, Ireland, Germany, and Scandinavia were moving to the city by the thousands. Simultaneously, a flourishing community of about six hundred African Americans resided in the city, and spaces like steamships and concert halls served both African American and white patrons simultaneously. Even before the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, Detroit was an important stop on the Underground Railroad, as the single most common point of passage from the United States into Canada for those fleeing slavery. That Cohen’s work stands as a record, however biased, of these changes and communities is a testament to the artist’s importance to our understanding of the Detroit during his time there. Using his humorous 1852 painting, Near Old Post Office as its starting point, the first chapter considers the ways in which Cohen’s work reflects Michigan as a nexus of cultures and explores the artist’s personality through his use of the Post Office as a venue for his visual antics. Mindful that terms like “hybridity” or “transculturation” rely on the flawed notion that cultures, particularly those as migratory as that of the Jacksonian-era Great Lakes region, are somehow whole or “pure” prior to their collision, I shy away from these concepts, and instead consider Cohen’s work within the many aesthetic sensibilities in play during this time.19 The second chapter elaborates on the ways the artist’s

19 See Finbarr Barry Flood, Objects of Translation: Material Culture and Medieval "Hindu-Muslim" Encounter, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018), 5. Though written for a different field, the discussion of hybridity as a flawed notion is highly applicable here.

11 violently humorous art engages with the concept of the grotesque and how Cohen’s tempered version of this aesthetic is more full expressed in his private drawings. Here I lean on Frances Connelly’s definition of the grotesque as an aesthetic mode defined by its transgression of established boundaries, a recurring theme in Cohen’s work.20 Yet, Cohen was nothing if not socially savvy. Using his work for the Detroit volunteer fire department and his painting Reading of the Premiums at the Michigan State Fair as its basis, the third chapter explores the ways in which Cohen tempered both his subversive impulse and racist tendencies when it suited him professionally and financially. An idiosyncratic artist with a propensity for brutal aggression in his work, but Cohen’s drawings and paintings are nevertheless a critical record of the visual culture of a city that has largely escaped the purview of art historians, despite Detroit’s importance as a cultural and industrial center in the later nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

20 Frances S. Connelly, The Grotesque in Western Art and Culture: The Image at Play, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 1-22.

12 Chapter 2

THE POST OFFICE

Figure 4 Frederick E. Cohen, Near Old Post Office, Detroit. c. 1852. Oil on canvas mounted on board; H.19 ¾”, W. 23 ¾”. (Detroit Historical Museum.)

13 “Rotation was the rule” with the Post Office location in early Detroit, according to nineteenth-century city historian Silas Farmer. The building moved from building to building for years, a fact referenced by the title to Cohen’s painting Near Old Post Office, Detroit (fig. 3). The painting depicts a female figure, her mouth curled into a whisper of a smile, striding down the street. She gently lifts her skirts to keep them from sweeping across the wet ground of the pavement, her scarf and the ribbons adorning her bonnet flowing behind her. A tall man follows her, his head tilted upward as he grips a cigar between his lips. The starched white collar of his shirt peeks out from behind his brightly striped red scarf. His left hand sits assuredly on his hip, while the cane in his other hand lands on the foot of the fruit seller behind him. The elderly fruit seller, snarls raising his fist in anger, as his peaches falls to the ground. One peach lands behind the woman, where a suggestively positioned child’s hand reaches for the fruit directly between her legs. Handwritten advertisements and graffitied caricatures litter the wall behind the figures.

Figure 5 First National Bank and location of Detroit Post Office. From Silas Farmer, The History of Detroit and Michigan: Or, The Metropolis Illustrated (Detroit: S. Farmer and Company, 1889).

The precise date when Cohen completed the work is confusing, and the disjuncture between certain elements of the painting suggests he added the advertisements behind the figures after he completed the rest of the work. The stone building behind the figures eventually became known as the First National Bank building. Located at the southwest corner of Jefferson and Griswold Streets, this was the ninth site of the Detroit Post Office in twenty years.21 The interior of the building, seen through the doorway, clearly depicts the furniture typical to a post office, with letters sitting in various cubby holes. Yet the events referenced in the bills did not occur until over two years after the Post Office moved to the Mariner’s Church in November 1849. Griswold Street’s downward slope toward the Detroit River, clearly visible in images of the building (fig. 4) (which has since been destroyed), help to contextualize the slight diagonal where the building meets the street in Cohen’s painting and also explains the peculiar gait of male and female figures in the painting, both of whom appear to be walking downhill on tip toe. Bagg’s Block and Cohen’s studio, as advertised in the bill, were located across the street, at the northeast corner of Jefferson Avenue and Griswold Street (fig. 5). The intersection was an epicenter of activity for the artist, a place where

21 Silas Farmer, The History of Detroit and Michigan: Or, The Metropolis Illustrated; a Chronological Cyclopaedia of the Past and Present, Including a Full Record of Territorial Days in Michigan, and the Annals of Wayne County, (Detroit: S. Farmer and Company, 1889), 882.

he worked and interacted with the city at large. Ostensibly a comedic treatment of a Detroit street scene, Near Old Post Office simultaneously demonstrates breaches of etiquette that may have been commonplace in the city when the work was produced while also alluding to the cultural exchange and racial tensions that were at play on the cusp of the decline of the fur trade and in the immediate aftermath of the Fugitive Slave Laws.22 The painting documents Detroit as a border city, a liminal space between Canada and the United States, its streets a theater of racial and social contestation.

22 On this, see Harold Innis, The Fur Trade in Canada, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1930), 397-401.

16 Cohen painted every advertisement on the building to blatantly disregard the sign pleading “Post No Bills on this Wall” and offer services that could be interpreted either as scams or jokes. The products and services advertised include “worm proof caskets,” “Life and death preservers,” and “The Last Voyage to Calafor” (sic), alluding to the nineteenth-century gold rush, which was entering its death heaves by 1852.23 By 1850, the Detroit Free Press ran numerous stories suggesting that the

California gold rush was largely exaggerated, warning would-be gold diggers of excruciating hardship in the burgeoning territory.24 One article published in the paper in January 1850 noted that scurvy, gout, food shortages, dropping labor costs, and soaring prices for shoes plagued men who made the trip.25 Cohen’s misspelling of the word “California” paints the venture as a fool’s errand, the merits of which either long gone or never existent. The deteriorating condition of the bill alludes to the fact that California was no longer considered a feasible prospect for many by 1852. Mocking the men who left Michigan for California, Cohen declares himself as a man with no

23 Though Detroit newspapers were a few months late in announcing the news of newly discovered gold in California, over six thousand Michigan denizens left for California during the gold rush period, between 1848 and 1855, often traveling in groups over the continental United States. See “Gold! Michigan Men with a fever joined the rush to California,” Detroit News, February 24, 2013. http://blogs.detroitnews.com/history/2013/02/24/gold-michigan-men-with-a-fever- joined-the-rush-to-california/ Accessed February 27, 2020. In addition to the speculation-fueled high wages of the territory, many were drawn by the prospect that California gold diggers need no special tools or costly equipment besides a pick, shovel, and pan. Malcolm J. Rohrbough, “The Californian Gold Rush as a National Experience,” in California History, Vol. 77, No. 1, National Gold Rush Symposium (Spring, 1998), 17-19.

24 See for instance Detroit Free Press, January 4, 1850.

25 Detroit Free Press, January 11, 1850

17 need for the speculative risks of the West Coast. Indeed, the main source of his own income—portraits—is advertised on the same wall. Cohen seems to have favored the Post Office as a venue for his pranks, a place where he could flout his somewhat bullying sense of humor. One posthumous remembrance of the artist, published in 1922, is especially revealing of the artist’s nature. It recalls that when a client, Ryan, refused to pay for Cohen’s portrait of himself and his daughter, the artist painted an ass’s ears on Ryan’s portrait and a handkerchief over the woman’s face before displaying both works at the Post Office.26 Supposedly, the sitter relinquished payment within two hours. This story, though seemingly embellished, appears to be based in real events. “Ryan and lady” appear as an entry in Cohen’s sitter list and an undated newspaper clipping in the Newberry Album announces:

“Homan, in the corner of the Post Office, has, we observe, lately placed over his counter a laugh provoking, side aching picture painter by Cohen that will have the effect to keep an audience in good humor for a spell. We could’nt control our risibles at the sight of it, and it really makes us feel good natured with all mankind every time we look at it.27 Though the clipping lacks a date or other identifying information, it must have been published in Detroit at some point in the late 1840s or early 1850s, as Phineas

26 Jewish Daily News, “A Pioneer Painter,” May 5, 1922.

27 Newberry album. See also Appendix 1 in this thesis. The Ryan in question may have been John B. Ryan, an alderman and volunteer firefighter. According to his obituary, he was married in 1848, which roughly corresponds to the years of Cohen’s sitter’s list. Detroit Free Press, “Ex Alderman Ryan,” March 20, 1900. Another possibility is that this is William Ryan, who is listed as an honorary member of the Lafayette No. 4 Fire Company on an advertisement for a Fireman’s Ball. Catalogue no. 1955.69.143, Detroit Historical Museum, Special Archives.

18 Homan is listed as the bookseller and stationer at the Post Office in an 1850 directory of the city.28 Whether the laugh-inducing object was Cohen’s painting of Ryan and his wife (or daughter) is impossible to ascertain—the man must have been rather disliked for his mockery to inspire such glee. Yet that the particulars of the Ryan incident survived sixty years after the artist’s death speaks to Cohen’s capacity to enchant his community, something he did through a biting sense of wit.

Scholar John F. Kasson reminds us that by the mid-nineteenth century, etiquette books strongly discouraged laughter in gentile society—especially the kind of uncontrollable laugher Cohen’s antics inspired in his viewers.29 Mid-nineteenth century etiquette books pitched laughing akin to coughing and linked laughing in public with the unrefined masses. Yet etiquette books are an unreliable metric of actual behavior, and it is difficult to determine how much these standards would have been part of Detroit culture when Cohen was working there. Nevertheless, the artist’s instigation of mirth in his audiences would have likely been viewed as at least somewhat subversive and would have added to the Ryan’s embarrassment, a useful means of ensuring he paid for the commission. Moreover, as Kasson points out, the act of telling a joke was considered more fraught than hearing one. Cohen’s actions, but also his work, which is brimming with both humor and sexual innuendo, would have been risky for the artist without substantial social backing. 30 That newspapers like the

28 The Daily Advertiser Directory for the City of Detroit for the Year 1850, (Duncklee, Wales & Co, 1850), 156.

29 John F. Kasson, Rudeness and Civility: Manners in Nineteenth Century Urban America, (New York: Hill and Wang, 1990), 161-3.

30 Ibid, 164.

19 Detroit Free Press (and presumably, audiences) reacted favorably to Cohen’s work also speaks to the fact that this sort of behavior may have been more acceptable in some political circles of the antebellum city, such as Detroit’s Democratic, Jacksonian audiences. Cohen was clearly producing objects for spectators who were not affronted by the artist’s humor. Near Old Post Office nevertheless depicts people whose behavior is at the cliff edge of period standards of societal acceptability. From the uninhibited manner in which the woman walks down the street, to the violent gestures of the man with his raised fist, to the striding, smoking dandy, Near Old Post Office is a nineteenth- century etiquette writer’s nightmare come to life. The female figure in particular is somewhat shocking. Her exposed face, posture, and bright clothing blatantly disregards etiquette writers’ suggestions that middle-class women were supposed to walk slowly and feel discomfort in public, never mind her exposed undergarments.31

Cohen’s American audiences may have read the figure as a prostitute given her mannerisms, the fact that her bonnet allows for unrestricted vision, and the obvious allusion to sex in the fallen peach.32 The addition of a child’s hand throws an already risqué visual pun over the edge, suggestive of not only a breach of social mores, but also of deep psychological urges on the part of the artist. Even the dandyish man

31 Ibid, 124-28. Kasson specifies incidents of dandies staring at women, implicating them in prostitution. The way in which the woman lifts her skirt is also strikingly similar to a satirical British print published in Rambler’s Magazine which depicts the Duchess of Devonshire urinating on a political opponent, thereby revealing herself as unfeminine and sexually indecent. See Cindy McCreery, The Satirical Gaze: Prints of Women in Late Eighteenth-century England, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004) 71.

32 Kasson, 130.

20 breaks acceptable modes of behavior, not only in his flashy dress and use of a cane, but also in the way he looks at and pursues the woman.33 Marcia Goldberg has put forth the possibility that the striding man is a stand-in for Cohen, perhaps because of the cane that the man carries—an accessory several early twentieth century chronicles link with the artist.34 The pursuit of women was a recurring theme in Cohen’s early life and work. When the artist was twenty-five, this tendency led to a run-in with the law so spectacular that newspapers in Boston, Rochester, New Orleans, Cincinnati, and Brooklyn ran articles describing his misdeeds.35 Described variously as a “genteel rogue,” a “loafer,” and a “cavalier” by journalists, the painter tried to elope with the wife of a Toronto merchant. The two boarded separate steamships out of the city, but authorities caught the wife with an assortment of her husband’s valuables.36 Cohen escaped and settled in Rochester, where he convinced a boarding-house maid to steal a pocketbook full of money— some of which included worthless Michigan “wild-cat” bills.37 The artist split the

33 Ibid, 118.

34 Goldberg, “Frederick E. Cohen,” 56.

35 “Running Away with Another Man’s Wife,” Buffalo Courier, August 21, 1843; “A Nice Young Man,” Cincinnati Enquirer, December 27, 1843, “Buffalo Police,” Buffalo Daily Gazette, December 13, 1843; “A Genteel Rogue Caught,” New York Herald, December 19, 1843; “Arrest of a Genteel Rogue,” The Times Picayune, December 31, 1843.

36 “A Genteel Rogue Caught.”

37 On Michigan “wild-cat” currency, see Alonzo Barton Hepburn, History of Coinage and Currency in the United States and the Perennial Contest for Sound Money, (New York: Macmillan Company, 1903) 138. See, also Frederick Clever Bald, Michigan in Four Centuries, (New York: Harper, 1961), 210-212.

21 money with her, leaving her with the valueless bills and prompting her to report him to the authorities as a result. The circumstances of Cohen’s subsequent arrest read like a scene from a Charlie Chaplin film: after finding his boarding room filled with self- portraits, an officer finally caught the artist on his morning walk when he recognized Cohen’s imperial mustache. Cohen was charged with larceny, and in what must have been a devastating blow, one paper noted that the authorities discovered love notes from his Toronto amour filled with “a profusion of ‘My beloved Freddys,’ ‘My dear

22 angel,’ and other rich and endearing epithets.”38 These clippings do not appear in the Newberry album, though the event is not altogether absent from the book. A painting on the book’s board features a centaur with Cohen’s face crossing a body of water with a woman (fig. 7). The woman does not resemble his wife, and, in conjunction with the alarmed figures waving on the shore behind them, the painting seems to be a thinly veiled reference to the failed elopement, the artist’s attempt to cloak his past as a petty criminal in the guise of grand mythology. The aftermath must have haunted Cohen, whose correspondence repeatedly mentions honor and virtue and who seems to have fastidiously presented himself in a good light based on his later reputation.39 Yet beyond Cohen’s doppelganger, the striding dandy in Near Old Post Office also operates a composite figure, one that speaks to the confluence of cultures and nationalities active in Detroit when the painting was produced. For instance, the upward tilt of the cigar is highly reminiscent of the manner of smoking associated with Bowery Boy culture and, by extension, firemen’s culture. A painting of a fireman with an upturned cigar in his mouth by Robert Hopkin (fig. 8), Cohen’s protégé, reproduced in Silas Farmer’s Metropolis Illustrated, clearly indicates that this

38 Buffalo Daily Gazette, December 13, 1843, 2.

39 Some fifty years after his death, Cohen was remembered as “a handsome, genial, witty, and kindly man, well-liked by everybody.” Heineman, 65. An allusion to the elopement fiasco also occurs in a newspaper clipping in the Newberry album. It describes one of Cohen’s paintings, now lost, of the trial of a man who attempted to pass spurious banknotes to a “Dutchman.” The work appears to have been a large genre scene which included a self-portrait of Cohen flirting with a “from an interesting young lady, probably the Justice's daughter.” Newberry album.

