Category Archives: History

June 18, 2013

Battlefield Bystanders

By daseger

With two big battle anniversaries converging–that of Bunker Hill on June 17, 1775 and Waterloo on June 18, 1815–I was looking at contemporary and commemorative images of both contests and noticed the preponderance of bystanders, observers, and public reaction perspectives. These two battles seem very public, but of course all battles are, and these two were particularly epic, marking the commencement of the American Revolution and the defeat, finally, of Napoleon.

View of the attack on Bunker’s Hill (really Breed’s Hill), with the Burning of Charles Town, June 17,1775, drawn by Mr. Millar, engraved by Lodge (1775), Library of Congress; Print of an anonymous etching of the Battle of Waterloo with the key officers (c. 1815), British Museum.

Both battles were followed pretty quickly by reports from “near observers” for audiences hungry for results, and details: the deaths of Major Pitcairn and Dr. Joseph Warren at Bunker Hill, dashing displays of bravery in both battles, the capture of Napoleon (finally) several weeks after Waterloo. With time, as both events become part of history and national memory, the people get more involved with the emphasis on observation and reception, which is particularly apparent in composed images of the battles. I particularly like the “watching from the rooftops” images of Bunker Hill, which began with Winslow Homer’s 1875 engraving for Harper’s, and continued through a series of popular postcards published by Raphael Tuck & Sons.

Winslow Homer, The Battle of Bunker Hill–Watching the Fight from Cobb’s Hill in Boston, Harper‘s Weekly, June 26, 1875; Edwin Howland Bashfield, Suspense: The Boston people watching from the house tops the firing at Bunker Hill (1882); Raphael Tuck & Sons postcards, circa 1910.

I remember reading the sections on the Battle of Waterloo in Thackeray’s Vanity Fair and thinking: it seems like they’ve gone right from the ballroom to the battlefield (which they did) and what is Becky doing there? This was a strange battle, but certainly a momentous one. You can certainly ascertain the intense interest of civilians both in the vicinity of the battle and on the homefront in two striking images: the first, from William Mudford’s Historical Account of the Campaign in the Netherlands in 1815 (1817), is of the observatory tower commissioned by the King of the Netherlands, erected so all of those people at the ball could see the battle. The second is David Wilkie’s Chelsea Pensioners (1822), in which a very inclusive British public receive news of the big victory at Waterloo.

James Rouse painting, from Mudford’s Historical Account (1817); Sir David Wilkie, Chelsea Pensioners Receiving the London Gazette Extraordinary of Thursday, June 22 1815, Announcing the Battle of Waterloo (1822), Dulwich Picture Gallery.

6 Comments | tags: American Revolution, Art, Commemorations, ephemera, Napoleon, print culture | posted in Culture, History

June 14, 2013

Book Arts, past and present

By daseger

I have read so many articles lately about the impending and inevitable obsolescence of the book, that it is rather comforting to focus on the book as a work of art, as it certainly was in the past and remains so in the present. Surely books will survive as things, decorative or otherwise. The Morgan Library & Museum is exhibiting its precious sixteenth-century “Van Damme” Book of Hours this summer in celebration of the manuscript’s facsimile publication by Faksimile Verlag. This tiny little book is like a jewel, made the more so by its encasement in a silver filigree case that looks like a clutch purse, the commission of a previous owner.

The Van Damme Hours and case, Antonius van Damme, scribe, and Simon Bening, illuminator, 1531, Morgan Library & Museum.

I am jumping forward several centuries and into a genre that I’m not quite sure can be raised to the level of art: children’s shape (or shaped) books which were first issued in America in the 1860s by L. Prang of Boston with verse and designs by Salem’s own Lydia Very. I’ve been interested in the low profile Very for a while and I admire her spirit from afar: the sister and lifelong caretaker of “eccentric” poet Jones Very (they were the children of unwed first cousins of a very old Salem family), she taught in the Salem public schools while also maintaining a prolific publishing career, which included poetry, garden essays, and these shape books for children, which were part of Prang’s popular “Doll Series”. Despite Prang’s claim that the form “originated with us”, European publishers issued these novelty items at the same time, in all sorts of shapes: boxes, bears, cats.

