Creating a Western Heart: Art and Reform in 's Antebellum Associations

Wendy J. Katz

In studying art in early nineteenth-century opportunity for new economic, social and cultural Cincinnati, scholars generally emphasize the impres- choices, if reformers and promoters could win sup- sive number of artists and art institutions that flour- port for them. As Dr. Daniel Drake, an early and ished in the city. Alternately, they look more closely influential Cincinnati booster, wrote in William at how the work of individual artists who lived in the McGuffey's widely-disseminated "eclectic" reader, city expressed general trends in American life—how "we should foster western genius, encourage western painter Lilly Martin Spencer's scenes of domestic life, writers, patronize western publishers, augment the for example, contributed to the ideology of gendered number of western readers and create a western heart separate spheres.1 This division in focus separates . . . [then] the union will be secure, for its center will the local (a flowering of support for the arts) from the be sound, and its attraction on the surrounding parts national (the production of American gender roles), or irresistible. Then will our state governments emu- it sees the city sending artists to New York, from late each other in works for the common good; the whose standards and market a national culture then people of remote places begin to feel as the members issued and which, not incidentally, determined the of one family, and our whole intelligent and virtuous very value of the local cultivation of art by those later population unite, heart and hand. "5 triumphs on the national stage. Such a model of the By resituating antebellum artists within the lan- formation of a national artistic culture can be quite guage of morals, taste, and feeling that developed 2 convincing. Many if not most of the artists active in around art and exhibitions in Cincinnati, it becomes Cincinnati from the 1830s to the 1850s, including possible to see their participation in shaping the Spencer who arrived in 1841 and left the city in 1848, nature of and expectations for such a virtuous popu- spent much of their careers elsewhere, often in New lation. An interlocking array of men and women 3 York, where they achieved national recognition. cooperated to attach middle-class status to the culti- Their work would properly relate as much to those vation of proper feelings and behavior, particularly later patrons and markets as to conditions in the idea of self-control and a corresponding sympathy Cincinnati. with others, as a mark of the individual's relationship 6 However, what this model disregards is the sig- to the larger community. Reformers deliberately nificance of the local in producing the national.4 tried to construct a middle class around "respectable" When Cincinnati patrons and boosters advocated cre- values and tastes displayed at new venues, whether to ating a "western" art, they served their own personal clerks at the mercantile library, readers of women's economic and social interests in the city, but they magazines in the home, or attendees at lyceums and also self-consciously staked a claim to represent and mechanics' fairs. Art helped spread these values and reform the national culture. As the nation's third attract people to a new identity based on them, while largest manufacturing city, positioned on a river sys- artists who believed in a moral purpose for art found tem that Walt Whitman called the "spine" of the themselves and their work aligned with the project of nation, Cincinnatians into the 1850s optimistically public elevation.7 If the promoters of western art in envisioned their city as the future center of an Cincinnati did not succeed in creating a distinctive expanding nation and an exemplar for the rest of the western civilization by involving art in this project of country. The very character of this distinctly western redefining class along moral lines, they nevertheless city and its mixing of diverse individuals offered an helped shape a national culture.

Ohio Valley History Behind Cincinnati's drive to become the Athens selves further the goal of projecting a regional charac- of the West lay a concern for developing a harmo- ter and style as a type for the nation.10 nious urban culture capable of attracting and assimi- Cincinnati's success in fostering artists certain- lating a steady stream of emigrants. Economic ly owed much to the efforts of patrons and writers growth required bringing in both investment capital who supported the arts as part of their project for and a work force, but the heightened presence and urban reform. Patrons joined artists in founding insti- mobility of a sizable and diverse population threat- tutions that exhibited or taught art, occasionally ened to transform traditional bases for community funded artists' careers or travel, puffed local art in cohesiveness. Between 1820 and 1850, not only did newspapers and magazines, or simply purchased art- Cincinnati's population swell as a result of rural to works.11 But Cincinnati also possessed certain natu- urban migration, the number of immigrants from ral advantages for an art industry, including its com- overseas (primarily from Germany and Ireland) grew mercial and manufacturing base. The city's mer- to nearly sixty-nine percent of the labor force. That chants imported supplies from the East to sell to the labor force, both men and women, was increasingly West and South, including paints and luxury goods. employed in factories, creating a large pool of mostly The region also had its own linseed oil industry, white, landless wage-earners.8 In response, art pro- which not only exported the oil but also facilitated moters and urban boosters, often one and the same, inexpensive local production of paint supplies. sought to create a less hierarchic and more "natural" Because Cincinnati was a regional manufacturing western culture that would win allegiance from center, artists found crossover employment in several immigrants in the city, as well as bridge divisions related industries, including engraving (especially within the city's elite and, amid the sectionalism pre- bank notes), furniture-making, stage set painting, col- ceding the Civil War, even unite the nation itself. oring daguerreotypes, poster-making, and stonework 12 Regionalism also usefully proposed independ- for canals. The building industry alone employed ence from or resistance to dominant Eastern values, artists for murals, ornamental decor, wallpaper, glaz- 13 although no such independence, of course, existed. ing, and mixing colors. Drawn from small towns to The "Prospectus" for the Unitarian literary maga- the city's opportunities for exhibition, patronage and zine, the Western Messenger, pledged its editorial training within the artists' community, landscape attention "to everything which concerns the social painters like Godfrey Frankenstein and Worthington advance of the great West in civilization and happi- Whittredge worked on houses and signs while they ness," while the magazine's opposition to Eastern took lessons or apprenticed, while sculptors like convention and exclusiveness would bestow on it a Shobal Clevenger found employment as stonecutters pronounced "Western character."9 Despite its manu- before they began to carve busts. facturing prowess, Cincinnati merchants typically Charles Cist, author of several decennial sur- imported eastern goods for a southern market, keep- veys of Cincinnati, described the desired economic ing Cincinnati a debtor city to eastern financial cen- and educational role for Cincinnati and its artists in ters. Regionalism defended against that dependence the national landscape: "Cincinnati must become by creating a cultural sphere particular to itself, a the focus, or meeting place of a great network of inter- space safe from competition and invidious compar- nal communications—radiating from, to and through isons well suited to boosting local claims to great- this common centre," just as Cincinnati must pro- ness. Moreover, regional identity offered a route to mote the fine arts "to draw students from all parts of national power through the export of its culture to our common country here, to be instructed and ele- other regions. Cincinnati, accordingly, attracted from vated in their different walks; thus from a common the 1830s to the 1850s many reformers with definite centre radiating a just and classical taste to all around ideas about the nation's culture, including the us." Should Cincinnati do so, it would resemble Beechers, James Birney, Levi Coffin, Henry Blackwell, Rome, that "mistress of empires," for great artworks James H. Perkins, and William McGuffey. The activ- are understood as "connected with the prosperity, as ity of these reformers and writers helped establish they are with the sympathies of the people."Z4 A Cincinnati as the most important publishing center frontispiece view of Cincinnati from the Kentucky in the West and attracted artists who would them- shore preceded his comments, illustrating concretely

Fall 2001 Creating a Western Heart View of Cincinnati from Kentucky Charles Cist, Sketches and Statistics of Cincinnati in 1851 (CHS Collections) the notion of a beautiful city whose role was to ele- businessman and art patron with the city's vate or improve its citizens and expand imperially. prospects.16 The arts—like roads, canals, rivers, warehouses and Artists also saw their interests bound up with streets—would help establish the city as a regional the city. The Sketch Club, active in the 1850s and and national center of politics and business as well as 1860s, portrayed a group of its members on an culture. "Excursion"—elegantly dressed, with hats and canes City views of Cincinnati, whether a commis- as well as sketchpads—on a lightly forested hill with sioned painting, a lithograph sold to subscribers, or an a view of the river and the city in the distance, link- engraving published in a local or national magazine, ing its mutually beneficial artistic activities with became a visual realization of the role of the city as a urban ideals.:? The Club's mission statement civilizing agent.15 Patrons concerned with establish- affirmed the usefulness of a regional identity: the ing the city as an entrepot—but who also had a per- artists would increase "sectional independence" by sonal identification with the topography of the city— establishing local critical standards, since the East supported the format. One of the earliest views (from can't "judge the accuracy of Western art." They 1802) explicitly linked the fortunes of the wealthiest would foster a protectionist policy toward local men and their institutions to the city by identifying industry and resources by discouraging patrons from (in addition to the Presbyterian Church, the Fort and buying luxuries (like artworks) from the East and, the Green Tree Hotel) the residences of eleven promi- since the arts attract good society and "afford a strong nent men who probably subscribed money for the bond of sympathy," at the same time promoting print. Worthington Whittredge did a later view of the Cincinnati as a civilized city.18 A Sketch Club draw- city from the vantage point of George Schoenberger's ing assignment on the subject of "Industry" resulted park-like estate, suggesting an identification of that in a number of city views set amid rural bounds,- the