23 mannerism was also part of Detroit firemen’s behavior. Simultaneously, Cohen’s figure exhibits sartorial aspects that speak to the continuing presence of the fur trade and the city’s porous border with Canada during this period. The khaki-colored overcoat, known as a capote, worn by the figure recalls a type of garment worn by

Figure 8 Reproduction of Robert Hopkin’s painting of a fireman. From Silas Farmer, The History of Detroit and Michigan: Or, The Metropolis Illustrated… (Detroit: S. Farmer and Company, 1889).

Canadian voyageurs. Painted about six years before Near Old Post Office, John

Kane’s portrait of Canadian surveyor John Henry Lefroy clearly illustrates this garment (fig. 9).40 Similarly, the striped red scarf around the dandy’s neck appears to

40 On John Kane’s travels during this time, see Diane Eaton and Sheila Urbanek, Paul Kane’s Great Nor-West, (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1995), viii. Kane’s depiction of John Henry Lefroy was rediscovered in 2002.

24 be an example of a cinture à flesche, one of the finger woven textiles typically worn as sashes by Métis voyageurs (fig. 10).41 Even the ostrich feather in the man’s hat links him to the fur trade—the feathers were a popular decoration for fur traders’ headwear in exactly the period when this work was produced.42 Borrowing sartorial tropes Canadian voyageurs and mannerisms from firemen’s culture, the figure is a rare visual document of cultural exchange between Canada and the United States during this period. He functions simultaneously as a portrait of Cohen and of Detroit at the dusk of the North American fur trade.

Figure 9 John Kane, Scene in the Northwest: Portrait of John Henry Lefroy, 1845- 6. Oil on canvas; H 20”, W 31”. (Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto.)

41 On this see, Angela Gottfred, “What Voyageurs Wore: Voyageur Clothing from Head to Toe, 1774-1821,” Northwest Journal. April 1, 2020. http://www.northwestjournal.ca/XVII1.htm.

42 Ibid. See also, Grace Lee Nute, The Voyageur, (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 1955), 15.

Figure 10 Anonymous French Canadian, Sash (ceinture fléchée), 1830-1840, English wool, H. 7”, W. 68 ½”. (McCord Museum, Gift of Mrs. J. B. Learmont, M543. Image © McCord Museum.)

The bright red scarves worn by voyageurs became an enduring symbol of Canadian resistance to British rule during the Patriot War. Having served in that conflict, also known as the Upper Canada Rebellion, Cohen may have been working from memory of his experiences as a British soldier. As a nineteen-year-old soldier in 1837, the artist was a member of Captain John F. Sparks’s Company during the war. 43 The company, a well-trained group of British soldiers, participated in the suppression of a rebellious militia in Windsor, Canada, directly across the river from Detroit. Though the British conquered the militia quickly, they also committed numerous war crimes, including the murder of non-combatants and unarmed prisoners. In Windsor,

43 My thanks to Deborah Child for her help in obtaining documents from the Public Records of Ottawa showing that Cohen was paid 1.11.0 LSD army sterling for his services in Captain John Sparks’s Company in January 1839, which suggests he served the duration of the war. For a recent history of the Patriot War, see R. Alan Douglas, Uppermost Canada: The Western District and the Detroit Frontier, 1800- 1850. (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2001), 165-66.

26 soldiers shot and killed surrendering civilians, burned corpses unceremoniously, killed a young man as he attempted to run away, and tossed a “bleeding corpse” of another prisoner over a fence into a cemetery. 44 Though a relatively minor conflict, these events drew wide opprobrium in the United States, which is perhaps why Cohen (or his descendants) claimed that he deserted the army and spent the war harmlessly— mischievously—drawing cartoons on the wall of a jail cell in nearby Sandwich,

Canada. These experiences are not addressed directly in any Cohen’s surviving work, but the early exposure to extreme violence may have informed the artist’s aesthetic tendencies. Maria Goldberg linked the caricatures on the wall of Near Old Post Office to the drawings that Cohen was rumored to have produced inside of his jail cell. In the painting, they surround the female figure in a cloud of leering faces. Next to the cartoons is a bill for the performance of African American opera singer, Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield (fig. 11). Born into slavery in Natchez,

Mississippi, Greenfield was raised among elite white society in Philadelphia. Though early nineteenth century biographies claimed she was entirely self-taught, Greenfield likely learned to perform at least in part through training with professional musicians.45 After the death of her enslaver, she began preforming for audiences professionally in Buffalo, New York, where newspapers dubbed her the “Black

Swan,” a racialized play on Jenny Lind’s sobriquet, “Swedish Nightingale.” Cohen

44 In another incident, the bodies of five militia members were burned in front of the guardhouse. Ross, 56.

45 Julia J. Chybowski, “Becoming the “Black Swan,” in Mid-Nineteenth-Century America: Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield's Early Life and Debut Concert Tour,” Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 67, No. 1 (Spring 2014), 127-32.

Figure 11 Detail of Frederick E. Cohen, Near Old Post Office, Detroit (fig. 4). (Detroit Historical Museum.)

recorded Greenfield’s performance in Detroit in a bill that reads “The Black Swan

Will Open Her Mouth and Yawn Tonight at the Fireman’s Hall—All Gone.” Unlike venues in Cincinnati and Columbus, Ohio, Detroit’s Fireman’s Hall allowed African American men and women to purchase the fifty cents tickets and attend the performance, a fact lauded by Ontario abolitionist paper, Voice of the Fugitive three days later.46 The paper noted that the event was a well-attended performance and included “all of the musical connoisseurs of the city” in spite of the “dark and stormy weather.”47 Above the sign, Cohen inserts a caricature of Greenfield, which he must have based either on printed material with her image (fig. 12) or on his

46Voice of the Fugitive, April 8, 1852.

47 Ibid.

Figure 12 Playbill for Elizabeth T. Greenfield's concert at Metropolitan Hall, New York City, Thursday, March 31, 1853. (Harvard Theatre Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University.)

observations of her at the event. His depiction of Greenfield is disturbing enough, but it becomes outright menacing when considered in association with the graffiti around it. An arrow pointing away from the flyer points to the image of what appears to be a featherless carcass of a bird, a visual decision which can only be read as a thinly veiled threat of sexual violence. Next to it, a caricature of a black man wearing upper middle- class attire directly faces the woman, an unmistakable allusion to racist fears of the

29 “threat” of black masculine sexuality. Both the advertisement and the cartoons viciously mock both the performance and its mixed-race audience. Cohen’s ire at and obvious jealousy of Greenfield’s performance is especially noteworthy in light of the fact that the Fireman’s Hall also hosted performances by traveling minstrel groups in the years after her performance.48 Indeed, Greenfield was herself known to have sung minstrel songs written by Stephen Foster.49 As

Christopher J. Smith has demonstrated, though much of the reporting on minstrel performances centered on New York City, these shows occurred throughout the United States and were largely spurred by the racial exchanges so common to “liminal, maritime, riverine, and frontier space,” an apt description for the Great Lakes during this period.50 In dedication speeches for the opening of the Firemen’s Hall one commenter noted that the building was specifically to be used for entertainment events ranging from minstrel dancing to lectures.51 Given that minstrelsy was, at this point in its development, a means for working class whites to differentiate themselves from the black people to whom they were frequently compared, this points to the fact that Cohen’s aggression toward Greenfield and her audience was not only racial, but also had a distinct element of class-based indignation, a reading bolstered by the

48Detroit Free Press, November 19, 1852. Detroit Free Press,

49 Eric Lott, Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 243.

50 Smith, 219.

51 Notably, the man used a pejorative to describe this. Detroit Free Press, December 18, 1850.

30 caricaturized drawing of the African American man in a top hat.52 For Cohen, the presence of a woman who, to applause and commendation, crossed Detroit’s racial divides appears to have been too much to pass without bristling remark. Unindoctrinated in the United States’ racial rhetoric and startled by the appalling treatment of black people in pre-Civil War America, European painters such as Christian Mayr and Eyre Crowe often rendered African American subjects with compassion.53 Though also an immigrant, Cohen was not like these painters, and Near Old Post Office clearly reveals the artist’s unabashed hostility toward African Americans. Like genre painters such as William Sidney Mount, Cohen was also a member of Detroit’s Democratic party, one prominent enough to be included in a list of Democrats published in the Detroit Free Press, itself a pro-slavery and anti-black suffrage publication, in 1853. The owners of the paper, the Campau family, Democrats and prominent slave owners in the early nineteenth century, also served as the artist’s patrons for numerous paintings, including a portrait of family patriarch Joseph Campau, then the richest man in Michigan thanks to his real estate fortune.54 References to “tame apes” in Cohen’s correspondence are difficult to interpret as

52 Lott, 24.

53 See, for instance, Christian Mayr, Kitchen Ball at White Sulphur Springs, Virginia (1838; North Carolina Museum of Art) and Eyre Crowe, Slaves Waiting for Sale: Richmond, Virginia (1861; Royal Academy).

54 On Campau’s enslavement of African Americans and his descendants founding of the Detroit Free Press, see Tiya Miles, The Dawn of Detroit: A Chronicle of Slavery and Freedom in the City of the Straits, (New York: The New Press, 2017), 54-55. Cohen also painted Campau’s portrait (Detroit Institute of Art) and a depiction of his home (Detroit Historical Museum).

31 anything other than the artist’s blatant racism.55 The artists views on race, in short, are nothing short of despicable. Near Old Post Office is a difficult work. The artist’s racist depiction of the Greenfield, the latent violence and sexuality saturating the scene, and the man’s shameless pursuit of the female figure speak to a predatory, aggressive painter at work. Yet the painting also records significant events in the cultural history of Detroit, including the atmosphere outside the city’s civic buildings, the sartorial impact of the Canadian fur trade, and the attitudes of certain parts of the population toward national events like the California gold rush. Cohen’s acknowledgement of Elizabeth Greenfield’s performance is deeply off-putting, but nevertheless marks how memorable and important the occasion must have been for Detroiters. This tension between pseudo-documentary record, repugnant psychology, and grotesque interpretation is a trademark of Cohen’s output of works about his adopted city.

55 Newberry album.

32 Chapter 3

THE MAYFLOWER

Figure 13 Frederick E. Cohen, The Mayflower, 1850. Oil on canvas; H. 34”, W. 29”. (Detroit Historical Museum.)

Advertised boldly next to Greenfield’s poster, Cohen’s studio served as a salon where the artist presented work to visiting reporters, who went on to produce glowing

33 puff pieces in the city’s papers. Such was the case with the artist’s eponymous panel painting for the steamship, Mayflower, an object which would have been incorporated into the decorative molding of the ship’s interior parlors. The painting depicts a sleeping woman in a barge guided across a large body of water by seven cherubs toward a distant temple. Sail and steamships appear in the distance. This painting, like Near Old Post Office, exhibits Cohen’s trolling humor, but unlike the racial aggression and overt sexuality of the genre scene, here the hidden element acts almost as a joke, a surprise for the artist’s more attentive viewers. Though the Mayflower initially appears to be an innocent, allegorical depiction—perhaps even cloying in its sentimentality— the work is suffused with a voyeuristic sexuality that is latent in much of the artist’s other work, both realistic and fantastical. Cohen had painted several well-received steamship interiors—first in the employ of the decorative firm Atkinson & Godfrey and later independently—before he executed the painting for the lady’s parlor of the ship (fig. 13).56 Great Lakes steamships were frequently caught in storms, grounded on rocks, or otherwise shipwrecked during this period, an inevitable consequence of deploying relatively new technology into a harsh and unpredictable environment. Reporting from Cohen's studio for the Detroit Free Press, a journalist likely had these challenges in mind when he remarked that the "scene is a charming picture of peace and beauty, all joy, and soft sunshine, and a summer's sea," before proceeding to describe another (now lost) panel painting for the steamship The Ocean, which portrayed the latter vessel rescuing

56 Cohen painted a landscape scene on stateroom doors of the steamship Boston under the direction of Atkinson & Godfrey in 1846. Detroit Free Press, March 24, 1846. He also worked on decoration for the steamship St. Louis. Newberry Album.

34 another ship in the tumults of a nighttime storm.57 The praise-laden piece in the Detroit Free Press also described the allegorical significance of the individual angels:

..."Navigation," a chubby child,…is guiding the swans, and urging them forward with a scourge of peacock's feather—"faith" with the emblematic torch, sitting upon the gunwale—"Watchfulness," distracted from appropriate duties by the trumpet which "Fame" is blowing—"Industry," plying the oar—"Plenty" sitting at the stern with the Cornucopia—while "Hope" is turning the rudder with her anchor.58

Together, this angelic crew guides the boat to a distant “Temple of Plenty.” Both the Mayflower and Ocean were built by the Wards, a family of steamship and railroad tycoons, and launched in 1849 to facilitate travel between Buffalo and Detroit. With the capacity to carry over eight-hundred travelers, the Mayflower was a magnificent addition to the Great Lakes industrial ecology. Though the ship lacked enough bedrooms to host all of its passengers, newspapers reported that the more elegantly furnished lodgings included luxuries such as canopy beds, and boasted a “graceful saloon of gold and white, skylights of stained glass,…sumptuous divans, and a fine toned piano. Her [were] staterooms…hung with French curtains and stationary

57 Ibid. Storms were a common threat to steamship travel during the early 19th century. See, for example, the description of an 1834 journey on the steamship Michigan, in William Nowlin’s 1876 memoir of life in Michigan during the early 19th century. William Nowling, The Bark Covered House, or Back in the Woods Again, (New York: Readex Microprint, 1966), 26. Ironically, Ocean eventually came to the rescue of the shipwrecked Mayflower. Joel Stone, Floating Palaces of the Great Lakes: A History of Passenger Steamships on the Inland Seas, (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 2015), 122-3.

58 Detroit Free Press, "Beautiful Paintings for the Mayflower and Ocean," June 5, 1850.

35 basins.”59 Ostensibly, Cohen's painting was a perfect addition to the lavish interior. Yet, newspaper accounts of the Mayflower steamship obscure the ship’s history as a space where black and white men and women freely interacted and as a vessel that carried numerous self-emancipated people across the water to Canada. Like the scene depicted in Near Old Post Office, this space too flaunted its looseness with genteel etiquette. Isabella Bird, a British travel writer, left behind perhaps the most thorough description of the passenger experience aboard Mayflower after her 1853 journey through the United States. Bird was impressed by the lush decoration, including the ship’s stained glass windows, describing it as more impressive “than anything [she] had seen in the palaces of England.”60 She was also shocked to encounter “western men, in palmetto hats and great boots,” as well as enslaved and free African Americans “chatting and promenading.”61 The “basins” referenced in the newspaper article may have been a euphemism, as the containers had a purpose beyond washing.

According to Bird, the ladies’ parlor where Cohen’s panel painting would have hung featured “porcelain spittoons in considerable numbers.”62

59 Stone, 122. For a description of the interior, see Detroit Free Press, July 29, 1851. E. Corning and Co. of Albany provided the silverware for the ship, Detroit Free Press, “Local Matters and Items,” May 8, 1849.