Lydia Very, Good Two Shoes, (L. Prang, n.d.), Aleph-Bet Books, and Red Riding Hood (L. Prang, 1863) E. Wharton & Co., and Castell Brothers, London, cat-shaped book, Bromer Booksellers.

Taking another big leap up to the present, and some very elegant and detailed examples of “pop-up books”, another Victorian innovation: these “book sculptures” by Justin Rowe cross over into a new genre, but still, the book is the foundation, as well as the material i(n more ways than one). Here are images of his “Little Red” Riding Hood (compare to Very’s above) and “Shoot the Moon”.

Images © Justin Rowe, 2012.

So that brings us to what looks like a flourishing book-related movement? field? endeavor? (searching for the right word here). Artists’ books are exactly that: books made by artists in very (or singular) limited editions, inspired by themes and utilizing book crafts and materials, books that are composed (or simply made) in more of an artistic than literary manner. There seem to be many definitions and classifications of artists’ books out there, so I just made up my own–I hope it suffices and stand to be corrected! There are also many examples of artists’ books out there to feature, so I’ve just chosen two, to illustrate the range of work. The first images are of the cover and all the “pages” of renown book artist Julie Chen’s “Cat’s Cradle” from her beautiful website Flying River Press, while the last is of a hand-made botanical book from the Etsy shop modestly: the book lives on in many forms.

5 Comments | tags: Art, books, ephemera, Etsy, print culture, Shopping | posted in Culture, History, Paper

June 12, 2013

Wondrous Whales

By daseger

Over the past week or so I’ve had whales on the brain, and I’ve encountered them in numerous places: at the Smithsonian’s recently-opened Whales: from Bone to Book exhibit, in the pages of an old Salem-published book I picked up at a yard sale last weekend, and searching for examples of wonder in various digital archives of sixteenth and seventeenth-century English printed books. For early modern Englishmen and -women, few things were as “wondrous”, or providential, as the appearance of a “monstrous fish”, a “sea-monster”, or a whale. Their Christian worldview and precedents (Jonah and the whale, St. Brendan’s “island”) guaranteed that something big was up when one of these creatures appeared.

Timothy Granger, A Moste true and marveilous Straunge wonder (1568); St. Brendan holding mass on the back of a whale, from Caspar Plautius, Nova Typis Transacta Navigatio (1621); Illustration from George Francis Dow, Whale Ships and Whaling: a Pictorial History (1925).

Every maritime culture appears to have its whale lore, but I’m only (vaguely) familiar with the western variety, and still trying to figure out quite a few whale tales. I’m not entirely certain why whales were so wondrous, so monstrous, so shocking, so noteworthy in the early modern era; after all, there were the ancient precedents as well as more recent medieval references, most notably to ambergris. Though there were diverse theories about its exact source, everyone seemed to accept that whales were somehow connected to the exotic substance.

Birthwort, serpent & a sperm whale in a Salerno herbal, British Library MS Egerton 747, c. 1280-1310.

Centuries later, it is apparent that it was not just whales that were wondrous in early modern England but beached or stranded whales, gigantic creatures that were far from their natural surroundings. And I can understand the fascination; I remember discovering the remains of a whale (just a blubbery part really) on a rocky beach in Maine when I was a child and running home to tell my parents, small bone in hand, quite vividly. Another memory I have of a whale comes from much later, when I was researching my dissertation and came across a seventeenth-century pamphlet reporting the foiled attempt of a Jesuit to sneak into England in the body of a whale. Few things were as threatening as Jesuits in post-Gunpowder Plot England, so this secret papal mission of sorts makes sense in the scheme of things, but I lost track of the reference and never found that source again. This past weekend, I found something similar: A True and Wonderfull Relation of a Whale with a “Romish Priest” in its belly, no doubt the tract of my faulty memory.

Two seventeenth-century tracts that look slightly more “scientific” but also contain “prodigious” accounts are A True Report and Exact Description of a mighty Sea-monster, or Whale (1617) and Strange News from the Deep, Being a Full Account of a Large Prodigious Whale (1677). These accounts date from the same century when the English were actively engaging in whaling well off-shore in the North Atlantic, so apparently it was only whales at home that were wondrous. Those in the deep possessed another characteristic–value–which would only increase in the coming centuries.