Ohio Valley History city was, after all, the product of considerable indus- trary associations which exist among the members of trial labor. Juxtaposing the city and nature, a feature other societies . . . Friendships are formed from con- of city views that was disappearing in the East, prom- geniality, and not from accident or worldly design. ised that urban development would not destroy the Yet there is a tempering of prejudices, a mutual very natural surroundings that made the West enlightenment from previous differences of education unique. and habits—differences even of country and language. Nature was only one of the elements in the Great force is thus given to any principle carried out urban landscape that bound people and the city into action by the common convictions of differing together. A periodical titled Rose of the Valley called persons."T9 The reader of .Rose of the Valley, perhaps its frontispiece view of "Cincinnati in 1839" "a taking up the position of the two genteel women pic- panoramic map of exquisite beauty and variety," tured on the Kentucky shoreline, should see how a which included streets that ran nearly parallel to landscape and population marked by variety produced meet at right angle intersections, a broad river, busy harmony and "common convictions." Or as an eti- commerce, and magnificent furnishings in the quette book put it, a person with good judgment not dwellings. But most favorable to the city's prospects only has "large and extended views," but because was its variety of people: "its population contains objects at a distance are "just as real and not little to contributions of almost every element that goes to him," can look to the future, with its long-term goals constitute society . . . There are here few of the arbi- and shared interests with fellow citizens.22 To see the city in terms of its public works and buildings taught viewers to equate their own interests with those of the city as a whole. Voluntary associations became a key vehicle for forming and expanding a unified regional culture. As Michel Chevalier noted in 1839, Cincinnati's soci- eties took "upon themselves the task of enforcing the decrees of public opinion."21 Though their aims ranged from temperance to literature, these organiza- tions all demanded that members think of them- selves as mutually dependent rather than in pursuit of their own "selfish" or narrowly economic interest. They advocated the adoption of what has been called a humanitarian sensibility, a cognitive style that demanded responsibility for and attention to others, even if remote in manners, appearance or locale.22 In cities like Cincinnati where even workers in smaller shops produced for distant markets, the new power of individuals—often acting in associations—to inter- vene in distant events (and vice versa) encouraged individuals to weigh actions against what others else- where might want or do, an exercise that required an imaginative projection into the feelings and interests of others. In a lecture to Cincinnati's new lyceum, Timothy Walker, a Whig and Cincinnati city council member, described the city as filled with strangers and emigrants who lacked the common traditions that ordinarily supplied social ties. Accordingly, inhabitants needed frequent intercourse in order to A Sketch Club Excursion rub off mutual prejudice, acquire a uniform character, The Sketch Club Scrapbook Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County and achieve a harmony of mutual interests, just as a

Fall 2001 Creating a Western Heart family "should have mutual attachments and sympa- erns.26 The Cincinnati Universalist Sunday School thies."23 The spirit of the age is association, he pro- magazine Youth's Friend explicitly discussed the sub- claimed, not the individual as an insulated being but ject of "Mutual Dependence" in terms of recognizing an "expansive feeling" which identifies self with the a harmony beyond the economic: all classes need or community. Walker may have been right, at least for depend on each other, a fortunate condition which Cincinnati: although the city's population increased leads to greater sociability and happiness.2? 248% between 1840 and 1860, the number of associ- Attempts by individuals or trades at independence ations rose by 368%.24 really disguise selfishness and personal interest, the As the testimony of politicians like Walker sug- Friend continued, which destroys civility. gests, the refining influence of mutual interdepend- This description of a harmonious civic life is ence had partisan connotations. Cincinnati Whigs certainly evidence of elite and evangelical nervous- who dominated banking, insurance, commerce, man- ness about working-class dissent and disturbed social ufacturing, real estate and some of the professions, hierarchies. But reducing desires to "elevate the pub- nevertheless had to compete with Jacksonian lic" to a mere gloss for social control is to misunder- Democrats for a large voting constituency of artisans stand the various ends served by efforts to uplift the or "mechanics," anti-evangelicals of all classes, and humble. Those who prescribed a set of moral values immigrants. Hamilton County regularly voted and behaviors did not cynically intend to teach work- Democratic, but in Cincinnati, neither party truly ers to act against their own interests by identifying dominated. Whigs accordingly needed to persuade with those of another class. Many reformers instead voters of the truth of economic interdependence in sought to replace standards that excluded individuals order to convince them of the value of measures rang- from respectability on the basis of wealth, birth or ing from education to infrastructure that seemed only profession with seemingly more universal moral to help others. To argue that "public improvements" codes of character. The farmer who planted flowers (a like canals benefited all—not just investors in exports goal of agricultural and horticultural societies), like and manufacturing—and that all should pay for them, the mechanic who attended science lectures (at the required voters to accept an expansive idea of public Ohio Mechanics Institute, the Society for the responsibility and public debt, becoming "men who Promotion of Useful Knowledge, or the Western perceived what the city might be, and were willing to Museum), or the clerk who visited an art exhibition work for its interests." Not surprisingly, these (at the Mercantile Library, or Western Art Union), speeches were especially given in years of financial demonstrated their ability to think of principles and panic, amid attacks on Whigs as servants of the people beyond themselves or their immediate profit. monied, whose canals, banks and manners benefited Good company—a "republic" independent of rank or only the few.2 5 station arising among "those who think and feel . . . Contested constituencies like the mechanics, who possess correct ideas and honourable senti- among whom one might count artists, received spe- ments," according to one etiquette book—included cial attention from Cincinnati's elite through organi- most (but not all) of the wealthy as well as respectable zations like the Ohio Mechanics Institute. Through members of other classes; essentially anyone who evening classes, exhibitions, and a library, the demonstrated a willingness to adopt and display the Mechanics Institute, in the words of its President non-utilitarian values categorized as refinement 28 John P. Foote, sought "to supply the means of acquir- might qualify. While obscuring real economic dif- ing useful knowledge to those who want to become ferences, such a moral community appeared to useful citizens and to deserve the respect and esteem remove class barriers to mobility and achievement. of their contemporaries" as well as the means "of Thus while many artists received assistance enjoying the greatest portion of happiness that may from wealthy individuals (particularly Nicholas be compatible with their situation in life." If the Longworth who offered funds for travel and study mechanics now voted, they needed instruction in rather than or in addition to purchases), art patrons what was compatible with their happiness, especially active in reform brought painting and sculpture into given the new articulation of class and ethnic inter- a network of organizations that expressly intended to ests in trade unions, cooperatives, churches and tav- educate and refine their members and the public into

Ohio Valley History such a community.29 Timothy Walker commis- Historical Society, and promoted the Cincinnati sioned portraits from James Beard, but also supported Academy of Fine Arts and the Western Art Union. the Mercantile Library, which regularly hosted These associations mediated the consumption of art speeches on manners, reform, and western prospects, by lending it a disinterested and noncommerical con- as well as exhibiting busts of local and national text; the language of refinement they spoke harnessed statesmen by Cincinnati sculptors. Clerks who visit- art's sensual appeal to the cart of moral improvement. ed the library could read amid disembodied marble Their fairs, exhibitions, lectures, and classes coun- heads that identified men's character as primarily tered individuals' centrifugal tendencies, the latter public and disinterested. Peyton Symmes collected accelerated by increasingly stratified workplaces, by art, but he also wrote for newspapers and literary drawing them into civic-minded institutions con- magazines, joined the Humane Society, campaigned trolled by elite board members. for schools for girls, and served as corresponding sec- Elite support for these institutions secured their retary of the Section of Fine Arts of the Society for the position as cultural gatekeepers.30 But the choice to Promotion of Useful Knowledge, which held public support the creation of a regional culture, which art exhibitions in 1841 and 1842. Foote too bought defines its members by geography, pushed boosters works by Cincinnati artists like Beard and Hiram and patrons in the direction of identifying themselves Powers, but in addition published a paper, founded with the values of other classes. Antebellum patrons, the literary Semi-Colon Club and the Cincinnati for example, deliberately presented themselves in a manner that downplayed their wealth. Travelers to Cincinnati mentioned the unassuming nature of its capitalists who wore their shirt sleeves rather than formal attire to dinner, perhaps exhibiting on their persons the result of pressure to separate wealth from refinement.31 Similarly, Sketch Club member Robert Duncanson's full-length portrait of Cincinnati real estate magnate, "," (1858), depicts him in gentlemanly black, but with prosaic to-do lists pinned rather eccentrically to his cuff. The landscape behind him also displays his (or his work- ers') industry, since it shows a view of the vineyards that produced a well-known regional wine that Longworth had introduced. Thus he appears in his role of public benefactor and member of the Horticultural Club, with his figure connecting the cultivated land behind him to the spray of Catawba grapes twined around the table next to him, symbol of the West's ability to produce goods that could com- pete with Europe. This presentation of Longworth as a regionalist producer with connections to labor as well as consumption was reinforced in a lithograph titled "Mr. Longworth—Esquire of Cincinnati and the Vineyards of Ohio, 1858." It too features a full-length portrait set above a view of Belmont, Longworth's home, which had an art gallery as well as murals by Duncanson. The second page of the lithograph shows employees performing tasks in Longworth's cellars and, in the central vignette, picking grapes in the Portrait of Nicholas Longworth, 1858 field. Where Duncanson elided the question of labor, Robert S. Duncanson University of Cincinnati Fine Arts Collection the lithograph conjoins as well as contrasts