60 Isabella Lucy Bird, An English Woman in America, (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1966), 168.

61 Ibid, 169-70.

62 Ibid.

Figure 14 James Smillie after Thomas Cole, The Voyage of Life—Youth, 1849, Engraving on wove paper; H. 15 ¼”, W. 22 ¾”. (Library of Congress.)

Figure 15 Detail of barge in Cole, The Voyage of Life—Youth (fig. 14). (Library of Congress.)

Figure 16 Detail showing Temple of Man’s Ambitions in Cole, The Voyage of Life—Youth (fig. 14). (Library of Congress.)

Figure 17 Detail showing the “Temple of Plenty” in Cohen, The Mayflower (fig. 13). (Detroit Historical Museum.)

38 At first sight, Cohen’s panel bears a resemblance to fellow English-born artist Thomas Cole's Voyage of Life (1842) series (fig. 14).63 The barge in the Mayflower recalls the one in Youth in its orientation, the swans at its bow and stern echoing Cole’s boat of angels (fig. 15). The spherical dome of Cole's otherworldly Temple of Man's Ambitions also evokes (fig. 16), albeit on a smaller scale, Cohen's unkempt Temple of Plenty (fig. 17). Where, from a distance, Cole’s temple appears crystalline and immaculate, Cohen used a dripping, wet-on-wet impasto to depict the vines, flowers, and trees creeping up the façade of his temple. The architecture of the building also uses a loose brush handling, and Cohen incised the thick paint where the steps of the temple meet the water with the end of his brush. Cohen’s brushwork indicates he may have seen Cole’s technique at some point. Like Cole, Cohen’s foliage is imprecise in its depiction of actual plants and relies on a wet-on-wet impasto executed with a heavily loaded brush and bright, saturated colors. Both artists also used dabbing to accelerate the process of painting foliage. Moreover, similar color schemes appear in both painters’ work, particularly in the bright blue morning glories emerging from the cornucopia in The Mayflower, which recall blue bells in the tropical foliage of Cole’s Childhood (figs. 18 and 19). In the painting Youth, these correspondences extend even to the architecture of the temple, which appears crisply rendered from a distance and in prints, but dissolves into loaded, wet brushstrokes when seen up close. These formal similarities give way to vastly divergent themes.

63 Cohen could have encountered these works at several junctures by the time he executed The Mayflower. Cincinnati iron magnate George K. Schoenberger acquired The Voyage of Life as early as 1845, and the works were included in the 1848 Western Art Union exhibition, within striking distance of Detroit and Mount Vernon, Ohio, where Cohen spent summers with his wife’s family.

39 Cole’s temple is an idealized goal, beckoning the young protagonist onward, but ultimately unreachable. On the other hand, the Temple of Plenty is ready to receive the slumbering maiden into its depths, the barge guaranteed to arrive at its threshold, and the maiden to be engulfed by its teeming excesses. Though the painting was destined for the women’s parlor, beneath its saccharine exterior, the vision of The Mayflower is indelibly male, electrified with latent sexual tension.

Figure 18 Detail of foliage in Thomas Cole, The Voyage of Life: Childhood, 1842, Oil on canvas; H. 52 7/8”. W. 76 7/8”. (The National Gallery, Washington, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund.)

Figure 19 Detail of cornucopia in Cohen, The Mayflower (fig. 13).

Figure 20 Detail of Cohen’s self-portrait in The Mayflower (fig. 13).

To borrow the Detroit Free Press journalist’s interpretation, as if taking advantage of the distracted angel representing Watchfulness, Cohen transforms the chaste myth of Puritans reaching the wintery coast of Massachusetts into a lusty Bacchanalian daydream. Phallic symbols, from torches to horns to peacock feathers, abound. The androgynous figure of Plenty sprawls over the ship’s stern, covered with vines and flowers painted in the same manner as those of the temple in the distance.

The figure’s bright red cheeks and slightly open mouth offer an unmistakable allusion to drunkenness. Perched on the cornucopia-stern of the ship, her pink knee points

41 towards the viewer, while one hand rests on a globe.64 Directly below her arm, hidden behind the blue edges of the cornucopia’s opening and crawling out from behind the riot of flowers, a tiny self-portrait of Cohen materializes from its depths (fig. 13). The minuscule portrait and the cornucopia create a unique formal moment in the painting, as no other part of the work is painted with the care and attention paid to this area, with its multiplicity of textures and foliage rendered with attentive, precise brush handling. The cornucopia has long been linked to visual expressions of the grotesque, a connection that can be traced to Henry Peacham’s 1606 The Art of Drawing with the Pen. Peacham writes:

You may…draw naked boyes riding and playing with their paper-mills or bubble-shells upon Goates, Eagles, Dolphins&c: the bones of a Rammes head hung with strings of beeds and Ribands, Satyres, Triton, apes, Cornu-copia’s….cherries & any kind of wild trail or vinet after your owne invention.you cannot bee too fantastical.65 For Peacham, the greater the variety of objects and “inventions,” the more satisfying the composition, and superficially at least, Cohen aimed to please his audiences. He certainly cared enough about his reception to carefully preserve the many newspaper articles singing his praises in the Newberry album. Peacham’s instructional description of the grotesque vividly recalls Cohen’s imagery in The

64 Similar attributes appear in the hands of a sculpture representing the sun in a 1796 publication on the Villa Borghese. See part 3, pl. 2 in Sculpture de palazzo della Villa Borghese detta Pinciana, Parte I, (Rome, 1796), https://archive.org/details/sculturedelpalaz01piro/page/n6.

65 Henry Peacham, The Art of Drawing with a Pen and Limming in Water Colours, More Exactlie Then Heretofore Taught, (New York: De Capo Press, 1970), 36.

42 Mayflower, and by depicting himself as an artist with a paintbrush in hand, Cohen links the abundance of the cornucopia with his creative fecundity. A concept that encompasses a broad range of formal and thematic expressions from abjection to mischief, the grotesque aptly describes many of the ways Cohen translated his experiences of the antebellum Great Lakes in his paintings and drawings especially.66 Like a comedian concealing a history of trauma behind his jokes,

Cohen’s work is rarely funny without undercurrents of desperation or wickedness. Painting during the same period that Ruskin wrote about the grotesque in Stones of Venice and Modern Painters, Cohen’s engagement with this aesthetic mode echoes Ruskin’s definitions. For Ruskin, the grotesque could take on a variety of forms but was always tinged with some degree of evil, however minute. He identifies three distinct manifestations of the grotesque in art, which are works “(1) arising from healthful but irrational play of the imagination in times of rest, (2) …from irregular and accidental contemplation of terrible things, or evil in general, [and] (3) from the confusion of the imagination by the presence of truths it could not wholly grasp.” Pertinently to Cohen’s work, Ruskin links unfettered imagination with malfeasance,

66 In examining the grotesque as an aesthetic mode during this period, this essay elaborates on Sarah Burns’ point that expressions of darker visions offered artists and viewers a means of grappling with the “Enlightenment vision of the rational American Republic as a place of liberty, balance, harmony, and progress” by giving voice and expression to its antithesis. Burns defines the gothic broadly as a foil to these sunny perceptions of American exceptionalism, a “constellation of themes and moods” that encompass both negative emotions—such as terror and disgust—and sublime experiences of fantasy and the uncanny. Burns, xix. Highly ornamental forms in Gothic revival architecture appeared in Ohio and Michigan as early as the 1820s. See Rexford Newcome, Architecture of the Old Northwest Territory: A Study of Early Architecture in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, & part of Minnesota, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1950), 138-9, 146-7.

43 stating that it “is curiously like bad children, and likes to play with fire; in its mocking or playful moods it is apt to jest, sometimes bitterly… sometimes slightly and wickedly, with death and sin.”67 These definitions manifest in Cohen’s work through a variety of means, often relying on a cast of mischievous characters including minuscule portraits of the artist, leering goblins, knife-wielding toddlers, and caricatures, but perhaps most especially though the presence of an almost compulsive engagement with evil. The violence that appears in his work is often—though not always—tempered by the artist’s comedic impulse Meant as a visual joke, not unlike the waywardly plastered bills in Near Old Post Office, the insect-like self-portrait in the Mayflower is comically creepy, his beady eyes staring into the retreating distance as the boat moves forward. For those that had known him, the rendition would have been all the more hilarious given that Cohen possessed a “Herculean frame,” according to one obituary.68 Yet, tiny figure builds on the disquieting subtext in the work, which is tied to the unconscious, involuntary travel of the woman and of sexual voyeurism. However minute and seemingly innocent, in his penetration into the world of the ladies’ parlor, Cohen’s joke falls on the malignant side of period concepts of good and bad (or false) humor,

67 John Ruskin, Modern Painters, by a graduate of Oxford, Vol. III, (New York: Frank F. Lovell and Co, ca. 1873), 112-13. Excellent case studies of the visual expression of these impulses can be found in Jurgis Baltrušaitis (trans. Richard Miller), Aberrations: An Essay on the Creation of Visual Forms, (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1989). His essay on the correspondence between gothic architecture and forests is especially fascinating to consider in the context of Gothic revival styles in heavily wooded Michigan of this period, 108-26.

68 This quote appears in one of the obituaries found in the Newberry album.

44 ranging mischief and bullying in its tamer forms to outright violence.69 In The Mayflower Cohen’s tiny proxy becomes a spy into the feminine world of the ladies’ parlor. At once funny and sinister, Cohen’s covert intrusion in this female sphere hints at exactly the sort of visual wit that critic Clarence Cook ridiculed a decade later, when he wrote that “there is truth to nature and truth to the moral sense of humanity; and where both of these are violated, the later certainly should receive the more severe condemnation.”70 For Cook, the “highest expression” of comedy that an artwork could aspire to was the moralizing tone found in the genre paintings of artists like Hogarth.71 Had the critic seen Cohen’s work, it would have failed on both fronts. Like Cole, Cohen’s flowers and vegetation lack specificity to real plants, but, more egregiously, instead of the righteousness of Hogarth, his work trades in the humor of bawdy, impish pranks. This slightly malignant form of humor, inflected with the Ruskinian notion of puckishness, frequently recurs as a counterpoint to Cohen’s darker imaginative proclivities. The ribald confluence of intoxication and sexuality is a common manifestation of the grotesque, resonant with the heady abundance and over- indulgence implied in the Mayflower panel by the cornucopia, the allegorical Plenty, and the Temple.72 This is the wicked liberty insinuated by Ruskin in his linking of the

69 See Jennifer Greenhill, Playing It Straight, (Berkley: University of California Press, 2012), 12.

70 Clarence Cook, “The Humorous in Art,” in The New Path, 1, No. 10 (Feb. 1864), 134. Greenhill, Playing it Straight, 15.

71 Cook, “The Humorous in Art,” 134.

72 Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. Helene Iswolsky, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), 19-20, 89.

45 grotesque with “Sensualists,” artists who choose to align their work the language of evil, not of good.73 In her trans-historical treatise on the subject, Frances S. Connelly characterizes the intangible concept of the grotesque by its actions, rather than its visual or thematic characteristics. Always produced by and in dialogue with the society around it, the grotesque is inextricably tied with the collapse of boundaries and norms—such as those broken by Cohen’s penetration into the ladies’ parlor. It is always in the process of becoming, in a state of play (or spielraum), and moving across established limits.74 These definitions expand Ruskinian definitions of the grotesque as an aesthetic mode. That this aesthetic so deeply informs Cohen’s oeuvre might have been one of the reasons that his paintings never gained traction with the American Art-Union (AAU), and in turn, why so few of his paintings survive. Replete with elements of fantasy and off-color characters, Cohen’s work found little favor in the eyes of manager Andrew Warner, his point of contact with the organization. In keeping with the AAU’s goals of advancing a unifying, morally uplifting vision of national art, Warner informed Cohen that the organization sought works that were “taken from everyday life that were not suggestive of, or create painful emotions,” rather than religious or allegorical works, unless they were exceptionally well- painted.75 The advice fell on deaf ears. The artist’s work routinely, perhaps involuntarily, ran afoul of the moral standards the AAU sought to establish for

73 Ruskin, 90.

74 Connelly, 1-22.

75 On the moral conservatism of the AAU see Rachel N. Klein, “Art and Authority in Antebellum New York City: The Rise and Fall of the American Art Union” in The Journal of American History, Vol. 81, No. 4 (Mar. 1995), 1537-9. Andrew Warner quoted in Goldberg, “Frederick E. Cohen,” 59.

46 American art. Though the AAU did accept a few of his paintings for distribution (never reproduction), Cohen’s initially deferential attitude toward the organization eventually soured after the AAU rejected the The Sabbath Breaking (now lost) in 1850. Here, too, Cohen’s sly engagement with the grotesque sneaks into the work. A surviving drawing of the work suggests that it likely included the troubling detail of a child squeezing a bird to death in an otherwise tame scene (figs. 21 and 22).

Figure 21 Frederick E. Cohen, The Sabbath Breaking, 1849. Ink and graphite on paper; approx. H. 8”. W. 11 ½”. From Frederick E. Cohen album. (Newberry Library, Chicago. Special Collections.)

Figure 22 Detail of Frederick E. Cohen, The Sabbath Breaking (fig. 21). (Newberry Library, Chicago. Special Collections.)

A drawing related to The Mayflower in the Newberry Album further elaborates Cohen’s engagement with grotesque elements of humor. Executed in grey washes of ink, a drawing on the page inscribed “Miss Robert’s Album,” features the single cornucopia of the Mayflower panel doubled amid a profusion of acanthus leaves (fig.

23). Cohen represents himself in a reclining pose, as if the diminutive figure in the Mayflower’s cornucopia has sprouted into a full-grown man in concert with the teeming foliage around him. His face turned toward the viewer in a confident—if somewhat strained—smirk, Cohen announces himself as the ruler of this imagined world. He loosely holds a paintbrush in his right hand, while resting his left on a face as it grimaces from behind a leaf. A goblin-like character stares at him from below, sprawled on the cornucopias, each of which is also producing a mask-like face. An artist’s palette and brushes rest at the goblin’s feet. The drawing alludes to a dense constellation of sources, suggesting the richness of Cohen’s visual and aesthetic interests. Having worked as a decorative painter, Cohen would have had access to

Figure 23 Frederick E. Cohen, untitled drawing. Ink and graphite on paper; approx. H. 8”. W. 11 ½”. From Frederick E. Cohen album. (Newberry Library, Chicago. Special Collections.)

49 numerous pattern books from which to draw ornamental imagery. In this drawing, he expands on the meaning of these ornamental motifs in multiple ways. In its location in the album, shape, and stylized foliage, the drawing parodies the Jacobean-style armorial bookplates that were in vogue in the early eighteenth century (fig. 24), which often deployed this type of visual language, albeit on a smaller scale.76 Simultaneously, Cohen’s pose and the cornucopias recall ancient Roman sculptures representing allegories of the rivers Tigris (today linked with the Tiber) and the Nile (fig. 25), located at the Piazza del Campidoglio, which Cohen would have been familiar with through prints or replicas.77 Yet the artist appends the allusions, one to noble lineage and heraldry, the other to classical sculpture, by his comedic treatment of the material. The acanthus leaves on the left side of the device appear to be shriveling. Instead of the overflowing fruits and flowers offered by classical horns of plenty, these cornucopias produce taunting, frowning faces, faces that Cohen embodies himself as an imp hidden in the stern of the Mayflower.78 In tandem with these lighthearted sensibilities, several scholars have noted that during the Romantic era, the laughter of the grotesque was linked with the infernal laughter of demonic

76 On bookplates of this style, see David Pearson, Provenance Research in Book History: A Handbook, (New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 1998), 59.