10 Comments | tags: books, England, ephemera, Flora and Fauna, print culture, Teaching | posted in Culture, History, Nature

June 5, 2013

A Hebrew Scholar at Harvard

By daseger

Last night was the second annual Conservation Night at the Salem Athenaeum, at which the newly-conserved books which were “adopted” last year were showcased to their sponsors, as well as a whole new (actually very old) crop of books which need conservation through sponsorship. It was a really nice evening, because it was immediately apparent that everyone in attendance (quite a crowd) really loved books, and they were able to examine and touch and talk about such amazing texts as the 1730 edition of Newton’s Opticks, a 1774 edition of Franklin’s Experiments and Observations on Electricity, several Hawthorne first editions, as well as the first appearance of Poe’s The Raven and Collected Poems in book form. Two conservators who did much of the work on the first group of adoptees were also on hand to discuss their process and answer questions (quite a lot of questions): Peter Geraty of Praxis Bindery and Stephanie Gibbs. I was on the committee which chose the books to be put forward for adoption, so I’ve been looking and thinking about these titles all year long. I knew that the Newton and the Franklin and the Poe and anything by Hawthorne (this is Salem after all) would find sponsors quickly (and so they did) but that less famous titles might be “orphaned”, so I went straight for a more mundane text (book), the first Hebrew textbook to be published in America by the first Jew to receive a college degree in the New World: Judah Monis’s Grammar of the Hebrew Tongue [Dickdook leshon gnebreet]. Being an Essay to Bring the Hebrew Grammar into English, to Facilitate the Instruction of All Those Who Are Desirous of Acquiring a Clear Idea of this Primitive Tongue by their Own Studies. Boston, N.E., Printed by Jonas Green, and are to be sold by the author at his house in Cambridge, 1735.

As an educator myself, I was drawn to this important educational text: upperclassmen at Harvard College in the eighteenth century were required to read the Old Testament in its original language, and so training in Hebrew was essential. Monis transitioned from student to instructor at Harvard in the 1720s based on his knowledge of the ancient language, and students would make copies of his handwritten grammar before the college imported Hebrew type from England and commissioned the printed text, which remained required reading for undergraduates for much of the eighteenth century. I was also drawn to Monis’s personal story: born in the Old world, he flourished in the New, based on the expertise he acquired from his heritage. But in order to retain his position at Harvard (which he held until his retirement in 1760) he was compelled to relinquish a good part of that heritage and convert to Christianity.

The complete list of adoptable Athenaeum books is available here: there are still a few “orphans”, and one share of Monis, I believe.

2 Comments | tags: books, Historic Preservation, Local Events, Salem Athenaeum, Teaching | posted in Culture, Current Events, History, Paper, Salem

June 1, 2013

Bad Hermits

By daseger

Somehow I never connected the words hermit and hermitage until yesterday, when I read an article in the New York Times about a new book by Gordon Campbell entitled The Hermit in the Garden: From Imperial Rome to Ornamental Gnome (Oxford University Press), which traces “the origins of Snow White’s cuddly dwarf friends and their suburban-lawn counterparts to the 18th-century outbuildings where real people lived merely to provide ambiance.” The article leads off with a photograph of an eighteenth-century Scottish hermitage (one of only perhaps 200 such structures that survive in Europe) that made the metaphorical light bulb turn on in my head. It also included a charming story taken from the book, about an English nobleman who hired a hermit to live in the quaint hermitage in his garden, for a period of seven years. Apparently the solitude was oppressive, and “subsequent versions of the story have the hermit being caught in the local tavern after three weeks and dismissed, and more recent elaborations include improper relations with a dairymaid” according to Mr. Campbell.

The Surviving Scottish Hermitage/ Photograph by Gordon Campbell, New York Times.