Fall 2001 Creating a Western Heart 1, s, M, 1- HARPKI:S U> BH.Y. 3 iliffl yT

Harper's Weekly, July 24, 1858, p. 472 Harper's Weekly, July 24, 1858, p. 473

Longworth with his apparently unskilled workers. which social divisions were increasingly evident in Indeed, much of the vineyard's success depended not the contrast between workers' inexpensive wood so much on Longworth as on the knowledgeable homes and the elite's brick mansions, the Ohio German immigrants he employed, many of whom Mechanics Institute occupied one of the most archi- shared Longworth's opposition to slavery and temper- tecturally fabulous buildings in Cincinnati, an eclec- 32 ance. tic mix of styles that highlighted both artisan skills Duncanson's portrait of Longworth later hung in and the wealth required to put up the building.33 Its the Ohio Mechanics Institute, where Longworth's presence declared to visitors that both the city's elites peers attempted to bring art and science into a more and its mechanics espoused refined values. egalitarian space. Like Farmers College, an agricul- Periodicals edited by local reformers also fea- tural college headed by Freeman Cary and his father tured regional authors and offered advice on forming William which tried to detach farming from a purely standards of taste and feeling in everything from manual occupation and associate it instead with sci- home decoration to agriculture. They specifically ence and the liberal arts, the Ohio Mechanics included illustrations, despite their greater expense, Institute emphasized that mechanics should under- because pictures would "speak to the mind and stand the theory behind industry. They would there- heart" of the reader, "to inculcate important by improve their social and economic status, making truths."34 The Cincinnatus, published by Farmers farmers and mechanics into gentlemen with a grasp College, urged readers to make farming more com- of broader principles and creating a coherent group fortable and tasteful by planting smooth lawns and with tastes that cut across class lines. In a city in flowers and public gardens.35 Rather than illustrat-

Ohio Valley History ing local farms, the Cincinnatus engraved views of and Great Miami, Mill Creek, and Licking Rivers, Cincinnati and public buildings like the Ohio sites where wealthy Cincinnatians had begun to build Mechanics Institute, demonstrating the city's country seats. In his 1851 Western Scenery, a book progress in refinement through its institutions for which depicted local sites like the Ohio Mechanics public education. When the African American artist Institute, William Wells included a lithograph of a Robert Duncanson painted a portrait of the abolition- Godfrey Frankenstein view of the Great Miami that ist Freeman Cary, he showed him not in connection pictured a gentleman (in top hat) fishing at a calm with private property that would suggest his status bend of the river.36 Like the well-dressed men and derived from ownership of land, but with the College women fishing in an earlier Frankenstein view of in the background. Thus, the project of urban boost- Blue Hole, residents and visitors admired the Little erism and reform became entangled with education Miami and local rivers for their pristine and peaceful in refined manners and support for local art. water as well as their abundance.3^ Just as city views Cincinnatians also supported landscape paint- incorporated a serene and broadly curving (or easily ings that depicted nature as a setting whose very free- navigable) Ohio River, local landscapes adopted a doms permitted civilized self-restraint to be shown. booster's perspective by showing the rivers' absolute For example, Duncanson's depiction of "Blue Hole, stillness and potential for violence in abeyance— Flood Waters, Little Miami River" (1851) joined those especially important after the series of bad floods of numerous Cincinnati artists who painted the Little from 1844-51. In Duncanson's painting, a dense for-

Blue Hole, Little Miami River, 1851 Robert S. Duncanson Cincinnati Art Museum, Gift of Norbert Heerman

Fall 2001 Creating a Western Heart opposed to picnicking genteel tourists—at home in their native lakes and forests also argued reassuringly that immersion in nature led not to wildness, but to the stability of a region- al identity. Cincinnati's Angling Club probably helped establish fishing as a sport rather than a way to earn a living, and so made the fisherman available as an image of the natural gentle- man.38 A paper from the literary Semi-Colon Club pointed out that nature and art offer higher gratifications because they exercise the heart, illustrating the idea with a Goethe poem about a fisherman losing himself in nature.39 An engraving in the Cincinnati maga- zine Moore's Western Lady's Book (next to a pattern for lace) showed a barefoot and strawhat- ted "Fisherman" casting his line into a pool at the bottom of a forested western landscape. A poem captioning the picture describes how the boy rises early, Moore's Western Lady's Book March 1856 singing, and patiently fishes, and his experi- est encloses the pool, with two drowned branches ence of nature, whether angling or plowing, acts "But projecting above the surface of the water. Amid this to bind him to his native mountains more. "4° The isolated and rugged setting, the small, slightly ragged bonds were economic, formed from his labor, but youths fishing in the foreground are an image of the they were also more securely bonds of desire. In these desired effect of tranquil nature on the often socially various regional productions, nature was a realm in mixed and transient residents of the river bottoms which social relations were formed from motives and of Cincinnati. other than profit and so could tie individuals to a larg- The fiction of the two rustic fishermen—as er social identity.

io Ohio Valley History Like picturesque nature, artworks themselves bers and the public through lecture courses, publica- offered a virtue-inducing contrast to the competitive tions and a library.44 The Ohio Mechanics Institute world of market relations. To own art or the goods of similarly incorporated the fine arts (which included refinement was a sign of permanence and prosperity, lithography, engraving, pen, daguerreotyping, solo- but further demonstrated the desire and intention to graphs, fresco, framing, gilding, sign painting, foster unselfish attachments. The Genius of the West mechanical drawing, oils, copies, monochromatic instructed that "birds, music, flowers, pictures, poet- painting, statuary, etc.) as a subset of a larger catego- ry, are all potent ministers for good" and should ry of instruction in science and the arts.45 The "use- appear in "every home aiming for happiness and ful, fine and ornamental," as one request for submis- virtue."4i Accordingly, educational or benevolent sions to the annual Fair described it, could and did associations occasionally exhibited artworks for the range from glass, dyed cloth, furniture, agricultural public or their members, while institutions specifi- and machine tools, architectural designs, ornamental cally directed at promoting the arts spoke the lan- penmanship, machines, leather goods, and in the guage of benevolence. Art elevated or made the "soul Ladies Department, quilts, clothing, mats, needle- grow big," and "friends of educational reform and work, shell and hair ornaments, and waxwork.46 progress in Ohio demand Normal Schools, and such a These organizations aimed for inclusiveness. one is the Cosmopolitan Art Association, which The Mechanics Institute Fairs, held annually from through its annual distribution offers a silent but 1838 to i860, generally avoided creating formal hier- impressive lecture that enters the domestic sanctuary archies or distinctions between types of goods and 2 to bring a genial influence brighter than jewels. "4 A expected them all to reveal the same characteristic of newspaper review of the Society for the Promotion of skilled labor and finish, whether useful or ornamen- Useful Knowledge's 1841 exhibition of 238 works of tal. An 1854 list of booths and spaces suggests that art praised the exhibition as a mark of the city's organizers grouped objects in each division together, degree of civilization, comparable to other examples with ornamental signs, sculpture, daguerreotypes, of the public will to spend on public works: "The architectural drawings, prints, fancy pictures, frames canals and railroads, which radiate in all directions and oils in proximity, but a visitor to an earlier fair from this point—our elegant residences, and towering described seeing painters "Beard, Cranch, Groenland, stores—our business-thronged streets, and scores of and Mrs. Spencer exhibit to admiring beholders, amid churches, manufactories, and steamboats are not music and flowers, and saddles, and mammoth 3 more to our credit. "4 The existence of public insti- bones," which confirms that at least in some viewers' tutions that exhibited art itself declared that art was eyes, the Fair did not observe strict separation of cat- an important source of civic culture, to be covered by egories.47 the press, and to be open to the public in ways that In contrast, the shorter-lived Western Art Union differed from the private and exclusive spaces of col- (1847-1852) was both more exclusive and more lectors' homes. focused on consumption. Unlike Cincinnati's art However, boosters interested in creating a civic academies, the Western Art Union instructed only by culture that connected art with progress, industry and criticizing, exhibiting and distributing art. It acted as artisans approached the task differently depending on a non-profit dealer, purchasing and then allotting art- whether they emphasized production or consump- works to subscribers through engravings and a lottery. tion. For educational organizations like the Society Rather than training would-be artists, the Art Union for the Promotion of Useful Knowledge and the Ohio consolidated and shaped a market for luxury goods. Mechanics Institute, the fine arts were part of an Original artworks, not priorities for most people's dis- incredibly broad range of offerings. The Society had posable income in comparison to other furnishings fourteen divisions, from the professions (law, medi- such as carpets and mirrors, were made accessible by cine) to the sciences (exact, political and natural) and the $5 subscription fee. The expressed goal of the the liberal and practical arts (literature, philosophy, Western Art Union, as for fellow unions in other history, language, commerce, agriculture, statistics). cities, was to produce a taste or market for art that In addition to art exhibitions, the Society opened its would eventually replace the Art Union's function.48 "moral, intellectual and social resources" to mem- The Western Art Union also separated the fine