77 Just how much time Cohen spent at the Royal Academy remains somewhat of a mystery. Though it is unlikely that he studied there for six years, as he claimed, the Newberry album notes at least one artist, William West, from the Royal Academy had his portrait painted by Cohen.. See, also, Goldberg, “Frederick E. Cohen,” 56.

78 Quoting Walter Blair, Greenhill notes that a capacity for critical self-evaluation is a critical tenant of American humor. Greenhill, Playing It Straight, 3-4.

Figure 24 Jacobean armorial bookplate for the Reverend William Talbot, c. 1682- 1699. Engraving on paper. H. 3 ½”. W. 2 3/8”. (The British Museum.)

Figure 25 Unknown artist, Allegory of the Nile, Piazza del Campidoglio, Rome.

51 forces.79 Without the reigns of commission, the drawing becomes an unhindered visualization of the sex, jest, and mockery alluded to in the Mayflower panel, the artist’s patronizing expression and the drawing an unmistakable mark of ownership on what is ostensibly pitched to be his wife’s album. Another self-portrait (fig. 26) in the Newberry album exhibits even more viciousness and overt references to sexuality. In this drawing, too, much of the meaning is situated Cohen’s favorite hiding place, the work’s ornamental border.80 In its form, it recalls an impresa, a type of emblematic device used by Italian academies and nobility in the sixteenth century.81 Images and text within the impresa meant to convey something of the character of the individual or institution for which they were created. Indeed, the composition with a leering face in the center and the caryatids on either side is quite similar to imprese by Venetian printmakers such as Domenico Zenoi (fig. 27) and Giacomo Franco.82 Doing away with the inscription, Cohen inserts himself into the center of the emblem. Clothed in the banyan and embroidered hat of

79 See, for instance, Wolfgang Kayser, The Grotesque in the Age of Romanticism, trans. Ulrich Weisstein (New York: Columbus University Press, 1981), 58; Bakhtin, 41; and, more recently, Shun-liang Chao, Rethinking the Concept of the Grotesque: Crashaw, Baudelaire, Magritte (New York: Routledge, 2017), 104.

80 On this, see Paul Duro’s study of the concept of the parergon in early modern aesthetics prior to Jacques Derrida’s use of the term in The Truth in Painting. Paul Duro, “What is a Parergon?” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 77, no. 1 (Winter 2019), 30.

81 Donato Mansueto and Elena Laura Calogero, eds. The Italian Emblem: A Collection of Essays, (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 2007), vii.

82 See also Elizabeth Miller, Sixteenth Century Italian Ornament Prints in the Victoria and Albert Museum, (London: V&A Publications, 1999), 112-15.

52 an eighteenth-century philosopher, he calmly gazes at the viewer. Smoke pours from his mouth and the head of his serpentine pipe. He holds a brush in one hand and

Figure 26 Frederick E. Cohen, Self-Portrait, c. 1850. Ink and graphite on paper; H. 8”. W. 11 1/2". From Frederick E. Cohen album. (Newberry Library, Chicago. Special Collections.)

rests the other on a book with his name on it, which, in concert with his pose and the careful, Rembrandt-esque modeling of his face, signals his confidence as an artist. Two putti flank him.83 They have taken a decidedly violent turn, abusing each of the

83 In their connection with the concept of play, putti commonly appear in visual depictions of the grotesque, as in the works of Cornelis Bos, Nicoletta da Modena, and

54 topless caryatids. The putto on the left stabs the woman with a dagger as she hides her face with her arm, the line of her eyebrow curling in response to the pain as she clutches at the curtain above her. On the right, a grinning child squeezes the breast of the woman, simultaneously resting his foot on her buttocks. She too grimaces. At the top of the composition, in addition to a palette and brushes, a man with a furious expression—the vision of an angry, vengeful God—snarls at the viewer as he parts the drapery. Cohen’s self-satisfied expression in the drawing appears to imply that his artistic superiority draws from the brutality around him. The angry man’s face bears resemblance to that of an allegorical depiction of cholera found a few pages later (fig. 28).84 In that work, the lethal disease takes the form of a man flying over the dead and dying on a vulture. He holds a flaming sword in his left hand as he reaches the right toward the viewer, his long fingernails curling forward. Cohen’s Detroit period coincided with several cholera outbreaks, notably the

1849 epidemic which killed over one in ten people in major Midwestern cities.85 In his correspondence, Cohen discusses the possibility of leaving the city out

Christopher Jamnitzer. While putti typically partake in innocent activities, artists like Jamnitzer have also experimented with darker expressions of this motif. Madeleine C. Viljoen, “Christoph Jamnitzer's Neuw Grotteßken Buch, Cosmography, and Early Modern Ornament,” The Art Bulletin, 98, no. 3, (2016), 230-31.

84 See accompanying poem transcribed in Appendix B.

85 Charles E. Rosenberg, The Cholera Years: The United States in 1832, 1849, and 1866. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967), 101-05.

Figure 28 Frederick E. Cohen, Cholera, c. 1849. Ink on paper; approx. H. 8”. W. 11 1/2". From Frederick E. Cohen album. (Newberry Library, Chicago. Special Collections.)

of fear for his wife and daughter.86 Period understandings of the disease linked cholera with filth and considered it an affliction of the poor, the unclean, and the sinful, which might also have played to the artist’s concerns.87 The fact that cholera was thought to spread through travel and was frequently associated with immigrants may have also been meaningful for the English-born and oft-itinerant Cohen. The inclusion of a face which matches the allegorical figure of the disease in Cohen’s self-portrait lends weight to the notion that the artist saw himself in the wretched masses accused of spreading the illness. The chaos and violence of the border are a startling contrast to Cohen’s non-plussed composure. Several sources mention that Cohen drank heavily, and the abusive putti could allude to inebriated hostility, a sinister evolution of the bawdy, celebratory mood of The Mayflower. Considering the tender letters Cohen sent to his wife and daughters throughout the 1850s, this reading helps to contextualize the temperance vow included in the Newberry album, written a mere two months before the artist’s death of apoplexy at the age of forty.88 In the physiognomic similarities between Cohen and the snarling man and its reference to Italian impresa, the self- portrait asks us to read its periphery as a reflection of Cohen’s inner world, a foil to the performative depiction of the sophisticated artist in the center of the work.

86 American Art-Union letters.

87 Rosenberg, 121-28.

88 Newberry album.

57 In this way, the self-portrait offers a fitting visual metaphor for Cohen as a professional working artist in antebellum Detroit. The considerable number of commissioned portraits that he left behind suggests that for all his visual antics, Cohen knew how to behave himself, how to act the part of the straight-faced, sophisticated artist, when necessary. Nevertheless, as in the Mayflower, the violent impish sense of humor and overtures to Renaissance prints worm their way into even the more sober examples of Cohen’s publicly displayed work. Because so much of his large scale and public work has been lost, it is difficult to know just how much these sensibilities became part of the larger fabric of Detroit’s visual culture during this period. The recurring mention of the artist’s work in public contexts suggests that the aesthetic sensibilities found in the Mayflower and in the Newberry album may have been a significant presence in the city’s civic art during the late 1840s and early 1850s and may also account for the artist’s long afterlife in the city’s remembrances.89

89 See for instance, the quote that “many of our older citizens will recall” Cohen in Charles Forbes Warner, Picturesque Detroit and Environs, (Northampton, Mass: Picturesque Publishing Company, 1893), 129.

58 Chapter 4

THE FIRE DEPARTMENT AND THE STATE FAIR

Figure 29 Drawing of Frederick E. Cohen’s banner for Lafayette Co. No. 4. From Silas Farmer, The History of Detroit and Michigan, 1884.

Even from the crudely engraved reproduction, the 1846 banner for Lafayette Company No. 4 volunteer fire company (fig. 29) is instantly recognizable as Cohen’s work, complete with the under-sized hands so common to the artist’s early output. Like the self-portrait, the banner strongly resembles an emblem. Just as the paper did with his painting for the Mayflower, the Detroit Free Press commented on the banner in a studio visit to the artist’s newly opened salon, the first mention of Cohen in the newspaper after the he ran a series of least eight separate advertisements over the course of the previous spring and summer. 90 Cohen rarely ran advertisements after this point, save for occasional mentions of the sales of his work. He had no need to do so, as frequent attention from the Detroit Free Press and other papers easily made up for the lack of self-promotion. The notion of fire as “The Great Devourer,” against which noble firemen struggle, finds its expression in the serpent coiling around the scene.91 Inside, a fireman holding small child raises a horn to his lips as he races toward the window. Behind him, a bed explodes in flames as another firefighter, perched on a ladder in the window, desperately shoots at it with a water hose. An eagle spreads its wings above the image. Banners hang from its wings and the coils of the serpent with the motto of Lafayette No. 4: “When danger calls, we’re prompt to fly, and bravely do or bravely die.” At the center bottom of the image, a Greco-Roman mask screams in horror, not unlike the snarling man above Cohen in his self-portrait.

The reverse of the banner, which has been described in newspapers, but not

90 See, for example Detroit Free Press, April 21, 1846.

91 Amy S. Greenberg, Cause for Alarm: The Volunteer Fire Department in the Nineteenth Century City, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 23-4.

60 reproduced, featured a scene with a firefighter saving a woman. The object must have seen heavy use in the many celebrations organized by Detroit fire companies. In 1847, the year after the banner was produced, the Lafayette company displayed it in the city’s July 4th celebrations, which included a parade of both the city’s volunteer fire companies and those of nearby cities, including Cleveland, Rochester, and Buffalo.92 Cohen almost certainly served as a volunteer firefighter himself, though we do not know to which of the eight active volunteer fire companies he belonged. His work for Eagle No. 2, Lafayette No. 4., and Phoenix No. 6 suggests that if he was a fireman, he may have been a member of one of these brigades.93 Critically, Cohen’s most active period as an artist in Detroit coincided with the building of several fire engines and the celebrated reception of volunteer firemen, prior to the later vilification these companies faced in the mid- to late-1850s. By that point Cohen had largely left the city and was primarily active as an itinerant artist in northwest Ohio, near to his wife’s family. Volunteer fire companies’ loss of prestige in the later 1850s eventually led to the professionalization of the Detroit fire department in December 1859, almost exactly a year after Cohen’s death. Prior to this professionalization, Detroit’s fire companies, like that of most American cities, consisted of a handful of volunteer brigades located throughout the city. These companies also served a civic purpose by offering male members spaces for social gathering and political exchange. In the

92 On the early history of production of similar objects for trade unions, see John Gorman, Banner Bright: An Illustrated History of Trade Union Banners, (Essex, England: Scorpion Publishing, 1986), 31-7. My thanks to Linda Eaton for recommending this volume.

93 In 1850, Detroit had eight volunteer fire companies. See Farmer, 509.

61 fraternal comradery among their members, volunteer companies also offered the many migratory men who were entering the city—Cohen among them—a chance to form social bonds in the absence of those provided by family.94 Cohen fulfilled many of the stereotypes of the men who gravitated toward these institutions. He was itinerant, ambitious, and young, and his prior association with the British Army would have primed him for the type of male association that would have been a major draw of these companies.95 Given that he was reportedly averse to life in the British Army, Cohen would have likely found a far more suitable alternative to the masculine bravado of the army in the culture of volunteer firefighting. As historian Amy S. Greenberg writes, volunteer fire men were not only offered monetary tribute for their service, they were also often exempt from compulsory militia service and pitched as more honorable than soldiers, since their work did not result in the death of their opponents, but rather in a struggle against a force of nature.96 Numerous other aspects of fire department culture manifest in the persona Cohen crafted for himself in Detroit. Like Cohen, firefighting culture put emphasis on virtue and honor, often as a means toward power. The rowdy antics of some fire departments similarly fits with Cohen’s character.97 And, finally—perhaps most importantly—the artist’s association with the

94 Greenberg, 52-4.

95 The artist may have also been a mason. At the very least, he produced paintings for the masonic lodge in Mount Vernon, Ohio.

96 Greenberg, 34-5.

97 Greenberg, for instance, situates firefighting culture between middle-class civility and working-class rowdiness. Cities such as Saint Louis, which shares historical similarities to Detroit as a frontier town, were for known for the rowdiness of their volunteer firefighters. See Greenberg, 68.

62 fire company would have provided him with ample contact with Detroit’s political elite, who in turn became fodder for the artist’s portraits. Whether the culture of the fire department molded Cohen’s personality and the “brand” he built for himself in Detroit, or the artist was tailor-made by temperament and ambition for membership, his participation in and association with volunteer fire fighting companies would have offered him numerous professional and social benefits.

Clearly, Cohen was aware of and actively engaged opportunities to make his work visible to the public. Like his decorative work for Detroit’s steamships, association with the fire department also gave him valuable opportunities to show off his work, reaching far more viewers than he would have been able to through studio visits alone. In turn, when newspapers reported on these happenings and noted his “genius” contribution, their mention of the artist further offering him what was essentially free advertising. In January 1848, he executed a transparency for the fire department, which made its debut at a celebratory gala held. The large-scale object filled an entire room of the hall in which the ball took place and depicted Detroit as it appeared in 1805, the year of the city’s most famous fire, and in 1848. “Brilliantly illuminated” the transparency would have been an impressive, eye-catching object, even amidst the considerable decorations that accompanied it, including American flags and festoons of “variegated paper.”98 Dinner for the event was served by John J Garrison, a grocer based about two blocks north of Cohen’s studio and salon and the grandfather of Maria Louisa Roberts, Cohen’s wife.99 Events like the firemen’s ball,

98 Detroit Free Press, January 22, 1848.

99 Garrison also sat for his portrait by Cohen. Newberry Album.

63 frequently held by the department and by individual companies were important social gatherings in Detroit. They would have given Cohen the chance to meet new clients and to reinforce social ties with the communities he relied on for commissions.

Figure 30 Frederick E. Cohen, Portrait of William Barclay, c. 1847. Oil on canvas; H. 28”. W. 26”. (Detroit Historical Museum.)

One such commission is portrait of fireman and chief engineer William

Barclay (fig. 30). Born in Scotland, Barclay, like Cohen, emigrated to the United States in the 1830s. By the late 1840s, he was named the Chief Engineer of the Fire Department. He may have commissioned the portrait by Cohen to commemorate the event and, per Cohen’s sitter list, the artist also executed paintings of Barclay’s family

64 (now lost). The portrait depicts Barclay in the midst of action, pointing to a fire in the distance. He holds a speaking horn in his left hand, which is attached to his belt with a long, red sash. Cohen carefully depicted the tartan Barclay wore beneath his uniform.100 The stiffness of the figure attests to the artist’s developing skillset as a painter: Barclay’s grip on the speaking horn is particularly strained and unnatural and his hands are far too small for his body. Yet Cohen’s talents as portraitist is nevertheless evident in the numerous glazes which render the minute details of the sitter’s face with striking realism. Hints of wrinkles appear at the corners of the forty- year-old’s alert blue eyes. The corners of his mouth are pulled back, as if he had just finished speaking into the horn when Cohen captured his likeness. Though he is cleanshaven, the fireman’s stubble draws attention to the fact that Barclay is seeing to his duties well into the night.101 The depiction of him pointing toward the fire in the distance leans on a trope that was popular for images of firemen during this era. In about 1840, Italian artist Nicolino Calyo executed a similar image of a New York head fireman pointing to an unseen conflation with his speaking horn in hand (fig. 31). Remarkably, the nocturnal setting of Cohen’s depiction also anticipates Currier and Ives 1858 rendition of the theme (fig. 32) by over a decade, though the dramatic

100 The pattern of the tartan seems to loosely correspond to the Barclay tartan as described in the 1842 book of tartans, Vestiarium Scoticum. The publication was later proven to have been forged.