These stories also caught by attention, as they reminded me of the wayward hermit in a magnificent (and amusing) medieval manuscript commonly known as the “Smithfield Decretals”, produced in southern France around 1300 with additional illuminations added in London later on. Its formal title is the Decretals of [Pope] Gregory IX, British Library Royal MS 10 E.iv and it fills 310 folios of text and accompanying gloss–you can read a great post about it here. The images are varied and whimsical: there are anthropomorphic animals, grotesques, crimes and misdemeanors, amorous encounters, and a very bad hermit, who, enticed by the devil, leaves his hermitage for the tavern, and becomes (in succession) a drunkard, fornicator, murderer, and wild man (surely an occupational hazard for any hermit), before he is ultimately redeemed in the end.

The Hermit and the Devil, followed by the Hermit drinking outside a tavern, in delicto flagrante, clubbing a miller to death, as a wild man with only animals for company, and confessing his many sins, British Library MS Royal 10 E. iv, early 14th century.

8 Comments | tags: Art, books, Gardens, Manuscripts, Medieval | posted in Culture, History

May 30, 2013

Joan for the Ages

By daseger

Today marks the day of Joan of Arc’s execution at the hands of the Rouen Inquisition under the thumb of the English occupiers of France in 1431, and consequently her Feast Day, as of 1920. She was accused of a myriad of charges, but ultimately it was her conviction as a relapsed heretic that led to her death by burning at the stake, as well as the desire of the English to demonize such an inspirational figure in the closing stages of the Hundred Years’ War. There are many interesting things about Joan’s life and death, but one of the most compelling aspects of her image is its timelessness, which is discussed at length (and in many manifestations) in two great books: a collection of essays edited by Dominique Goy-Blanquet entitled Joan of Arc, a Saint for All Reasons: Studies in Myth and Politics (2003) and Nora Heimann’s Joan of Arc in French Art and Culture (1700-1855): From Satire to Sanctity (2005).

Jehanne La Pucelle, the “Maid of Orleans” was famous in her own time and immediately after her death. I love the poem by her contemporary Christine de Pisan, directed to the French king but really all about Joan:

And you, the King of France, King Charles,
The seventh of that noble name,
Who fought a mighty war before
Good fortune came at all to you:
Do, now, observe your dignity Exalted by the Maid, who bent
Your enemies beneath your flag
In record time (that’s something new!)

That’s something new! It sounds so modern, but I guess Joan was pretty modern in the fifteenth century, which might account for some of her timelessness thereafter. She resurfaces pretty predictably in times of conflict: the French Wars of Religion in the sixteenth century, the French Revolution in the eighteenth century, World Wars I & II in the twentieth century. All of her cultural depictions could fill a museum, or an encyclopedia, but certainly she is transformed into a nineteenth-century romantic heroine by Friedrich Schiller’s 1801 play, The Maid of Orleans. She was embraced by the Suffrage movements on both side of the Atlantic in the early twentieth century, and she remains a feminist hero(ine) in our own time. Joan’s eternal image can be seen in depictions from a succession of centuries, beginning with the late fifteenth-century manuscript poem Les Vigiles du roi Charles VII by Martial d’Auvergne (Paris, BnF, département des Manuscrits, Français 5054) and proceeding into the last century.

The Maid of Orleans in Les Vigiles du Roi Charles VII, later 15th century, and riding into battle in Les Vies des femmes célèbres by Antoine Du Four, about 1505, Dobrée Museum, Nantes, France.

Joan of Arc in print in the seventeenth century: prints by Leonard Gaultier (1612) and William Marshall (1642), British Museum.

I’m skipping over the eighteenth century, when the imagery associated with Voltaire’s scandalous poem La Pucelle d’Orléans reduces Joan to a sexual object; you would think the Enlightenment would be a great time for the Maid as a victim of the Inquisition, but it isn’t. It’s in the following centuries that she really gains power as both an iconic and historical (with the release of the trial records in the 1840s) figure, tying into the emerging nationalist and feminist movements (sometimes at the same time).

Satirical print of the support for Napoleon among French “Amazonian” women, who rally around a statue of Joan, Jean Baptiste Genty, 1815, British Museum; Edward Penfield cover for Harper’s, April 1895, New York Public Library Digital Gallery; Lillian Lancaster [Tennant] Map of France as Joan of Arc (or vice-versa), 1910, Garwood & Voight; Progam Cover for the 1913 Woman Suffrage Procession, Washington, D.C., Library of Congress; Joan of Arc They are Calling You (a “weeping” France) sheet music, 1917, Library of Congress; U.S. war posters from the First and Second World Wars, Library of Congress.