Fall 2001 Creating a Western Heart 11 arts from the useful and ornamental, attaching the Frankenstein criticized the Art Union's Directors for rhetoric of the civilizing and improving influence of a form of nepotism, not without justification. commerce in consumer goods more specifically to President Charles Stetson owned the Spencer paint- that single category. The Directors exerted more con- ing that supplied the 1849 engraving, and so apart trol over what was exhibited in the Art Union gal- from fame, its publication did not enrich her at all, leries, since they selected which artists to purchase despite the fact that support of artists was one of the from, rather than relying on submissions. The Art Union's purposes. The relatively obscure Mechanics Institute's newspaper advertisements in Benjamin McConkey sold twenty-nine landscapes to contrast encouraged any "public-spirited [American] the Union, more than any other single artist; the bet- mechanic" (though preferably western ones) to sub- ter-known Worthington Whittredge, only nineteen.52 mit work, and appealed especially to the ladies for Vice-President William Adams sold three of his own contributions.49 The Art Union also eliminated the paintings to the Union,- William Steele, Secretary and spirit of competition invoked by the planners of the board member, sold fourteen of his paintings to the Mechanics Institute Fairs. Where Fair judges gave Art Union as well. Infighting among the board, espe- prizes (diplomas or certificates) to the most skillfully cially accusations among Hall, Stetson, and Steele of made or useful object, the purchaser of an Art Union mismanaging funds, finally doomed it. In these cir- subscription might win a copy of an Old Master, an cumstances, insistence on elevated conduct seems original sculpture, or a landscape,- the annual lottery not to have been particularly effective, though per- allotted them all equal weight. haps it becomes more clear why organizations who Of course, some overlap occurred. The Ohio counted the elite among their membership needed to Mechanics Institute and the Western Art Union emphasize it. shared a mission to "foster Western talent and enter- In choosing art for its members (who were most- prise" as well as the "enlightenment and refinement ly concentrated in Cincinnati), the Western Art of the mass of the people." When the Institute con- Union resembled its peers in other cities in over- structed its own building downtown, not far from the whelmingly preferring landscapes, mostly with Art Union galleries, the inauguration ceremony American settings, with genre running a distant sec- included inserting a copy of the Transactions of the ond and still-life, portraiture, and history paintings in Western Art Union in the cornerstone. Miles a small minority.53 The Union Transactions for 1847 Greenwood, a manufacturer and founder of the Ohio urged artists to give especial attention to "local and Mechanics Institute, was an early board member of national subjects as may enlist the pride of our coun- the Western Art Union, though he and fellow factory try in the support of good taste," while the 1849 owner Luman Watson left after the first year.5° Other annual report requested the Union become "pictorial members of the Art Union board also had a history of illustrator of American History." This seemed to involvement in the city's art and educational institu- translate into choosing genre subjects for the Western tions, including James Hall, Timothy Walker, John P. Art Union's engravings, as in William Ranney's Foote, Joseph Longworth (son of Nicholas), James H. "Trapper's Last Shot" (1850), Lilly Martin Spencer's Perkins, and . As its name suggests too, "Life's Happy Hour" (1849), and James Beard's "The the Western Art Union's goal of disseminating a Poor Relations" (1848). The Art Union gave local broader taste for the arts—attracting support for west- artists some preference, but purchased national ern art—matched the city's other vehicles of regional names that drew memberships too. In general, rather self-promotion, from magazines like Genius of the than fostering any one particular subject, local or oth- West to the Western Museum.5l erwise, the Western Art Union selected art that The Art Union, however, eventually collapsed appeared designed to exercise a genial and civilizing because it was not able to sustain the contradiction influence. embedded in its program of refinement. It tried to In New York, Spencer sold paintings to that establish art as a sphere that transcended personal city's American Art-Union, but her genre scenes drew and economic interest, but critics perceived board what was "American" about class and character from members as defining the public interest to their own the conflicts that emerged in regional commercial profit. Artists Thomas W. Whitley and John and industrial hubs like Cincinnati. "Young

i 2 Ohio Valley History lican, including the practice of professional men in Cincinnati performing the grocery shopping. In "Returning from Market," Trollope's illustrator and companion Auguste Hervieu depicts a gentleman in top hat and coat with a bulging basket. The incon- gruity of turnips and raw meat with morning clothes was enough to establish the humor of American soci- ety in comparison with European standards, where association with domestic labor and commerce demeaned a gentleman. 54 Although Trollope did not emphasize it, the custom also set middle-class men and their free mornings apart from mechanics. Spencer adds details that better establish the urban setting, plus the rain and the spilled basket. As Hervieu does not, she suggests that the man is not yet adept or accustomed to the task, indeed that he is awkward in performing it. His slightly contorted pose suggests he is an object of ridicule in the same way that a Cincinnati etiquette book promised that everyone could be a gentleman and a lady, yet sup- plied amusing instructional illustrations contrasting "grace and elegance with awkwardness and deformi- ty."55 One could not exist without the other, but such illustrations of "before" and "after" created a narrative promising viewers transformation by their emulation of examples of what to do and what to avoid. A male passer-by in the painting laughs at the man's predicament, while a woman across the street watches him too, with her skirts indecorously hitched up to avoid the wet. A second man, dressed in workman's clothes and holding an empty basket, Returning from Market Auguste Hervieu also turns his head while the viewer is positioned on From Christopher Mulvey's Transatlantic Manners: Social the pavement approaching all three. Patterns in Nineteenth-century Anglo-American Travel Together these elements create a painting about Literature, 1990 the normative effect of public opinion being felt by one self-conscious individual. Antebellum travel lit- Husband" (1854) is not her most typical work, which erature by English and American authors equated the tended to feature women and children, but it was pop- monotony they found in Ohio Valley landscapes with ular. She painted at least three versions, including the sameness of its people and their manners, a social one owned by her usual middleman, the dealer homogeneity they saw produced by uniform exposure William Schaus, which was made into a print by to commercial culture and public opinion, the latter Goupil. In it, some of the common strategies at work exerted through associations, hotels, parlors, newspa- in art and urban associations become visible. She bor- pers and public spaces.56 The standardization of rowed the subject from English author Frances these venues and the common expectations they Trollope's 1832 Domestic Manners of the Americans, enforced pressed individuals to outwardly conform which itself was based in part on Trollope's endeavors and correspondingly produced worry over being sin- to make politeness pay by opening a luxury goods gled out as eccentric. Genre painting, in its depiction store in Cincinnati. Trollope wittily condemned any of norms and their violations, performed a similar number of American habits as uncivilized and repub- function, singling out peculiarly American types or