101 Ironically, Barclay eventually lost his foundry business to a fire, an event that seemingly dissuaded him from the fire department. He went on to pursue a career as an alderman, a police commissioner, and eventually oversaw Detroit’s sewer system. See Detroit Free Press, “Fire Cools Chief’s Zeal,” May 2, 1954. As in other cities, Farmer notes that firemen were handsomely treated with coffee and refreshments for their work by grateful citizens, especially when they worked at night. Farmer, 508.

65 appeal of nighttime fire scenes were popular well before, as evidenced by the many variations of nocturnal fires executed by Calyo. Nevertheless, similarities between Calyo’s drawings and prints, the Currier and Ives print, and the portrait of Barclay suggests that all three may have been working with similar sources.

Figure 31 Nicolino Calyo. The Head Fireman, c. 1840. Watercolor on paper; H. 11”. W. 9 1/12”. (Yale University Art Gallery.)

Figure 32 Currier and Ives, The American Fireman, Rushing to the Conflict, 1858. Lithograph. (Yale University Art Gallery.)

Perhaps the single most important contribution of the Fire Department to the artistic culture of Detroit—and to Cohen’s career—consisted of two fine art exhibitions held at the newly erected Fireman’s Hall in the winters of 1852 and 1853, events which served as major diversions for the city. The shows displayed over five hundred and six hundred works of art, respectively, including twenty-seven paintings by Cohen in the first year and almost fifty in 1853. The exhibitions were the first major display of art in the city and included work by international artists, as well as painters such as Robert Duncanson, John Mix Stanley, Robert Weir, and Regis Francois Gignoux, and copies of old masters (as well as a notable handful of “originals,” likely dubious). Here, too, Cohen’s patronage reveals his deep immersion

67 in the political power circles of the city. Works by the artist were held by the Phoenix No. 6 Fire Company, by Detroit Mayor John Ladue, steamship tycoon E.B. Ward, and other business and political leaders. The wide array of the artist’s patrons suggests that Cohen knew how to ingratiate himself to many different forces at play in Detroit’s growing and diverse communities, and how to suppress the more controversial aspects of his artistic persona to insure he stayed in their good stead.

One would think that an artist so drawn to subversive humor would use his talents toward satirical work. Strikingly, Cohen’s sardonic wit in no way extended to the ruling elite of Detroit—his patrons—nor attempted any substantive critique of his clientele, or even potential clientele, save for when it served him financially (as in the Ryan incident). Indeed, Cohen’s work skirts away from any moral high ground, despite the many overtures to virtue in his writing.102 Indeed, the transformation of one work, The Reading of the Premiums at the Michigan State Fair, from sketch to oil painting illustrates the extent to which the artist was capable of pandering to his clientele, while avoiding any sort of expression that might have been construed as offensive by those paying him.

102 In this way and despite surface similarities between the two artists, Cohen, who relied heavily on commissioned portraiture for income, diverges from Hogarth, an artist who was similarly attracted to the use of grotesquerie in his figures. Though he relies on similar visual tools, unlike his fellow English predecessor, Cohen’s work never gestures toward the exposure of hypocrisy, whereas Hogarth routinely set his sights on the wealthy individuals who refused to abide by the righteous standards of middle-class life. On Hogarth and the grotesque, see Justin Edwards and Rune Grauland, Grotesque, (New York: Routledge, 2013), 99-100.

69 Cohen completed the oil painting, The Reading of the Premiums at the Michigan State Fair (fig. 33), in 1853.103 Though the work has long been thought to depict the first Michigan State Fair, the event is actually the fourth annual fair, which was held on September 22nd, 23rd, and 24th 1852.104 The painting was donated to the Burton Collection of the Detroit Public Library through the estate of Daniel J. Campau Jr. after his death in 1927. It was likely commissioned by his father, Daniel J. Campau

(son of real estate magnate Joseph Campau, also one of Cohen’s clients), who would have been in his mid-thirties when the work was executed. Campau appears in the work, and though records matching him with a figure in the work are now lost, his is probably the man in the top hat resting his chin in his hand, the only prominent figure that remains unidentified. A banner with the visage of an unidentified general hangs over the crowd below. Previous scholars have linked the man on the banner with Zachary Taylor, who was president at the time of the first Michigan State Fair, but Taylor has been dead for years when Cohen painted Reading of the Premiums, and Taylor does not resemble the slender figure depicted on the banner.105 Below, other tents and amusements of the

103 The work has several unfortunate condition issues. The canvas has been mounted on Masonite and what appears to be a botched attempt at inpainting has left several of the figures in the foreground with their faces covered by a white paint, lending them a ghastly visage.

104 The work mentioned in the Detroit Free Press as depicting “last year’s fair” in 1853. Detroit Free Press, June 18, 1853. This work is almost always mistakenly attributed to the 1849. See, for instance, John Minnis and Lauren Beaver, The Michigan Fair, (Mt. Pleasant: Arcadia Publishing, 2010), 9, and Arthur M. Woodford, This is Detroit: 1701-2001, (Detroit: Wayne State University, 2001), 62.

105 The portrait resembles Detroit’s second mayor, Elijah Brush, but with his sunken eyes and bulbous nose, the figure is too old to be Brush.

70 Michigan State Fair are visible through the doorway opening, including a man on horseback and an up-and-down—an early forerunner to the Ferris wheel.106 To the left of the opening, the focal point of Reading of the Premiums, J.C. Holmes, the secretary of the society, reads off awards ranging from two to ten dollars intended to provide incentive for Michigan farmers to enter their livestock and produce as submissions to the juried event.107 A book on the table reads “Cattle” at the top of the page, indicating the category of premiums Holmes announces to the crowd. Cattle were a lauded category in 1852, with numerous illustrations of prize winning specimens from the fair included in the published catalogue of the Michigan Agricultural Society’s proceedings.108 Former mayor and head of the Detroit fire department, James Van Dyke leans over the railing toward the bald man keeping records. Frederick Buhl, another city mayor, stands behind him. According to documentation held at the Detroit Public Library’s Burton Historical Collection, other men assembled in the painting include Titus Dort, Michigan senator Lewis Cass, politician and Republican party founder Zachariah Chandler, former Detroit mayor John Harmon, Amos T. Hall, Jeremiah Van Rensaeler, Charles Richmond, Charles Selkrig, book and stationary store owner A.S. Bagg, and two time mayor and masonic leader Levi Cook. Of the

106 Descriptions and images of up-and-downs can be found in Norman D. Anderson, Ferris Wheels: An Illustrated History, (Bowling Green: Bowling Green State University Press, 1992), 9-13.

107 Transactions of the State Agricultural Society with Reports of County Agricultural Societies for 1852, (Lansing: George W. Peck, Printer to the State, 1853), 3. Premiums could also include medals, diplomas, and books. In addition to displays of agricultural products, the fair also included fine art. In 1852, Cohen exhibited eight paintings, and won a premium for the work, How Do You Like Me. Ibid, 48, 97.

108 Ibid.

71 thirteen men listed in the work’s documentation many are firemen—as to be expected—but few seem to have direct links to the fair. Only two (Holmes and Dort) are listed as members of the executive committee of the State Agricultural Society, and Lewis Cass owned the property on which the event was held.109 Those three men aside, the relationships of the other figures to the fair are unknown, if they existed at all. A grouping of three figures in the foreground of the painting appears to represent groups that were outside political circles: two African American men and above them, a man dressed in what is likely Scandinavian attire, who is using an ear horn to hear the announcement.110 Like many spaces and events in antebellum Detroit, the Michigan State Fair was open to African Americans to attend (if not participate in).111 Scandinavian immigrants were moving to Michigan in large numbers in the 1850s, many settling as tool makers in Detroit.112 Rather than a record of the State Fair, Reading of the Premiums appears to be a visual metaphor for Detroit in the immediate aftermath of the Fugitive Slave Laws and a portrait of the elite politicians and business figures of the city. Cohen makes a droll reference to the latter fact, one of the few moments of levity in the work: a paper hanging from the railing at the bottom of the work reads “Studs and Bulls.”

109 Ibid, 3.

110 My gratitude to Linda Eaton for suggesting this as the most likely style of dress. Though I was not able to confirm this further, the migration of Scandinavian people into Detroit during this time suggests this region as the likely source of the man’s attire.

111 Voice of the Fugitive, August 27, 1851.

112 David Lee Poremba, ed. Detroit in Its World Setting: A Three Hundred Year Chronology, 1701-2001, (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2001), 127.

72 A drawing (fig. 34) related to the work included in the Newberry album titled Reading the Reports at the Michigan State Fair appears to be an early working draft of the work. Most of the stately figures in the final painting are either missing or highly altered. The faces of the figures in the drawing are caricatures, especially those of the two African American men in the foreground, who are more detailed than the other members of the crowd. Cohen mocks the spectators of the event staring at the man reading the premiums. Even religious figures are not spared: a priest looks up in awe as another man whispers in his ear. In the painting, this figure becomes a calm, bespectacled man who looks directly at the viewer. The figure who represents James

73 Adams Van Dyke in the painting is of a decidedly lower economic rank, judging by his floppy cap. Slack-jawed, he looks up at the reader of the premiums. The stiff way that Cohen drew the man to the right of him holding a cane to his lips seems to poke fun at the wealthy as well. The only female figure in the work, a woman in the rear of the crowd observing the proceedings with a shocked expression, has all but vanished, her bonnet barely visible from behind another man’s head. Both the mirth—the smiling boy climbing a pole, the grotesquely rendered faces—and the violence of the drawing disappear in the painting. The drawing features a brawl in the rear of the crowd, with two men fighting each other, one armed with a stick, and in the foreground, a pickpocket is busy robbing the figure who becomes Campau in the final work. In the painting, the site of aggression is centered on a single act. The hand of an unseen member of the crowd below delivers a disciplinary switch strike to the bare sole of the boy climbing the pole. The child’s eyes fill with shock at the blow. In its public form, the work becomes a statement about the men who preside over Detroit’s emergence as an agricultural and economic power and a remark on their capacity to maintain an enforced order. Compositionally, the painting shares features with other popular depictions of award ceremonies and assemblies of politicians produced during the Jacksonian era.

Cohen would have been familiar with and may have had in mind the 1848 AAU print depicting the organization’s distribution of prizes (fig. 35) which features as a similarly arranged, circular space, with much of the action taking place in the middle ground of the work. Thomas Doney’s United States Senate Chamber, 1846 (fig. 36) also relies on a comparable arrangement. In Cohen’s work, the circular ceiling and banner stand in for the chandelier and interior of the Senate chamber. Reading of

Figure 36 Thomas Doney after J. Whitehorne, United States Senate Chamber, 1849. Mezzotint on paper; H. 30 1/2”. W. 39 ½”. (Library of Congress.)

75 the Premiums, like United States Senate Chamber, may have served a didactic purpose when it was displayed in a mirror warehouse in that it would have acquainted its viewers with the lawyers and politicians of the city.113 Cohen, like Doney, likely “fortified” his painting through photography by relying on daguerreotypes to render the likenesses of at least some of the men in the painting.114 His lack of photographic reference for certain sitters would account for the peculiar draftsmanship of some individuals and not others. For instance, the face of the man holding his hat up in the rear of the crowd feels distinctly cartoonish in relation to other members of the assembly (fig. 37). In contrast, the head of Levi Cook, on the far right of the painting (fig. 38), so closely resembles a photograph (fig. 39) of him reproduced in the 1896 Freemasonry in Michigan that Cohen may have had access to the original of the image used in the book. Cohen’s placement of former Michigan senator Lewis Cass and former Detroit

Mayor Zacharia Chandler at opposite ends of the foreground, each with a distinct air of confidence, speaks to the political undercurrents of this work. Youthful Chandler, on the right-hand side of the painting, confidently leans over the rail of his seat as he watches the proceedings. Directly opposite him, Cass, who Chandler would later

113 Michael Leja, “Fortified Images for the Masses,” Art Journal, 70, No. 4 (Winter 2011), 72. Detroit Free Press, June 18, 1853.

114To borrow a term from Michael Leja for the reliance of mid-nineteenth century printmakers on photographic material to enhance the realism of their images. See Leja, “Fortified Images,” 66-71. Unlike those uses, which sought to overcome the limitations of daguerreotypes reproductive capacities, Cohen’s use of photography similarly produced a single, amalgamated image.

Figure 37 Detail of Frederick E. Cohen, Reading of the Premiums (fig. 33).

Figure 38 Detail of Frederick E. Cohen, Reading of the Premiums (fig. 33).

Figure 39 Photograph of Levi Cook. From Jefferson S. Conover, Freemasonry in Michigan, 1896.

77 succeeded as Michigan Senator, looks directly at the viewer. The elder Cass was a former enslaver and one of the nation’s top most advocates for the doctrine of popular sovereignty, letting white voters decide whether their state would allow slavery.115 Cohen’s depiction of the politician is highly flattering; Cass was obese and pushing seventy when the work was painted, but he looks dignified, alert, and youthful in the painting. Chandler was a businessman turned politician, a strict abolitionist who founded the Republican party in 1854, the year after Cohen completed the work. The positioning of the two men at opposite sides of the work appears to be a direct reference to the intensity of debates in Michigan about the future of slavery within the state. Cass was on his way out by the time that Cohen painted this work. After the party was founded in 1854, Michigan became a reliably Republican state.116 Cohen’s unusual decision to paint two African American figures (fig. 40) in the forefront of the work, directly between Chandler and Cass, suggests that he was intimately aware of the politicians’ divergent views. If the two black men are based on real individuals, their identity is now lost. The men seem to be relaying information between each other, caught in a deep discussion, ignoring the activities of the white politicians behind them. The man on the right points to the palm of his hand as he leans back to say something to his companion. The other man leans in to listen, a hand on his partner’s shoulder, a basket of linens hanging off his other arm. The corners of

115 For reference of Cass’s sale of a servant named Sally, see Willard Carl Klunder, Lewis Cass and the Politics of Moderation, (Kent State University Press, 1996), 46-7. Cass later denied that he ever owned slaves.

116 Bald, 254-259.

78 his mouth pulled back and his brow furrowed, his face conveys concentration. The two black men are grouped with the figure wearing Scandinavian clothing, perhaps a commentary on Detroit’s black and immigrant populations. While the two men turn away from the activity behind them, the Scandinavian man attempts to hear what is being said—the ear horn a material symbol for the language barrier of recent immigrant groups. Cohen makes the division between the city’s white citizenry, even recent arrivals, and its black populations clear.

Figure 40 Detail of Frederick E. Cohen, Reading of the Premiums (fig. 33).

Figure 41 Detail of Frederick E. Cohen, Reading of the Reports (fig. 34). (Newberry Library, Chicago. Special Collections.)