Fall 2001 Creating a Western Heart below."59 The viewer's problem in "Young Husband" derives not only from any embarrassment from iden- tification with the awkward husband, but also from the troubling positioning of the viewer with those who exert pressure through ridicule, rather than being asked to extend his or her sympathy in a way modeled by the painting. The Crayon's review of Spencer's work in the New York National Academy of Design exhibition of 1856 touched on the viewer's problem. In keeping with the New York art journal's general disparage- ment of artists who pursued forms of art associated with popular tastes, the review exhibits a general antipathy to artists attempting "low" comedy. This applied especially to women, who should be above such humor.60 Spencer's style, which was "without any trace of frivolity or affectation," was appropriate for society, but not in combination with her subjects, or as the Crayon said, "A labored jest is as bad in painting as at the dinner table." The danger of her violation of decorum is that the critic began to iden- tify with the subjects: "the feeling we have is not one The Young Husband: First Marketing, ca. 1854 of merriment at the incident, but of painful sympathy Lilly Martin Spencer with the poor people whose faces have been, by some Hunter Museum of American Art, Chattanooga, magic, fixed in the midst of a grin."61 The person Tennessee, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Scott L. Probasco, Jr. grinning is not the young husband, but the viewer. Spencer's more commonly praised and litho- actions and reforming them by holding them up for graphed paintings offered a different position and the viewer's amusement. Spencer's painting depicts example for the viewer, one that confirmed his or her that pressure of public opinion emanating from sever- possession of the social and self-restraints associated al classes, especially surveillance by the public of any with refinement, including feeling for others. For activity deemed odd. example, in "Domestic Happiness" (1849), which As Trollope's satire was greeted with hostility in sold in turn to the Philadelphia Art Union and the Cincinnati, so the critical dislike of "Young Western Art Union, presumably because of its ability Husband" seemed to derive from the choice of a mid- to attract subscribers, Spencer shows children who dle-class man as the target of its humor. 5 7 Yet this are unformed, soft and wrapped in loose dress that alone doesn't emphasize enough the difficulty of the itself suggests their unconstrained nature and a future viewer's position, which is equated with those in the of naturally internalized rather than externally street who mock the man's behavior and misfortunes. imposed control. They are contrasted with the par- When McGuffey's Reader illustrated a young woman ents, particularly the mother, who reminds her hus- falling and spilling milk in "The Thoughtless Boys," band of the need to be quiet—for the sake of the chil- the reaction he expected of his readers was split dren. The viewer, who joins them around the bed, between a good boy and a bad one, the good saying "I might feel nostalgia for childhood as a period of should not like to be served so myself," the bad escape from adult self-control and self-consciousness. thinking it "very good sport."58 Similarly, Frances But the same viewer would have simultaneously con- Gage's "Thoughts on the West" in the Western firmed, through that very sentiment, that he or she Literary Magazine criticized those who "look from a possessed just that awareness of adult obligations. pinnacle of independence, smile complacently and "Domestic Happiness," completed just after Spencer even laugh at the awkward motions of those left Cincinnati, represents a seemingly universal sub-

Ohio Valley History ject, while the later "Young Husband" was based on that "refined and exact taste," which required the more specifically regional customs. Yet the latter engagement of moral sympathies, found beauty in a painting took art out of the mode established for it in hammer as much as Greek sculpture. Journals for the region of reforming the viewer. more radical "associations" like the Fourierist Associations promoting art in Cincinnati con- Phalanx, to which Spencer's parents contributed, said structed viewership as part of the refining process, in in an 1844 exhibition review that art should "exer- which one "exercised the heart" with sympathy. cise a good influence on our manners and customs" Associations and groups proselytizing for an art that by "the most literal imitations of commonplace would civilize—and popularize—manners and morals nature" which are "the highest works of art." Such in general did not share the Crayon's dislike for com- an attitude appeared in etiquette books for women bining a painstakingly serious style with less weighty too, instructing readers that nature unfolds beauty in subjects. Thus an American Art-Union Bulletin arti- objects "disregarded as worthless by casual cle addressed "to the uninitiated" reminded readers observers" and thus renders "the most minute and common vegetables, sources of pleasurable study," further allowing women to "discover it [knowledge] OF THE ECLECTIC SERIES. 43 at home, to discover it where others have overlooked it."62 Art associations too saw their mission in terms of polishing the public and they admired highly fin- ished art that promised to do just that. As E. L. Magoon, a popular minister, art collector and mem- ber of the Western Art Union, said at the laying of the cornerstone of the Ohio Mechanics Institute's new building in 1848, the Institute recognized that "the best minds are [like jewels] in rough coatings and obscure caverns" and "need polish for use."63 Magoon's observation paralleled the strictures of refinement: rub with good company long enough and it will polish the individual into a finished and bril- liant form, removing all peculiarities. 3. But Edward said, " Let us tie the grass. It will be very good sport to tie the long grass over the path, The polished style had commercial connota- and to see people tumble upon their noses as they tions because it shared the values of exchange inher- run along, and do not suspect any thing of the mat- ter." ent in the ideal of polite company, but also because 4. So they tied it in several places, and then hid its promoters sought a larger clientele. A magazine themselves to see who would pass. And presently a published by the Cosmopolitan Art Association farmer's boy came running along, and down he tum- bled, and lay sprawling on the ground; however, he (based in Ohio and New York) echoed educational had nothing to do but to get up again; so there was institutions' expansive definitions of art and refine- not much harm done this time. ment, arguing that "pictures are like other embodi- 5. Then there came Susan the milk-maid tripping ments of the beautiful and the true, a lovely cottage along with her milk upon her head, and singing like a tark. When her foot struck against the place where with its tastefully arranged parts, an elegant sofa, a the grass was tied, down she came with her pail rat- handsome traveling carriage, a mirror, a lamp, a tling about her shoulders, and her milk was all spilt shawl, a walking stick or any other of the 10,000 upon the ground. 6 6. Then Edward said, " Poor Susan! I think I forms in which art exhibits itself." 4 Not should not like to be served so myself; let us untie surprisingly, the Cosmopolitan Art Association the grass."—" No, no," said William, " if the mitt is regularly purchased Spencer's domestic genre scenes,- spilt, there are some pigs that will lick it up; let us its founders, Henry and Chauncey Derby, also pub- lished etiquette books. Critics like the Crayon in turn attacked art unions, describing them as "cor- Newly Revised Second Reader, p. 43, 1844 William McGuffey rupted by commerce," with "commonplace" prizes 6 Winthrop B. Smith & Co., Cincinnati or "art trash" that was "false" and "made to sell." 5

Fall 2001 Creating a Western Heart Rather than encouraging subjective and intimate con- ciations and cities to attract and sustain broad sup- noisseurship, sociability and its less than independ- port for public—and individual—improvements, the ent values tainted the finished style. Instead of a cir- drive to attach a moral rather than class meaning to cle of wealthy patrons, both New York's American refinement had a certain urgency. Rather than mere- Art-Union and Cincinnati's Western Art Union ly drawing boundaries around an established elite, for depended for success on acquiring a large member- civic boosters and reformers in Cincinnati, art and ship to whom they promised that any subscriber refinement held the promise of creating a new and could own any artwork. All paid the same price for more harmonious common culture in the West. the opportunity. Supported by local patrons and institutions, artists In Cincinnati, art and educational associations like Duncanson and Spencer, did not produce a and patrons aimed to create a common culture and unique western vernacular, but then that was not the therefore supported art that helped shape shared goal of a regionalism that sought to represent the behaviors, attitudes, and responses among viewers. nation by adjusting its class boundaries. Cincinnati's The magazines, museums, fairs, and lectures through artists helped fulfill the promise of one of which they spread their ideas brought individuals Cincinnati's earliest (1828) Academies of Fine Arts to together at least partly outside of the relations of kin- redefine the middle class: "the possession of it [a ship, economic interest, or position in the social hier- taste for the Fine Arts] must always improve those archy. They also offered their members and audi- mechanics who possess it ... if they be of that class ences increased power over the social and aesthetic who call in the aid of reflection and judgment to their 6 standards of the local community. Even so loose and labours." ? Viewing the artworks of Spencer and her informal an "association" as a Cincinnati business peers offered both a point of entry and of resistance directory tried to create a community and market into an identity based on such ideals as self-control based on shared values: its introduction stressed suc- and sympathy for others. Reconnecting art to the dis- cess in business came through "polite, agreeable, affa- course of taste and morals employed by boosters and ble, obliging, gentlemanly" behavior. Frances reformers not only begins to explain why they Trollope pointed to the shifting ideological basis for encouraged an African American and a woman to class formations in Cincinnati when she translated become professional artists in antebellum Cincinnati, the moralized meanings for aesthetic terms current but also points to how the meanings and uses given to there: lovely meant good, fine meant useful, hand- art by local audiences produced the national tenden- some described the comfortable, and ugly implied cy to see class as character rather than economics. unamiable.66 Lilly Martin Spencer's labor-intensive style helped include a broader segment of the city in this Wendy Katz is Assistant Professor of Art History at regional redefinition of who would or should qualify the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. Her book, as social equals even as it assisted in refining or Regionalism and Reform: Art and Class in Antebellum Cincinnati, will be published by the Ohio State University reshaping would-be entrants to the company of the Press in 2002. respectable. The popular appeal of her play with the theme of humorous resistance to incorporation itself was necessary to both the reforming and regionalist 1. Studies of Cincinnati include Robert Vitz, The Queen and aims of urban boosters. In New York, Spencer the Arts: Cultural Life in Nineteenth-Century Cincinnati encountered an apparently similar structure of elites (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1989); Denny Carter, "Cincinnati as an Art Center, 1830-1865," in The Golden Age: who possessed diverging interests, yet coalesced Cincinnati Painters of the Nineteenth Century Represented in around art and associations as a route to cultural the Cincinnati Art Museum (Cincinnati Art Museum, 1979), influence. But the effort there to sacralize art, though 13-21; Kenneth Trapp, "The Growth of Fine Arts Institutions in Cincinnati: 1838-1854," unpublished paper delivered at the it continued to appropriate a moralizing language, Ohio-Indiana American Studies Association Spring Meeting, more clearly clashed with Spencer's role as populariz- Hueston Woods Lodge, April 21, 1978, Cincinnati Historical er of art—the very role for which the Art Unions Society Library. David Lubin has most recently positioned praised her. Spencer in relation to attitudes toward gender, Picturing a Nation: Art and Social Change in Nineteenth-Century Given the struggle of so many antebellum asso- America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 159-203.

16 Ohio Valley History Cincinnati—one born in the first two decades of the century, which included a number of well-regard- ed sculptors such as Hiram Powers, John King, Thomas Jones, Shobal Clevenger and Edward Brackett, as well as portrait and genre painters, notably James Beard and Miner Kellogg. A sec- ond generation was born closer to the 1820s and was more active in the 1840s, producing a group of somewhat better known painters. While not a complete list, this cohort included the landscape painters John and Godfrey Frankenstein, Worthington Whittredge, Robert Duncanson, Benjamin McConkey, William Sonntag, genre, figure, portrait and history painters William H. Powell, Thomas B. Read, Lilly Martin Spencer, Charles Webber, and Joseph O. Eaton. The list's length is less surprising than its diversity, as counted among the city's more successful artists were the African American landscapist Duncanson and the female genre painter Spencer. 4. For a recent example, Edward Tatsuya Hashima, "To Win A Glorious National Inheritance': Local History, Nationalism, and the Formation of Identity in New York State, 1820-1860," (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1997). 5. Dr. Daniel Drake, "Natural Ties among the Western States," in William McGuffey, Eclectic Fourth Reader (Cincinnati, Truman and Smith, 1838), 274. Domestic Happiness, 1849 On the diffusion of the textbook, Lilly Martin Spencer see Harvey Minnich, William H. Detroit Institute of Arts, Bequest of Dr. and Mrs. James Cleland, Jr. McGuffey and His Readers (New York: American Book Co., 1936). 6. The middle class is generally 2. Elizabeth Johns discusses regional stereotypes in American defined occupationally, either negatively as non-manual labor- Genre Painting (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990) and ers or positively as professional or managerial. The elite then Angela Miller's study of George Bingham, "The Mechanisms of occupy the position of capitalists, owners of large manufactur- the Market and the Invention of Western Regionalism," in ing or other businesses, and the working class encompasses David Miller, ed., American Iconology (New Haven: Yale manual laborers, including artisans or mechanics. For class University Press, 1993), 112-34, examines western regional definitions in this period, including ones that stress moral types as a prelude to their integration into the national econo- components, see Stuart Blumin, Emergence of the Middle my and culture. Other formulations of regionalism in relation Class (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990) and to dependence on a standard or norm include Henry Shapiro, Bertram Wyatt-Brown, "Proslavery and Antislavery "The Place of Culture and the Problem of Identity," in Allen Intellectuals: Class Concepts and Polemical Struggle," in Batteau, ed., Appalachia and America: Autonomy and Lewis Perry and Michael Fellman, eds., AntiSlavery Regional Dependence (Lexington: University Press of Reconsidered: New Perspectives on the Abolitionists (Baton Kentucky, 1983), 111-41. Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1979), 308-336. 3. There were two generations of antebellum artists in 7. A recent account of the conflict between artists' reforming

Fall 2001 Creating a Western Heart aims, the Cincinnati Academy of Fine Arts, and patronage in Worth, Texas: Amon Carter Museum, 1976). Cincinnati is Elisabeth Roark, "John Frankenstein's 'Portrait of 16. Anthony Janson, Worthington Whittredge (Cambridge: Godfrey Frankenstein' and the Aesthetics of Friedrich Cambridge University Press 1989), 27. Other city leaders sup- Schiller," American Art 15 (Spring 2001), 74-83. ported city views. "Cincinnati Ohio," drawn by Samuel M. 8. Joe William Trotter, River Jordan: African American Urban Lee and engraved by J. Cone, was published by N. & G. Life in the Ohio River Valley (Lexington, Kentucky, 1998), 13- Guilford as an engraving (Cincinnati Public Library). Nathan 22; see also Steven Ross, Workers on the Edge: Work, Leisure Guilford published other local works, like James Hall's and Politics in Industrializing Cincinnati, 1788-1890 (New Western Souvenir, a Christmas and New Year's Gift for 1829. York: Columbia University Press, 1985). In 1835, Longworth encouraged John Casper Wild, a French 9. Quoted in Robert Habich, Transcendentalism and the watercolorist who resided in Cincinnati, to publish a series of Western Messenger (Toronto: Associated University Presses, lithographic views of the city, John McDermott, "J. C. Wild, 1985), 51. Editors included the Reverend Ephraim Peabody, Western Painter and Lithographer," Ohio State Archaeological (1835), James Freeman Clarke (1836) and William H. Channing and Historical Quarterly 60 (April 1951), 111-25. (1839-41). Contributors included James H. Perkins, who lived 17. The Sketch Club Scrapbook (Cincinnati Public Library) with Timothy Walker while studying law, Nathan Guilford, opens with "A Sketch Club Excursion," n.d., collaborative lith- local publisher J.A. James, as well as eastern writers like ograph. Margaret Fuller and Ralph W. Emerson and British poets such 18. "The Sketch Club," The Sketch Club 1 (March 31, i860), i; as Tennyson, Wordsworth and Keats. Its subscribers resided "National Art," 4. Scrapbook, Cincinnati Public Library. primarily in Cincinnati and west of the Alleghenies. 19. Rose of the Valley: Flower of the West 1 (January 1839), 10. Daniel Aaron, Cincinnati: Queen City of the West Frontispiece, n.p. (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1992); Walter Sutton, 20. J. Hamilton Moore, The Young Gentlemen and Lady's The Western Book Trade: Cincinnati as a Nineteenth-Century Monitor (New York: Daniel D. Smith, 1824), 62-63. On the role Publishing and Book-Trade Center (Columbus: Ohio State of nature framing cities, see James Machor, Pastoral Cities: University Press for the Ohio Historical Society, 1961). Urban Ideals and the Symbolic Landscape of America 11. Cincinnati institutions that exhibited art included the (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987); on cities' rela- Cincinnati Academy of Fine Arts, the Western Museum, the tionship to workers and capital, see Caroline Arscott and Ohio Mechanics Institute, the Young Men's Mercantile Library Griselda Pollock with Janet Wolff, "The Partial View: The Association, the Firemen's Fund, the Society for the Promotion Visual Representation of the Early Nineteenth-Century City," of Useful Knowledge, Ball's Daguerrian Gallery, Faris' in Janet Wolff and John Seed, eds., The Culture of Capital (New Daguerrean Gallery, the Western Art Union, Western York: Manchester University Press, 1988), 191-221. Association for the Encouragement of Manufacture and the 21. Michel Chevalier, Society, Manners and Politics in the Arts, the Shakespeare Gallery, Wiswell's Gallery, Cincinnati (Boston: Weeks, Jordan & Co., 1839), 207. Gallery of Fine Arts, Cincinnati Athenaeum and Society of 22. Thomas Haskell, "Capitalism and the Origins of the Literary and Educational Discussion, the Cincinnati Sketch Humanitarian Sensibility," Parts I and II, American Historical Club, and the Cincinnati Drawing and Painting Academy. Review 90 (April 1985), 339-61, and (June 1985), 547-66; Private patrons like Longworth, George Schoenberger, and Norbert Elias, Civilizing Process (New York: Pantheon Books, Judge Jacob Burnet also occasionally opened their homes to vis- 1978) and The Court Society (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983) explic- itors; Longworth provided some degree or offer of support to itly connects a centralizing, increasingly interdependent socie- Powers, James Beard, Thomas B. Read, Spencer, William H. ty to the increased demand for "politeness" or self-restraint Powell and Duncanson. All of the above institutions received and surveillance. innumerable newspaper notices, as did individual artists. 23. Timothy Walker, Lecture before the Cincinnati Lyceum, Duncanson, for example, from 1843 to 1872 received at least March 20, 1832 (Cincinnati: Historical and Philosophical 112 mentions in the leading Cincinnati newspapers. Society of Ohio, 1832), 59-64, in Walker Papers, Book 1, 12. See Carter, "Cincinnati as an Art Center," 13-21, and also Cincinnati Historical Society Library. Donald Scott describes Barbara Groseclose, "Itinerant Painting in Ohio: Origins and the typical lyceum audience as "aspiring" men and women, Implications," Ohio History 90 (Spring 1981), 129-40; Rhea mostly native-born, urban residents aged twenty to forty, rep- Mansfield Knittle, Early Ohio Taverns; Tavern-sign, Barge, resenting a wide range of trades and professions. Scott, Banner, Chair and Settee Painters (Ashland, Ohio: private "Popular Lecture and the Creation of a Public in Mid- printing, 1937). Nineteenth-Century America," Journal of American History 13. As well as city directory occupational headings, artists' let- 66 (March 1990), 801. ters or biographies mention their occasional employment in 24. Ross, Workers on the Edge, 164. these trades, including landscape painters John and Godfrey 25. Edward Mansfield quoted in Carl Abbott, Boosters and Frankenstein, sculptors Shobal Clevenger and Powers, minia- Businessmen: Popular Economic Thought and Urban Growth ture painter William Miller, and landscapists Duncanson and in the Ante-bellum Midwest (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood William Sonntag. Press, 1981), 150-51. The Miami Canal, completed in 1831, 14. Charles Cist, Sketches and Statistics of Cincinnati in 1851 connected the city with the Great Lakes and gave the city its (Cincinnati: Wm. H. Moore & Co., 1851), 120, 130; and Cist, position at the center of the East-West trade as well as North- Sketches and Statistics of Cincinnati in 1859 (Cincinnati: W. South. For a recent survey of the literature on boosters, John H. Moore, 1859), 201. D. Fairfield's "Democracy in Cincinnati: Civic Virtue and 15. The guide to interpreting city views is John Reps, Views Three Generations of Urban Historians," Urban History 24 and Viewmakers of Urban America, 1825-1925 (Columbia: (November 1997), 200-220. On financial panics and Ohio poli- University of Missouri Press, 1984) and Cities on Stone (Fort tics, see Andrew Cayton, The Frontier Republic: Ideology and