Though the depiction of the two black men in the painting is more realistic than the disquieting, racialized caricature (fig. 41) Cohen used in the sketch for the work, but the two men are one of the few elements translated from the sketch to the painting almost unchanged. Cohen was not the only artist to transform caricatures of black men in his private drawings into realistic portrayals in works intended for public consumption. Working in approximately the same period, William Sidney Mount also relied on caricature in his working drawings of African Americans, only to translate

80 them to realized figures in his paintings.117 In this case, Cohen may have been wary of publicly displaying a work that was so obviously disparaging of African Americans publicly in Detroit, perhaps out of fear that such a portrayal would alienate abolitionist clientele. Though black suffrage was voted down in Michigan in 1850, the same year that the Fugitive Slave Law passed, Detroit had become the single most important point of entry into Canada for enslaved men and women and with an active community of black residents.118 The city’s six hundred African American residents in 1850 was triple the population of the previous decade, and the city had a vigorous Underground Railroad community invested in ensuring that men and women were safely guided to Canadian shores. 119 One organization, the Colored Vigilant Committee, formed in the 1840s, was an all-black society devoted to protecting the city’s African American population. Over its two-decade existence, the Committee raised and distributed over one hundred thousand dollars in funding and helped thousands of fleeing men and women escape slavery. Thanks in part to the organization’s activism, Detroit earned a reputation for being unwelcoming to slave catchers, particularly after the Committee pressured the Mayor John Ladue to secure

117 Notably, not all artists worked in this way. James Clonney’s drawings depicted black Americans in “full-dimensioned, sympathetic rendering,” whereas his paintings relied on brutal stereotype—much to approval of his audiences. Elizabeth Johns, American Genre Painting: The Politics of Everyday Life, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), 113.

118 Bald, 255.

119 Roy Finkenbine, “A Community Militant and Organized: Colored Vigilant Committee of Detroit,” in Karolyn Smardz Frost and Veta Smith Rucker, eds, A Fluid Frontier: Slavery, Resistance, and the Underground Railroad in the Detroit River Borderland, (Detroit: Wayne State University, 2016), 155.

81 the freedom of Giles Rose, a formerly enslaved man who sought refuge in Michigan. Donations to the subscription were provided by the city’s politicians after agitation from black residents from Detroit and the hundreds of others who crossed the border from Canada to protest Rose’s arrest. Notably, given the Campau family’s history of slave ownership and the family’s inextricable connections to the Detroit Free Press, the Democratic paper was critical of the Underground Railroad activity in Detroit and the city’s disregard for the Fugitive Slave Laws.120 The paper repeatedly published articles in support of the 1850 legislation and urged its readers to vote against the enfranchisement of black Americans in Michigan.121 To the city’s credit, the paper was fighting a losing battle: not a single enslaved person was captured and returned to the south after the Rose incident occurred in October 1850.122 The hushed, plotting discussion of the two black figures in Reading of the Premiums obliquely to references the Detroit’s abolitionist activity, but by rendering the figures realistically, Cohen obscures his opinions on the subject. The two men’s affiliation with abolitionist causes may also be reinforced by their attire, which, like the striding man in Near Old Post Office, borrows from several sources. The red sash worn by the figure on left could be the garment worn by voyageurs, suggesting that the man might be Canadian. Simultaneously, his scarlet vest appears to be a reference to the city’s riverine activity. The red vest and loose white shirt is almost identical to the dress of the prominent white flatboat man in

120 Ibid, 155-62.

121 Detroit Free Press, October 29, 1850.

122 Finkebine, “A Community Militant and Organized,” 160.

82 George Caleb Bingham’s Jolly Flatboatmen in Port (fig. 42), and the bright red shirt of the other man also appears frequently in depictions of flatboat workers. 123 Given that escape to Canada from Michigan necessarily occurred over the Detroit River, that the men are wearing outfits nearly identical to that of Bingham’s flatboatmen may suggest a reference to the Underground Railroad in this work. Just as the nervously smiling African American figure in Jolly Flatboatmen in Port wears a tattered shirt, signaling him out and conveying his low position in the hierarchy of the white men around him, the two African American men in Cohen’s work look out of place in the sea of starched white shirts and black suits behind them. But unlike the black figure in Jolly Flatboatmen, the two figures in Reading of the Premiums, who are connected to Zachariah Chandler by the pew on which he leans, anchor the work and force the viewer to bypass them in the course of interacting with the politicians in the middle ground. Their position in the forefront of the painting is a powerful statement about the significance of Detroit’s black activist communities in the period when Cohen executed the painting. Ambivalence toward black subjects was a nearly ubiquitous theme among genre painters after 1830, and by 1850, an acceptance of slavery was the dominant position of American artists.124 But there are significant details that make Reading of the Premiums unlike other antebellum paintings featuring black men. The front-and- center placement of the two individuals is particularly unusual, and indeed, the two men are the largest figures in the entire painting. Thus, and in spite of Cohen’s views

123 Smith, 219.

124 Johns, 123.

83 on race, the work speaks to the effectiveness and significance of Detroit’s black and abolitionist communities to the city in the mid-1850s.125 That Cohen altered the two men’s depiction from caricatures to somewhat realized, if still threatening, figures in the painting suggests that the artist was wary of offending either the city’s abolitionist communities, its black population, or both, in a work that would have been on semi- public view. It also speaks to the effectiveness of these communities in fighting against the racism of the political and media machinery that kept Cohen in business.

Figure 42 George Caleb Bingham, The Jolly Flatboatmen at Port, 1857. Oil on canvas; H. 77 ¼”. W. 69 5/8”. (Saint Louis Art Museum. Museum Purchase, 123.1944.)

125 Johns, American Genre Painting, 123.

84 Cohen’s allegiances notwithstanding, Reading of the Premiums is a singular and important visual document of Detroit’s early history. Though it does not, as has been assumed, depict the first Michigan State Fair, the social and political issues which the work addresses are, in many ways, more pertinent to the history of the city than that singular event. Cohen’s work not only captures the tension between popular sovereignty and Free Soil ideologies, but his treatment of African Americans is unusual in the history of American genre painting and speaks to the strength of these communities in antebellum Detroit. Moreover, that this painting was available and advertised for public viewing, however limited, suggests that it would have also been a source of discussion among nineteenth-century Detroiters, discussions which perhaps encompassed not just the state’s politics, but also the larger questions that the nation would attempt reckon with about seven years after Reading of the Premiums was produced.

85 Chapter 5

EPILOGUE

Figure 43 Detail showing Cohen’s self-portrait in Reading of the Premiums (fig. 33).

Cohen decided to include himself in the Reading of the Premiums, but notably outside of the crowd. Dour faced and pale, he emerges from behind the pole opposite the one with the climbing child and looks directly at the viewer. His self-portrayal in the work is unusual for the artist, at odds with his cultivated persona as a man-about-

86 town. He appears ready to disappear behind the tent column at any moment. In positioning himself next to the tent pole, Cohen links himself to the punished child on the opposite side of the painting, as if lamenting his inability to suffuse the work with the violent comedy so typical of his work. As Detroit became ever more developed and populated by migrants over the course of the 1850s, Cohen’s visual antics must have been increasingly at odds with the genteel sensibilities that would have simultaneously developed and he executed Reading of the Premiums not long before he began spending long periods of time working as an itinerant painter in central and northeastern Ohio. In December 1858, about a month after signing a temperance pledge, Cohen died of an aneurism while shooting hogs with a neighbor. He was remarkably young, only forty-one years old. Obituaries in Ohio and Detroit mourned the loss of the painter. His memory lived on for a time in occasional mentions and posthumous biographies in Detroit and Mount Vernon, Ohio, where he is buried with his wife and first child. For all the unsavory aspects of Cohen’s personality so inextricably suffused in his work, his paintings and drawings are a unique contribution to nineteenth-century American painting and his absence from the history of American art begs reevaluation. His genre paintings and allegorical works, brimming with off-color comedy, aggression, and latent sexuality offer a singular view into the material life and visual culture of Detroit at a critical point in the city’s history. Works like Near Old Post

Office, Detroit capture events that were highly pertinent to transnational history of the Great Lakes in the years preceding the Civil War. Simultaneously, the racism of Cohen’s work offers a glimpse of the enormous challenges facing African Americans and abolitionists in antebellum Detroit, a major center of Underground Railroad

87 activity. Aesthetically, the artist’s phantasmagoric paintings for public spaces, such as his panel for The Mayflower steamship lady’s parlor and his banner for the Lafayette No. 4 fire company, suggest that grotesquerie was a highly visible aspect of Detroit’s culture in the 1840s and 1850s. That Cohen engaged with inspiration from early modern visual sources upends traditional art historical narratives that dismiss works of art produced in the nineteenth century Midwest as derivative of coastal models.

This study was instigated with the hope of contributing, in some small way, to the understanding of one of the most culturally rich and unappreciated cities in the country and to show that the nineteenth-century material legacy of the region is complicated and worthy of sustained art historical consideration on a national scale. Scholarship often begets preservation, and much remains to be done in this regard. Recovering and studying paintings by Cohen and other artists active in the nineteenth- century Great Lakes region will go far in expanding our understanding of the unique aesthetics of this highly fluid national border and offer a better appreciation of the networks of artistic exchange in which these painters and craftspeople took part. Such an endeavor is critical to a more complete history of American art. For his part, Cohen produced hundreds of paintings and the vast majority of the artist’s works are now lost. One unlocated work, reproduced in the Curatorial Files of the Detroit Institute of

Art, offers a tantalizing glimpse of the artist’s distinctive, dreamlike images yet to be discovered and studied by art historians and material culture scholars alike. Perhaps once a panel in one of the many steamships drifting across the surface of the Great Lakes, the painting depicts a hand delicately lifting a splendorous bouquet of flowers out of the dark depths of the waters below, as if asking us to take them.

90 REFERENCES

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93 Kasson, John F. Rudeness and Civility: Manners in Nineteenth Century Urban America. New York: Hill and Wang, 1990.

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96 Appendix A

COHEN’S SITTERS AND ORIGINAL WORKS126

Rev. John Synge, Windsor England, 1127

Dr. Harrison, London, England, 2 Capt. Harrison, Regiment Manchester England, 3 Capt. Cohen George, Windsor, England, 4 Mrs. Jane Cohen, Windsor, England, 5 Lucius C. Cohen, Windsor, England, 6 Edward W. Cohen, Windsor, England, 7 [[Grory]] E. Cohen, Windsor, England, 8

Bennett Cohen, Windsor, England, 9 Antonio Cohen, Windsor, England, 10 Williamson Cohen, Windsor, England. 11 James Cohen, Lieut. [[Sapp Minors]], Windsor, England, 12

126 This is a transcription of the handwritten list of sitters and their residences in the Frederick E. Cohen album, Newberry Library, Chicago, Special Collections. Extant portraits of numerous figures not listed here suggest that Cohen ceased updating this list in the early 1850s. Lack of city directory entries for Buffalo figures may imply that Cohen fabricated a portion of this list.

127 Number refers to sitters, not individual paintings. Beginning with entry 65, numerous sitters are listed in one entry. This list preserves Cohen’s misspellings and mistakes. Illegible words are bracketed.

97 Jane Cohen, Windsor, England, 13 Charlott Cohen, Windsor, England, 14 Charles Cohen, Windsor England, 15 Dr. James French, Windsor, England, 16 James Tobin Esq Cash Bank of England, Windsor England, 17 Jane Tobin, Windsor, England, 18

Charlott, Windsor, England, 19 Minna, Windsor, England, 20 George, Windsor, England, 21 James [[Jun]], Windsor, England, 22 Rev [[?]] Harrison, Windsor, England, 23 Dr. D. French, Windsor, England, 24 Rev. John French, Windsor, England, 25

Jon Bennett, Esq, Windsor, England, 26 Wellington Mortimour, Adj 15th Hussars, Windsor, England, 27 Richard Martin, 3rd Dragoon Guards, Windsor, England, 28 William W. West Royal Academy, Windsor, England, 29 William Courtney, Esq, London, 30

Harriat Courtney, London, 31 William [[Jun]], London, 32

Sam, London, 33 Thomas, London, 34 Henry Perce, Esq, London, 35 Mrs. Mahlda Perce, London, 36

98 Dr. Thomas Cambell, Glasgow, Scotland, 37 Mrs. Marian Cambell, Glasgow, Scotland, 38 Charlott Cambell, Glasgow, Scotland, 39 Co. William Cambell, 93 Highlanders, 40 Dr. Marshall, 93 Highlanders, 41 Dr. Murray, Edinburgh, Scotland, 42

Jane Murray, Edinburgh, Scotland, 43 Sam Murray, Edinburgh, Scotland, 44 Capt. Montieth, 42 Highlanders, Canandaigua, New York, 45 Minnie Montieth128, Canandaigua, New York, 46 William Person, Esq, New York ,47129 Lady, New York, 48 Daughter, New York, 49

George Huff, Esq, New York, 50 Lady, New York, 51 William Huff, New York, 52 Filmore H. Richardson, New York, 53 Mrs. C. Richardson, New York, 54

Eli Preston, Esq, New York, 55 Mrs. Preston, New York, 56

George Preston, New York, 57

128 Cohen’s cousin.

129 This and the entries to follow listed as “New York” possibly refer to Canandaigua, not New York City.

99 Eliz Preston, New York, 58 Henry Preston, New York, 59 Boy, New York, 60 Henry Fitz Cobb & lady, New York, 61 And Children, four, New York, 65 George H. Robinson & family, New York, 71

J. Forrester Esq & lady, New York, 75 William Robinson Esq & lady, Canadaigua, 77 Matilda Mountieth (full length), Canandaigua, New York, 78 George W. Miller & family, Canandaigua, New York, 87 John Smith, Esq & family, Canandaigua, New York, 91 William Coper, Dr., Buffalo, 92 George Auston & family, Buffalo, 99

James Cooper, Esq & family, Buffalo, 104 Eli Cook, Esq, Buffalo, 105 Elich Cook, Esq, Buffalo, 106 Hon. Dan Webster, Buffalo, 107 James Smith, Esq, Buffalo, 108

David Smith, Buffalo, 109 William White & family, Buffalo, 112

Lieut. William Goodall & family, Buffalo, 117 L Spencer & Family, Buffalo, 121 H.H. Cornish & family, Buffalo, 125 Judge Foster & family, Buffalo, 134

100 George Ingles Esq, Buffalo, 135 William Bigby & family, Buffalo, 146 John Borst, Esq, & family, Buffalo, 151 Capt. Rich Robinson & family, Buffalo, 155 Capt. Floyd & lady, Buffalo, 157 Capt. Folgier, Buffalo, 158

Capt. Blake, Buffalo, 159 Theu E. Whiting, Buffalo, 160 John Fingley & lady, Buffalo, 162 George S. Patton, Esq, Buffalo, 163 William Rider & lady, Buffalo, 165 Sam Brown M.D. & family, Buffalo, 171 Alix Mac Kee & Family, Buffalo, 178

James Atkinson M.D. & family, Buffalo, 185 William Ritchie, M.D., Buffalo, 186 Miss Mac Bluer, Buffalo, 187 Mrs. Hunt National Theater, Buffalo, 188 George Hardie & Family, Buffalo, 192

Jacob Van Hauser, Buffalo, 193 George Wilson, Esq, Buffalo, 194

David Wilson, M.D., Buffalo, 195 H.H. Adams Esq & family, Buffalo, 205 Geoge Sprague & family, Buffalo, 214 Mr. Clinton & lady, Buffalo, 216

101 Dan Marble or Yankee Dan, Buffalo, 217 George H. W. Mossep, vocalist, Buffalo, 218 John K Miller & family, Buffalo, 225 Miss Randolph & sister, Buffalo, 227 William Wallock a star, Buffalo, 228 Mrs. Greenlock, Buffalo, 229

B. Leonard Esq & family, Buffalo, 238 Albert Blaunch & family, Buffalo, 245 Corn Boulrouche, M.D., Buffalo, 246 John Lee & family, Buffalo, 255 Goerge Welsh & family, Buffalo, 261 Hon. John Hamilton, Niagara, 275 Major Sprague, 71 Reg foot, Niagara, 276

Major Narsh & lady, Niagara, 276130 Mr. Milo & family, Kingston Urb., 280 Edwar Rogers & family, Kingston Urb., 283 Wilson Esq George, Kingston Urb., 284 Wilson David [[boculist]], Kingston Urb., 285

Dr. Stanfield & lady, Kingston Urb., 287 William [[Crethington]], Esq, Kingston Urb., 288

Alex Ross& Family, Kingston Urb., 297 Mr. Burchill, Gt. Office, Kingston Urb., 298

130 Cohen’s numbering mistake.

102 J. Thronton, Esq, Kingston Urb., 299 Davis M.D. & family, Kingston Urb., 303 Capt. Heath, Royal Lanciers, Kingston Urb., 304 Major M Graugh, Royal Lanciers., Kingston Urb., 305 Capt. Martain, Royal Artillery., Kingston Urb., 306 Lieut. Corin, 85 Regiment Foot, Kingston Urb., 307

Miss Conway, Kingston Urb., 308 Ensign Walsh, Reg. 85 Foot, Kingston Fort, 309 Bill Midleton, Royal Navy, Kingston Fort, 310 George [[Femno]], Kingston Fort, 311 Sam Hughes Esq & Family, Kingston Fort, 318 Ged Milton Esq & Lady, Kingston Fort, 320 W.W. Whiting & Family, Buffalo, 323

George Gibson & Lady, Buffalo, 325 William Spencer MD, Buffalo, 326 Parkman M.D. & Lady, Buffalo, 329 Bill Dictinson artist, age 73, Buffalo, 330131 Jacob Baker & family, Buffalo, 335

Peter Baker Esq, Buffalo, 336 Charles [[Chaer]],

131 Possibly refers to William Dickenson, an artist active in the Auburm, NY region in the mid-nineteenth century. See William H. Gerdts, Art Across America: Two Centuries of Regional Painting 1710-1920, Vol. 1 New England, New York, and the Mid-Atlantic, (New York: Abbeville Press, 1990), 190.