18 Ohio Valley History Politics in the Ohio Country, 1780-1825 (Kent State University University of Alabama Press, 1996), 24-36. See also Dana Press, 1986); Stephen Maizlish, Triumph of Sectionalism: The Hamel, "A History of the Ohio Mechanics Institute" (Ph.D. Transformation of Ohio Politics, 1844-1856, (Kent State diss., University of Cincinnati, 1962). The Ohio Mechanics University Press, 1983). Institute in 1839 bought Frances Trollope's unsuccessful 26. John P. Foote presents to the Directors 3 stock certificates Bazaar, which she had intended as an architectural landmark, in the Cincinnati Astronomical Society, May 1, 1845, Ohio spending considerable money on trim and ornament. The Mechanics Institute Papers, Box 4, University of Cincinnati Institute obliterated A. Hervieu's interior murals as out of (hereinafter cited as OMI). This process is outlined in Ross, keeping with its spirit and character. See George Kendall's Workers on the Edge, 163-92. Sketch of the History of the Ohio Mechanics Institute 27. "Mutual Dependence," Youth's Friend (March 1847), 201- (Cincinnati: Achilles Pugh, 1835), Box 72, OMI. When the 202. Timothy Mahoney's Provincial Lives: Middle-Class Institute later raised funds to build a new home, in the fash- Experience in the Antebellum Middle West (Cambridge, Eng.: ionable downtown, the Board also chose a less eclectic style. Cambridge University Press, 1998) emphasizes gentility's 34. "Barbarism and Civilization," Western Literary Magazine 1 regional basis and stabilizing purposes. (1854), 161-63. The "truth" inculcated in these particular 28. A Manual of Politeness, Comprising the Principles of images was the superiority of European over Native American Etiquette, and Rules of Behavior in Genteel Society, for civilizations. Persons of Both Sexes, (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott &. Co., 35. "Why aren't farming and farmhouses more attractive?" 1842), 15, 40-43. Cincinnatus: Devoted to Science, Agriculture, Horticulture, 29. See Rita Niblack, "Nicholas Longworth, Art Patron of Education and Improving Rural Taste 2 (August 1857), 344-45; Cincinnati," (M.A. thesis, University of Cincinnati, 1985), and "Cincinnati in 1858" Frontispiece, Cincinnatus 3 (January Nicholas Longworth: Art Patron of Cincinnati (Cincinnati: 1858). Duncanson did portraits of both Freeman Cary and his Taft Museum, 1988); Denny Carter Young, "The Longworths: father William. College Hill, the location of Farmers College, Three Generations of Art Patronage in Cincinnati," in Kenneth also housed a Female College and its magazine The Dewdrop. Trapp, ed., Celebrate Cincinnati Art (Cincinnati: The Cary's poems appeared in McGuffey's Reader as well as the Museum, 1982), 29-47. other family organs. 30. On the role of elites, see Walter Glazer, "Participation and 36. The accompanying text emphasizes the fertility of the Power: Voluntary Associations and the Functional Miami Valley and the stream's rich Indian history. William Organization of Cincinnati in 1840," Historical Methods Wells, Western Scenery (Cincinnati: Otto Onken, 1851), 35. Newsletter 5 (September 1972), 151-68; Cole Dawson, Frankenstein also did "Blue Licks on the Licking River" (ca. "Yankees in the Queen City," (Ph.D. diss., Miami University, 1840), another healthy resort, beauty spot and site of geological 1977); Kenneth Winkle, Politics of Community: Migration interest, Benjamin Drake, Tales and Sketches of the Queen and Politics in Antebellum Ohio (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge City (Cincinnati: E. Morgan and Co., 1838), 98. Frankenstein's University Press, 1988), 170, and Nancy Rosenbloom, "Bank Licks, Kentucky," a scene of two coat-and-hatted fisher- "Cincinnati's Common Schools: The Politics of Reform 1829- men by a placid pond, was reproduced in Cincinnati's Sunday 1853" (Ph.D. diss., University of Rochester, 1982). Dianne School publication Youth's Friend (February 1848), 188-89. Macleod's Art and the Victorian Middle Class: Money and the 37. Joseph Ketner, The Emergence of the African-American Making of Cultural Identity (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge Artist: Robert S. Duncanson, 1821-1872, (Columbia: University Press, 1996), 65-66, similarly argues that a middle- University of Missouri Press, 1993), 39, notes the subject of class identity emerged in towns like Manchester and Leeds Blue Hole appears in the Cincinnati repertoire in 1833, and through new modes of art cultural patronage, especially ones adds Miner Kellogg to the list of artists who painted it, as well that emphasized the "socially ameliorating potential" of art. as Frankenstein and Sonntag. 31. Dr. Thomas Nichols, Forty Years of American Life (London: 38. "Summer Recreation," Cincinnatus 3 (July 1858), inside John Maxwell and Co., 1864), 150. On 19th-century refine- back cover. The Cincinnati Angling Club left a Scrapbook ment, see C. Dallett Hemphill, Bowing to Necessities: A (1830), Ohio Historical and Philosophical Society Library, and History of Manners in America, 1620-1860 (New York: Oxford Proceedings (1831). A Cincinnati Shooting Club also left University Press, 1999); Richard Bushman, Refinement of Records from 1831-1838, located at the Ohio Historical and America (New York: Knopf, 1992); John Kasson, Rudeness Philosophical Society Library. and Civility (New York: Hill and Wang, 1990); and Karen 39. Semi-Colon Club Papers, Cincinnati Historical Society Halttunen, Confidence Men and Painted Women (New Haven: Library. The Semi-Colon Club's fortnightly meetings rotated Yale University Press, 1982). between the houses of John P. Foote, Charles Stetson, and 32. Germans patronized "Longworth's Wine Garden," and William Greene. Other members included Benjamin Drake, many German Protestants abandoned the Democratic party in the son of Daniel Drake, editor Edward Mansfield, First favor of the new Republican party over slavery. See Ross, Congregational minister Ephraim Peabody, editor James Workers on the Edge, 174, 188; Jed Dannenbaum, Drink and Freeman Clarke, William H. Channing, James H. Perkins, Disorder: Temperance Reform in Cincinnati from the Caroline Hentz, and Isaac A. Jewett. The papers that survive Washingtonian Revival to the WCTU (Urbana: University of are mostly anonymous except for ones later published else- Illinois Press, 1984), 148. where. 33. Judith Spraul-Schmidt, "The Ohio Mechanic's Institute: 40. Moore's Western Lady's Book 13 (March 1856), inside back The Challenge of Incivility in the Democratic Republic," in cover. Hamilton Cravens, Alan Marcus, and David Katzman, eds., 41. "Mission of Beauty," Genius of the West 4 (March 1855), Technical Knowledge in American Culture: Science, 96. Editor William Coggeshall also published anthologies of Technology, and Medicine Since the Early 1800s (Tuscaloosa: poetry that included works by fellow western writers. See also

Fall 2001 Creating a Western Heart 19 "Old Homestead," Moore's Western Lady's Book 13 (February list of paintings, 1847, 1849, 1850. See also Carol Troyen, 1856), 55-56; "Beautify Your Home/' Moore's Western Lady's "Retreat to Arcadia: American Landscape and the American Book 13 (June 1856), 194. Art-Union," American Art Journal 23 (1991), 21-37. 42. Cosmopolitan Art Association, Cosmopolitan Art 54. Christopher Mulvey, Transatlantic Manners: Social Association Transactions and Annual Report for 1854-55 Patterns in nineteenth-century Anglo-American travel litera- (Sandusky, Ohio, 1855), 5-6. ture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 21-22. 43. Daily Gazette, April 24, 1841, quoted in Trapp, "Growth of 55. Illustrated Manners Book: A Manual of Good Behavior Fine Arts Institutions in Cincinnati: 1838-1854," 8. and Polite Accomplishment (Cincinnati: V. Nicholson & Co., 44. Charles Cist, Cincinnati in 1841 (Cincinnati, 1841), 134-35. 1855), iv. 45. See Anne Van Camp, "The Ohio Mechanics Institute" 56. Mulvey, Transatlantic Manners, 114. (M.A. thesis, University of Cincinnati, 1977). 57. Lubin, Picturing a Nation, 189f, argues this attack on the 46. "Notice of the 4th Annual Ohio Mechanics Fair," bumbling male is typical of Spencer. Cincinnati Enquirer April 10, 1841, Box 77, OMI. The Ladies 58. William McGuffey, Newly Revised Second Reader Department described in the Report of the Committee on the (Cincinnati: Winthrop B. Smith & Co., 1844), 43. 10th Annual Exhibition of the Ohio Mechanics Institute 59. Mrs. Frances Gage, "Thoughts of the West," Western (Cincinnati, 1850), Box 82, OMI. Literary Magazine 1 (1854), 175. Gage, a woman's rights, tem- 47. List of Booths and Spaces for the 13th Annual Exhibition perance and anti-slavery activist, also wrote an article, "Mrs. L. (1854), Box 82, OMI. "Mr. Soule, the Artist," Artist and M. Spencer, the Artist," for an unidentified St. Louis newspa- Artizan I (October 10, 1845), 14. per (1854-1857). Spencer Papers, microfilm reel 132, 48. The American Art Union in New York has received the Smithsonian Institution, Archives of American Art, most attention: Mary Cowdrey, The American Academy of Washington D.C. Fine Arts and the American Art Union, 1816-1852, vol. 1, 60. On the Crayon, see Wallach, "Long-Term Visions, Short- (New York: New York Historical Society, 1953); Maybelle term Failures," 306-308. Elizabeth Johns notes the Crayon's Mann, The American Art Union (New York: ALM Associates, gender bias. See Johns, American Genre Painting, 165. For a 1987); Mary Natale, "The American Art-Union, 1839-1851: A detailed analysis of humor and the Crayon, see Ketrina Poole, Reflection of National Identity" (M.A. thesis, Harvard "Satirical Humor and the American Domestic Scene: Lilly University, 1993); Rachel Klein, "Art and Authority in Martin Spencer (1822-1902) and 'Shake Hands?' (1854)," (M.A. Antebellum New York City: The Rise and Fall of the thesis, University of Oregon, 1992), 47-68. American Art-Union," Journal of American History 81 (March 61. "Exhibition of the National Academy," The Crayon, 3 (May 1995)/ 1534-61; Patricia Hills, "The American Art-Union as 1856), part 5, 146. Patron for Expansionist Ideology in the 1840s," in Andrew 62. Mrs. Jameson, "Some Thoughts on Art Addressed to the Hemingway and William Vaughan, eds., Art in Bourgeois Uninitiated," London Art Journal (April 1849), reprinted in the Society, 1790-1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Bulletin of the American Art Union (June 1849), 4-5; 1998), 314-39,- and Alan Wallach, "Long-term Visions, Short- "National Academy of Design," The Phalanx I (June 1844), term Failures: Art Institutions in the United States, 1800- 150-51. My Daughter's Manual or the Girl's Manual (New 1860," in Hemingway and Vaughan, eds., Art in Bourgeois York: D. Appleton & Co., 1839), 182, 196. Society, 297-313. 63. E. L. Magoon, Oration at the Laying of the Cornerstone of 49. "Notice of the 3rd Annual Ohio Mechanics Fair," the Ohio Mechanics Institute, Cincinnati (Cincinnati: Cincinnati Times Star, April 25, 1840, Box 77, OMI. Gazette Office, 1848), 17, Box 74. OMI. 50.Cincinnati Daily Times, April 20, 1847, Box 77, OMI. 64. Cosmopolitan Art Association, Cosmopolitan Art Duncanson, who exhibited in both the Mechanics Institute Association Transactions and Annual Report for 1854-55 Fairs and the Art Union, painted a portrait of Greenwood also (Sandusky, Ohio, 1855), 5-6. at one time in the collection of the Ohio Mechanics Institute, 65. "Cosmopolitan Art Association," The Crayon 4 (August according to Wendell Dabney, Cincinnati's Colored Citizens: 1857), part 8, 252-253. Historical, Sociological and Biographical (New York: Negro 66. W. Smead, "The Art of Money Making," in Cincinnati University Press, 1970; Cincinnati: Dabney, 1926), 93. Business Directory (Cincinnati: R. P. Brooks Publisher, 1844), 51. Transactions of the Western Art Union for 184J v. Frances Trollope, Domestic Manners of Americans (New (Cincinnati: B. Franklin, 1847), 6. John Seed describes a simi- York: Vintage Books, 1949), 427. lar process of elite involvement in class formation and creation 67. John P. Foote, The Act of Incorporation of the Cincinnati of a public for art in 19th-century industrial centers in Academy of Fine Arts, with an Address to the Members of the "'Commerce and the Liberal arts': The Political Economy of Institution (Cincinnati: G. T. Williamson, 1828), 7. Art in Manchester, 1775-1860," in Janet Wolff and John Seed, eds., Culture of Capital (Manchester, Eng.: Manchester University Press, 1988), 55, 66-71. 52. Roberta Dean, "The Western Art Union 1847-185 1," (M.A. thesis, George Washington University, 1978), Appendix G, 51- 58. 53. Transactions of the Western Art Union for 1847, 7; "Annual Report of the Western Art Union for 1849," in Transactions of the Western Art Union for 1849 (Cincinnati: B. Franklin printing house, 1849), 15. Numbers of paintings in each genre calculated from titles given in annual Transactions'

20 Ohio Valley History