103 painted on a pleasure trip to Chicago on board the St. Louis, 337 Capt. Brunt, Mississippi, ditto, 338 Ned Robinson, Esq of New York, do., 339 J Booner, Edi Buffalo Com., do., 340 Dr. Brown M.D., do., 341 Edwin Whitley, Esq, do., 342

Alex White & family, Chicago, 345 W. Eares & family, Chicago, 348 HH Evan Esq, Chicago, 349 R. Reid & Brooks artists, Chicago, 351 Mrs. Godfrey, Detroit, 352 John Atkinson & Lady, Detroit, 354132 Robert Robins, Detroit, 355

Robert Bullock, Detroit, 356 George Ross & Family, Perrysburgh, 359 J Hollister, Esq, Perrysburgh, 360 Mr. Carnden, Perrysburgh, 361 Eli Fowler & Family, Perrysburgh, 370

Edwin Mitchel, Perrysburgh, 371 W Drurey and family, Perrysburgh, 376

Miller & sister, Perrysburgh, 378 J. Wright & family, Detroit, 382

132 John Atkinson is one of the owners of the decorative firm Godfrey and Atkinson, where Cohen worked.

104 A.S. Bagg133 & family, Detroit, 394 Rush Bagg, Detroit, 395 Col. A.S. Williams134 full length, Detroit, 396 Mr. Moffitt & son, Detroit, 398 Daughter of Dunclay Esq, Detroit, 399 Zin Pitcher M.D.,135 Detroit, 400

E.M. Clarke M.D. & family, Detroit, 405 Dr. Steward & Lady, Detroit, 407 Rev. Dr. Duffield, Detroit, 408 D.B. Duffield Esq, Detroit, 409 Hon. J.M. Lean,136 Judge Supreme Court, Detroit, 410 Hon. Jacob Howard, Detroit, 411 John S. Abbott Esq & family, Detroit, 414

Joseph Godfrey,137 Detroit, 415 Miss La Deaux full length, Detroit, 416 Parker & family, N. Theater, Detroit, 421 Miss LaRoy, Detroit, 422 Mrs. Fields, Detroit, 423

133 Bagg owned a book and stationary store near Cohen’s studio.

134 Alpeaus Starkley Williams.

135 Detroit mayor in 1840-1.

136 John McLean, Supreme Court Judge.

137 Of Godfrey and Atkinson.

105 Mrs. Blodget, Detroit, 424 Son of J.W. Long, Detroit, 425 Son of Marvin Esq, Detroit, 426 John Richardson, Detroit, 427 Luis Ives, Detroit, 428138 Johnes, Sculptor, Detroit, 429

Mr. S Whitting, Detroit, 430 William Clay & family, Detroit, 433 Mrs. Dean & family, Detroit, 436 Mr. Edwards & family, Detroit, 441 Ryan & lady, Detroit, 443 Coyle Esq, Detroit, 444 Woods, [Edu], Detroit, 445

Mr. Robinson & family, Detroit, 449 Child of Drigs Esq, full length, Detroit, 450 John Harmon139 & family, Detroit, 453 [[Sru]] Harmon, Detroit, 454 Alex White Esq, Detroit, 455

Mr. Higgins Gt & family, Detroit, 459 Luis Farnsworth & lady, Detroit, 461

John Fay Esq, Detroit, 462

138 Artist active in Detroit.

139 Mayor of Detroit, 1853.

106 L. Baldwin & family, Detroit, 467 H. Wells & lady, Detroit, 469 Alex Newbould Esq, Detroit, 470 George Hill & family, Detroit, 473 W Barclay140 & family, Detroit, 476 Miss Chittenden full length, Detroit, 477

Mr. Kelly's son full length, Detroit, 478 Capt. Robinson's son full do, Detroit, 479 Capt. Clarke & family, Detroit, 485 Major Clarke, Detroit, 486 John Richardson Esq, Detroit, 487 Capt. Goodwin & lady, Detroit, 489 Mrs. Steele, artist, Detroit, 490

Mr. Handcock & family, Detroit, 494 Miss Barney, Detroit, 495 George Garrison, Detroit, 496141 Simon Draper, Detroit, 496 Mrs. T. Ceoculard, Detroit, 497

Two brothers, full length, Detroit, 499 Child of Mr. Clarke, Detroit, 500

Fanny Edgerton, Detroit, 501

140 See discussion of this portrait in this thesis, (fig. 30).

141 Cohen’s mistake in numbering.

107 Mrs. Young, Detroit, 502 E. Desnoyer M.D. & lady, Detroit, 504 Mr. Geness's family, Detroit, 509 Judge Wing USC, Detroit, 510 Rev. G Simons, Detroit, 511 General Brady, USA, Detroit, 512

Miss Duncan, Detroit, 513 Capt. F. Wheeler, Detroit, 514 Mr. Williamson & family, Detroit, 523 Hon. Lewis Cass U, Detroit, 524 Yrum Brown Esq, Detroit, 525142 G. Wilson M.D. full length New York 526 H.W. Glaseo Esq, full length, New York 527

Mrs. Finster, Detroit, 528 Ger. Cooley, artist, New York, 529 Charles Silkirk143, Detroit, 530 H. Hill M.D., Detroit, 531 Mrs. Pravaux & family, Detroit, 538

Alex Davidson Esq, Detroit, 539 Jeremiah Van Ransclear Esq, Detroit, 540

John Watson Esq, Detroit, 541

142 Misspelling of Hiram.

143 Misspelling of Selkrig.

108 Jim Homan Editor & Miss Snow, Detroit, 543 Mr. Hart & family, Detroit, 549 William Foot Esq & family, Detroit, 557 Lieut. Covell USN, Detroit, 558 H.B. Curtis, Mt. Vernon, Ohio, 561144 Tim V. Burr, M.D., Mt. Vernon, Ohio, 562

Stiles Burr & family, Mt. Vernon, Ohio, 566 H. Warden & family, Mt. Vernon, Ohio, 571 Mrs. C.P. Buckingham, Mt. Vernon, Ohio, 572 R.C. Herd Esq & lady, Mt. Vernon, Ohio, 574 T.N. Burr M.D. & lady, Mt. Vernon, Ohio, 576 Mrs. B. Norton & sister, Mt. Vernon, Ohio, 578 Joseph Mencheur, Mt. Vernon, Ohio, 579

Mrs. D.S. Norton, Mt. Vernon, Ohio, 580 Higgins Esq, Mt. Vernon, Ohio, 581 Armstrong, Mt. Veronon, Ohio, 582 Thom Tress [And], Mt. Veronon, Ohio, 583 Rich. Roberts & family, Mt. Veronon, Ohio 592

144 This entry corresponds to two paintings now held at the Gund Gallery, Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio.

109 Original Pictures Painted Since 1842145 The Conception, 16 x 9 ft, 2, French Cathedral, Buffalo Moses & the Mary’s, 10 x 8 ft, 4, French Cathedral, Buffalo George & the Dragon, 20 x 18 ft, 3, St. George’s Society Day of Judgement, 9 x 7 ft, 4300, New York Art-Union The Angel’s Whisper, 24 x 20 in, 4, New York Art-Union

Scene in Copper Harbour (sic), 2 ft x 20 in, 4, New York Art-Union Sled Racing on Detroit River, 3 x 2 ft, 18, New York Art-Union Painter’s Dream, 3 x 2 ft, 13, Sect. of Art Union Cooper’s Captives, 4 x 3 ft, 7, T. Smith, Esq, Buffalo St. Andrew’s Society, 5 x 4 ft, 130, T. Smith Esq, Buffalo Juan & Haidee from Byran, 2 ft x 28 in, 3, H.B. Curtis, Esq, Mt. Vernon Christ Healing the Blind, life size, 9 x 7 ft, 3, New York Art-Union

The Broad and Narrow Path, 9 x 7 ft, 17, New York Art-Union Eve, life size, 9 x 7 ft, 1, H.B. Curtis, Mt. Vernon Cain Killing his brother, 9 x 7 ft, 2, H.B. Curtis, Mt. Vernon Christ’s Baptism, 4 x 6 ft, 13, Liblee Esq Detroit Minors at Supper in Copper Harbor, 4 x 4 ft, 42, Curt Emison, Detroit

Portrait of Louis Phillippe, 4 x 2 ft, 1, Philadelphia Art Union Hughes Killing Indians, 2 x 3 ft., 6, Philadelphia Art Union

Joshua Slaying the Five Kings, 5 x 4 ft, 21, T. Tress, Mt. Vernon The Elopement of Europa & Jupiter, 7 x 4 ft, 9, Fisk M.D., New York

145 As of writing, all works on this list are lost. The number after the dimensions refers to the number of figures in the work.

110 Appendix B

SELECTED POEMS AND PROSE BY FREDERICK E. COHEN146

(1)

Day of Judgement

Look reader, look up upon the highest rock Around their creator, Earth’s people flock To the sounding trumpets, all with one acord (sic) Obey the call and gather round their Lord To judge the world we’ll find our mighty King While myriads of angels over their sovereign sing Now silent as when in the tomb, he sits to scan And bless the good to sentence the evil man Worldly justice, his footstool, striped of power lies To Earth the scales of her office drops, to heaven her spirit flies Upon his right hand are placed the happy and the blessed Some with joyfull (sic) mirth, others are caressed Like charity with her children by her maker’s side Like her all soul are sailing up the heavenly tide But war is on the other side, the awful sentence is passed Kings of Earth has last their power, and all are falling fast Some cling to life upon the rock, with death’s grim visage grasp But death and life now all alike in agonizing gasp They fall below in darkness from where each fiendish yell, Meet them half way up the flames, welcoming them to hell Or with his torturing spear foul Saturn takes his stand Forcing his long expected guests to join his hellish band Beneath the rock is Death upon his pail (sic) horse chained

146 All poems and prose transcribed here is from the Newberry Album. Some have also been published in the Philadelphia Illustrated Courier.

111 By Gabriel with his trump in hand Death’s power is retained Around the yawing graves ope wide throw out their dead, Each bone reclaims its mortal form, each skull its mortal head To join in judgement through the rending rocks they move Like creeping, crawling shadows from out a moon lit grove And Earth is all alive the world a living stage With good and evil moving on, Infancy, Youth, Manhood, and Old Age Afraid to rise like serpents coiled, the passions cling to Earth With longing love for lingering life yet cursing their day of birth The last trumpet sounds. Guardian Angel points the way Reader beware and follow him to the Judgement Day.

Figure 45 Frederick E. Cohen, Day of Judgement, 1849. Ink and graphite on paper, Approx. H. 8”, W. 11”. From Frederick E. Cohen album. (Newberry Library, Chicago, Special Collections.)

112

(2)

Figure 46 Frederick E. Cohen, “Pittfull spectacle…,” c. 1850. Ink on wove paper, approx. H. 7”, W. 9”. (Newberry Library, Chicago, Special Collections.)

Pitifull (sic) spectacle of deadly smart, Beside a bubbling fountain low she lay, Which she increased with her bleeding heart, And the cleane (sic) waves with purple gore did say; As in her lap a lovely babe did play His cruel sport, instead of sorrow dew, For in her streaming blood he did embay His little hands, and tender joints embrew: Pitifull (sic) spectacle, as ever eye did brew.

113

(3)

Designed for a Fountain*

What Mermaid throng is that now sprung Like holy angel spirits on guard where spirits sleep, All morning noon and night to dash their silver spray, Unto the heavens high, to fly, to fall, and die away.

F.E. Cohen *To the Illustrated Courier Philadelphia 1847

(4) Bernice*

We'd seek some mossy bank, sit, and scan The stars, forgetting earth and man, And all that is of earth, and watch the spheres, And dream we heard their music, and with tears, Born of our [bliss], arise and walk again, Langui (sic) with passion's epicurean pain

H.B Hurst (sic), Esq

*Designed for the Illustrated Courier, Philadelphia.

114

(5)

The Cholera147

Thou has come again thou mighty angel of death Filling the atmosphere with thy pestilential breath On vulture wings to soar o'er the haunts of men Taking Father Mother Sister Brother leaving Widows Orphans Mourning in thy train

Why art thou sent to us, from the spirit land To torture, with thy awful flaming sword in hand Piercing the very heart while firing all the brain Gathering the good and bad, Rich and poor, calling all to moulder (sic) in the dust again

F.E. Cohen Designed October 1848

147 See accompanying drawing in this study, (fig. 28).

115

(6)

Address to Imagination

Written for the Philadelphia Courier,

Feb. 29, 1849 Fairy partner why so tease me Sporting with my happy thought Farming with your airy feathers Ideal blossoms, dearly bought As they're gaining, winding, turning Dancing o'er my troubled mind Leave them growing-blowing-showing Nor scatter them before the wind

In a boat and from the ferry Row me up the river side To some lone grotto where the berry Bathes in blossoms in the tide As they're bathing creeping sleeping On the surface of each wave Let us catch them, peering peeping Expressions first that nature gave

Up the mountain down the valley Through the forest take one then Round the woodland cottage, rally O'er the wildest haunts of men And when nature is sleeping keeping Silence with the dead of night We’ll scan the starts, laughing, winking At their great pale ghosts of light

What is man that he should ponder And revel in this world of ours Where the angeles (sic) sit and all is wonder On banks bedecked with golden flowers

116 Tis true the moon is dieing, dieing (sic) While buried in the clouds of night Yet now the sun is rising, rising On golden wings as fare and bright

117 (7)

Personal correspondence not from Oberlin but from Berlin Township, Dresdent shanty Royces Woods

Dear Republican, L' asino e im ammale paziente e caborioso.

Therefore as I have nothing to do but amuse myself by troubling you, particularly as I wish to see my name in the newspapers in company with virtue honor and bravery permit me to inform you that I have visited the celebrated city of Squeel gut148 today having had a right good hunt too(sic) and from said city, while there I was busily engaged with the merchants on uptown ally (sic) and down street lane and all [[Soundshakers]] & Snyders mills but my principal business was with Mr. Greger a very honorable & upright man who I presume has a very fine assortment of goods. ladies patrons at $16 though I did not ask for the last mentioned article, yet I heard some person say that it took a great many yards to go round some person called poor Jeney who they said had the dropsy and was all puffed up. I visited the well known iron merchant Joseph Ankeny Esq first rate goodfellow also the timber merchant, Henery Snyder another goodfellow, I done an active business with them all though I did not solicet (sic) any "I admire the activity and enterprise of these princely merchants, many of whom, from small beginnings" are actively beginning yet and as for their modesty, energy and capacity, to wealth and fame nobody doubts in the least “I admire much of the beauty, taste and confinements of this city, but in no one particular I think Squeelgut stands unrivaled," viz. the true independence of her people, There are no idle gossipers here, no monkeys who would be heros (sic) dancing on the backs of broken- down and bloated elephants Every man has got too strong a nerve and to (sic) bald a heart to care whether a petty fool or a would be aristocrat has got is little great much by honesty or by cheating other wishes to wink or nod at them or not in fact they think the aquaintance (sic) of such puppys rather [[illeg.]] than [[illeg.]] I endeavored to find a court with some honorable lawyers but was informed the court was not in season had sat in bad season and the lawyers had not been hatched yet, therefore I had not the pleasure of getting aquainted (sic) by being

148 A nickname for the town that later became Butler, Ohio.

118 allowed to look at a cross the bar at them ase some people are, when come & presume they will be high low minded and laughable as two or three of their profession are who has been in the habit of visiting [illegible] though belonging to opposite parties we heard a good old backwoodsman inquire (who has lost their tame apes one of them seems as though he had been picking his owners packed (sic) and the other looks as though he had never seen a pocket to pick. Well Mr. Republican you see no glaring capitals here "selling off at cost" or greatly reduced prices" nor are there any person foolish enough to buy that which they do not want, even though Mr. Toode may think it convennant (sic) about the house I am afraid Toodle will think rather inconvenient (sic) before long, he had better sell himself to Burtons by shows as the smallest thing ever on Exhibition patron of a gasspipe (sic) ever intended to throw light on any community for the benefit of any community for his beams of reflection will never shine upon us in a flood of golde (sic) glorey (sic) Poor wall of mans most noble part. What e're thou went in time of youth. Thy good mother tried with all her art. To teach the friendship love and truth But alas poor scull thy vane and empty treasure Has dwindled away in simply measure In vanity's fair mixing vanity's blood Viva le am de beu Fritz

119 (8)

Oct. 30th 1858 Before Almighty God I do here solemly (sic) swear that I shall never taste, touch nor handle any kind of intoxicating drinks whatever, and that I shall strictly keep in my presence this oath whether at home or abroad in or out of the presence of my good and faithful family, and may God in his infinite goodness & mercy seal my oath with his great strength from this moment until the day I die. Amen

120 (9)

Faith and Hope

One morning as the sun arose, two spirits when forth upon the Earth. They were sisters; but Faith was of mature age, while Hope was yet a child. They were both beautiful, some love to gaze upon the contenance (sic) of Faith, for her eyes were serene, and her beauty changed not, but Hope was the delight of every heart. And the child sported in the freshness of the morning; and as she hovered o’er the gardens and dewy lawns, her wings glittered in the sunbeams like the rainbow. Come my sister, she cried and chace (sic) with me this butterfly from flower to flower But her sister was gazing at the lark as it rose from its slow nest and warbled away the clouds. And when it was noon, the child said again Come my sister and pluck with me the flowers of the garden, for they are beautiful and their fragrance is sweet, But Faith replied Nay my sister let the flowers be thine for thou art young and delight thyself in their beauty I will meditate in the shade till the heat of the day be past Thou wilt find me by the fountain in the forest, when thou art weary come and repose on my bosom. & she smiled and departed After a time Hope sought her sister, the tear was in her eye and her contenance (sic) was mournful The Faith said: My sister wherefore dost thou weep, & why is thy contenance (sic) sad. And the Child Answered, because a cloud is in the sky & the sunshine is overcast, see the rain begins to fall" It is but a shower, Faith replied & when it is over the fields will be greener than before Now the place where they sat was sheltered from the rain, as it had been from the noontide heat & Faith comforted the child, & showed her how the waters flowed with a clearer stream as the showers fell And presently the sun broke out again & the woods resounded with song then Hope was glad & went forth to her sports once more, After a time the sky was again darkened & the young spirit looked up & behold there was no cloud in the whole circle of the heavens. Therefore Hope marvelled (sic) for it was but yet night. & she fled to her sister and cast herself down at her feet & trembled exceedingly Then Faith raised the child & led her forth from the shade of the trees, pointed to the sun, & said A shadow is passing over the face therefore, but no ray of his glory is extinguished. He still walketh in brightness & thou shall again delight thyself in his beams. See even yet his faces not wholly hidden from us, but the child dare not look up, for the gloom struck upon her heart. & when all was bright again, she feared to wander from

121 sister & her sports were less gay than before. When the eventide was come, Faith went forth from the forest shade & sought the tower, where she might watch the setting of the sun, then said she to her younger sister, Come & behold how for the Glories of the sunset transcend the beauty of the morning, see how softly they melt away & give place to the shadows of the night. But Hope was now weary. her eye heavy, & her voice languid, She folded her radiant wings & dropped on her seated bosom & fell asleep, but Faith watched through the night She was never weary nor did her eyelids need repose, she laid the child on a bed of flowers, & kissed her cheek She also drew her mantel around the head of the sleeper that she might sleep in peace, Then Faith looked upwards & beheld how the stars came forth, she traced them in their radiant courses & listened to their harmonies which mortal Eve hath not heard, calm as she listened their music entranced her soul At length a light appeared in the East, & the sun burst forth from the portal of the heavens, Then the Spirit hastened to arouse the sleeper

Awake my sister, awake she cried, a new day hath dawned & no cloud shall overshadow it. Awake for the sun hath risen which shall set no more.

122 (10)

The Artist to Himself

Reflecting with delight on what I have seen In Rome’s old ancient pictured hall Sometimes like the fancy of a dream Steals o’er the memory of each scene As the suns pure rays on the landscape falls Yet it is not slumber sound and deep Tis that; that suits a painters rest Tis fancies sketch, a transparent sleep On which his dreams can pencil best Me thaught (sic) within those halls I stood Me thaught (sic) I saw her, to me well known With the pride of youth and beauty imbued And whispering to me in a welcome tone And shedding her witcheries o’er my sight To kindle affection with new delight The tender expression of the well now face And fervent cheeks of the warmest hue Which filled my canvas’s lifeless space And brough her fourth within my view But soon a light shone from the east Proclaiming our happy day was nigh And as the feeble light increased Friendly figures moved across the sky With white arrayed each shone in silver streaks With smiles of joy and greeting sigh’s And roses blooming tinged their cheeks And mirth of life was in their eyes With smiles of pleasure in every glare Seeming pointing on my lovely fare Among those figures to me was one Dearest of all, on which the sun When halfway risen a beam let fall I saw her; my very heart within me trembled Then embraced each other when shouts from all Spoke gladness from our friends assembled And as they turned their heads to view What a happy group could I trace

123 The sweet expression which it threw On each kind feature in every face And many a voice was heard proclaim Cohen you well may bare the name The enchanter you have won I raised This form devise on whom all gazed For her shall my fancy alone live on To mingle in peace with the dance and song What a lovely fare on those eyes A painter for whole years might gaze Nor find in all his range of dies (sic) For affection that ever could approach their blaze

124 (11)

The Home of My Youth149

Adua (sic) sweet home, for I never again Thy fertile hills & flowery vallies (sic) regain Oh wander fourth (sic), with sisters there to view Those wellknown (sic) sceines (sic) my childhood knew What pleasing memory is this that stirs my soul Those feelings now, far beyond control As I gaze with delight on that once loved dome And fancy I tread the quiet halls of home That pictured hall so clean & white Reflecting its rays on the picture’s light Stands there alone in the silent bale In safty (sic) from the storm’s rude gale There mourning streamlets glide between The moss groves & medows (sic) green Friends of my youth lie mouldering (sic) here Dear reader, chide not a falling tear No Fathers, welcome voise (sic) to hear Nor Mothers, smile my soul to cheer Foul death has come with sorrow’s gloom Their guards, my parents within the tomb Welcome is that sound it is to come To call them to their happy home Blame no kind reader for this thaught (sic) I still love home though far remote For time with me his course shall run And yet no final blow hath won Free from disease’s withering breath From fear or suden (sic) change of death May my inmost heat be purified And all affections sanctified Then again united we shall be In heaven a happy family

149 See accompanying illustration, (fig. 3) in this thesis.

125 Appendix C

CORRESPONDENCE FROM COHEN TO HIS WIFE, MARIA LOUISA ROBERTS, 1850s150

(1)

A Letter to my good wife

There are few families, I imagine any-- where in which love is not abused as furnishing & license for impoliteness, let it be remembered that I do not wish to speak harshly to you because I love you best, and know you will not resent it, it would be a shame that I would speak more impolitely to you than I dare so to any other female, except a low and vicious one, it is thus that the holiest affections of my nature would prove to be weaker to you. I hope you will never be endebted (sic) for the kindest politeness of your life with me, to those who do not belong to our household, things aught not to be so. Remember Louisa kind words are the circulating medium between true gentlemen and true ladies at home, and no polish in society exibited (sic) can atone for harsh language or disrespectful treat- meant too often indulged in between those bound to- gather by God's own ties of blood, and the still more scared bonds of conjugal affections, therefore I beg and beseech you to help me as long as our lives doth last, to heighten rather than depress that good nature which that good Being who has ever watched over

150 These letters are held in the Irvine Katz files, Rabbi Leo M. Franklin Archives, Temple Beth El, Bloomfield Hills, MI. Also included in the Katz files are letters from Cohen’s other family members, including descendants, cousins, and sisters.

126 you and I hath blessed us with, not only for our own sakes but for the government of God's Great laws and their influence up our angel children. My heart towards you, you know Your Fred

127 (2)

Mansfield, Tuesday evening

Angel The ladies Mrs. Biglow & Mc Fale say that they know of nothing to hinder them from coming home with me on Saturday next therefore good wife please have all things as you think best, I am well with the exception of very oppressive heat I thought I would melt to day. I completed two more paintings and am to commence two more this week for a gold watch as the man has no spoons. I took the watch to other jewelers and found I was getting a good bargain which I can turn into money at any time. Poor Sowers I was just in to see him, the Drs. operated upon him at 3 o'clock this afternoon the cut just the size of the scull below out and found one of the circular piece to be very thick he is quite incensible (sic) looked like a dead man with the exception of the heaving of his breast as he breaths. Goodby kiss my dear little angles Fred

Figure 47 Frederick E. Cohen, diagram of Sower’s scull operation. From Frederick E. Cohen Letters. (Irvine Katz files, Rabbi Leo M. Franklin Archives, Temple Beth El, Bloomfield Hills, MI.)

128

(3)

Tuesday morning Aug. 23, 1853 My good wife Louisa Will you be kind enough to keep my gold pen and pencil safe which you took from my vest pocket. Mrs. Hurd is now getting her two little girls painted so that I will not get finished as soon as I expected. I am to wait for my pay until she has accumulated $140 from her pin money which is $5.00 per week. I slept so sound this morning that all the bells they could raise could not waken me up I do not feel right well, about the same as I felt when at home. Kiss little Elle for me and tell her to be a good angel and come to meet me next Friday (if I come Goodby dear Fred

129

(4)

Mount Vernon Monday Good wife I have made inquiry respecting the meeting of trains from Mansfield to Wooster and am informed that Mrs Sloan had better take the morning train which she can do morning she pleases as the train for the latter place leaves Mansfield daily. The ladies arrived home safe and in good spirits and found their homes filled as usual with happiness. I am lonesome without you indeed Fred

My dear little angel Elle, How I miss you how I miss you Tis the hour I'd like to pat your rosey (sic) cheek If you were but with me now, how I'd kiss you, How I'd kiss you Papa

130 (5)

Wiler House, Feb. 8th 56 Good wife Louisa I wish to let you know that D. Sturges the banker wished to take me home next Sunday, at least he has proposed so, should we come you will be kind enough to have things nice not cooked but ready to cook, for I will try to put him off if I can until next spring for I will just as soon have MMakin come to the house, though he (Sturges) is a fine homespun fellow, you will know if I come on Saturday then of course he will not come but he has a fast mare which he has been driving me about town with every evening introducing me to every Tom, Dick, & Harry, in fact I have found a great many influential friends of old acquaintance in Buffalo here and there is a chance of good work for me. I have engaged much but wating (sic) for canvas. dear wife excuse more now as there are gentlemen in the room and I must close. Good by sweet good creatures Kiss little ones for me Your husband Fritz You may read this to the folks if you will

131 (6)

Wiler House Mansfield 20th 56 My good angel wife, intended writing last Saturday but expecting a letter from you, I put off too long for the mail. I am well and wanted to go home bad enough I assure you, but Mrs. Glesnor was sitting until after 3 O clock PM. therefore could not go (I would let you know the main reason but for Runyon standing over me. Work is coming in, so tonight the firemen are running about with a subscription list to have their chief Engineer Steven Sturges painted full length for the firemen's Hall. They have been out only about one hour and I see by the list they have not failed in getting a man. I counted 15 down. Tomorrow the old lady Sturges (the mother of all) sits for her portrait. I spent the afternoon there yesterday and therefore noon at McFales in part and at John Shermans to dinner but I am homesick my dear good wife I will be home early on Saturday if I am spared. God bless and protect you and my dear children. whom you will kiss for me a thousand times. Good night angels Fred P.S. I would write more but for the being so many about

132 (7)

Mansfield July 8th 1857 Angel Having a few moments to spare I know of no better or more agreeable way to pass them than by writing to you, for my feelings for home are ripe this beautiful morning. I can see your pure face radiating with holy rapture for your home and family, bless your sweet soul and may god ever give you strength to continue that good life which you have ever proven to me and mine. Lew I would said that Mrs. McFale and Mrs. Dr. Biglow tell me that they have been strongly thinking of making you a visit and staying with you over night, as soon as they mentioned it to me, I proposed them going with me some Saturday when I go home which they say they will do, therefore my good wife you will be kind enough to have the bedrooms in good order for I would feel mortified if they were not nice as these two ladies are the cream of this place in respectability and pureness and I think very fit associates for my angel family. I sent your dress home in care of Gregor on Monday last, I hope you like it, I have commenced, [[Dan]] Sturges child and B. Runyan's mother this week and think I shall get them done by next—if spared and allowed my health, the weather is extremely warm (page break) and oppressive. Columbus Delano and I got up yesterday morning very early and had a long walk round the suburbs of this city admiring nature and artifice sleeping in the gray clothes of morn. There were many points of conversation which laped (sic) up the old school says in memory's past and we felt as friends who were made to enjoy the refined sympathies of each other, he was here with his daughter on her way from New York School. I bid him farewell at one o'clock, and in the evening Plympton made his app- rance we spent some three hours together (different man) however from the morning's fall, I just seen him off and now are writing to my soul's full cup of happiness

133 to all that is good and the greatest blessing ever bestowed upon me in life Goodby (sic) Fred

N.B. Should I not come home on Saturday dear, try and have the hay cat and hauled up to the wood house, thrown over the text from the alley or stacked upon the little meadow, however do not do so unless you think it will be too ripe as I will do it myself when I come up next, in fact I would rather have it as the latter way. Goodby

134 Appendix D

IMAGE PERMISSIONS

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