1 Comment | tags: ephemera, Joan of Arc, Manuscripts, maps, print culture, Renaissance | posted in Culture, History

May 28, 2013

The Politics of Remembrance

By daseger

Remembrance–the ongoing public process of acknowledging the importance of past people and events, is inherently political (as we know all too well here in the “Witch City”) but it strikes me that Civil War remembrance and reconciliation is particularly problematical. This point was brought home this past weekend when I read a provocative and powerful editorial in the New York Times entitled “Misplaced Honor”. In the piece, author Jamie Malanowski calls for the renaming of the ten or more U.S. Army bases that are named for Confederate generals, men who led soldiers who fought and killed United States Army soldiers; indeed, who may have killed such soldiers themselves. Malanowski acknowledges the historical reason for the names of these bases– most of which were built between the world wars when the need for national unity was paramount–but asserts that we cannot let these names stand now, when African-Americans make up about a fifth of the military. The idea that today we ask any of these soldiers to serve at a place named for a defender of a racist slavocracy is deplorable; the thought that today we ask any American soldier to serve at a base named for someone who killed United States Army troops is beyond absurd. Would we have a Fort Rommel? A Camp Cornwallis?

Apparently there is even a consensus among Civil War historians that several of these namesakes (like Braxton Bragg of Fort Bragg) were bad generals. When I visited the official sites of bases names for Confederates–Fort Bragg, Fort Hood, Ford Benning–there was nothing to be found about these generals, except bland statements that they were local. And that really is the crux of it. The only substantive rejoinder to Malanowski’s argument that I could find (here) so far argues that local communities should have sway in the naming, or renaming, of public places in their midst. Hopefully, at the very least, this conversation can continue.

Portraits of Confederate generals, including Henry L. Benning, namesake of Ft. Benning in Georgia, lower center, Illustrated History of the Confederacy, 1899 & the 41st Engineers building a bridge at Ft. Bragg in North Carolina, 1942, Arthur Rothstein, photographer, Library of Congress.

8 Comments | tags: Photography, public history, Witch City | posted in Culture, History

May 25, 2013

Band of Brothers

By daseger

Because I’ve been rather engrossed in the Hundred Years War this past few weeks as I prepped for my summer graduate course on late medieval and Renaissance Europe, I’ve been thinking more about the Battle of Agincourt than, say, D-Day. And so for this Memorial Day weekend, a moment of remembrance and reflection, I thought I’d look at Shakespeare’s famous “band of brothers”/St. Crispin’s Day speech, with which King Harry rallies the troops just before battle in Henry V. “Band of brothers” is a familiar phrase to us now, because of Olivier and Branagh and Spielberg, but did it always have resonance? What did it mean when an actor first uttered these lines in 1599 or 1600, and after? From this day to the ending of the world, But we in it shall be remember’d; We few, we happy few, we BAND OF BROTHERS; For he to-day that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile; This day shall gentle his condition. And gentlemen in England now a-bed Shall think themselves accursed they were not here, And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks That fought with us upon Saint Crispin day.

Title page of first printed version of Henry V, Folger Shakespeare Library; Agincourt illumination, Lambeth Palace Library.

Of course Henry did not really utter these lines; Shakespeare wrote them for his late Elizabethan audience, tapping into their burgeoning nationalism in the decade after the defeat of the Spanish Armada, while Spain was still a very real threat. So when England was threatened again, do these words reappear? The Napoleonic Wars immediately come to mind, when an even more glorious national hero than King Henry V–Admiral Nelson–used the “band of brothers” analogy on several occasions, most notably in reference to the great victory against the French fleet at the Battle of the Nile in 1798. While Nelson was referring to the ship captains under his command, the phrase took on a more egalitarian and nationalistic meaning in the celebratory aftermath.

Contemporary prints of the “Glorious Battle of the Nile” and Admiral Nelson and his band of brothers, British Museum.

At about the same time the Battle of the Nile was waging on the other side of the world, Philadelphia statesman Joseph Hopkinson was penning a poem that later became the lyrics to the so-called first American national anthem, Hail, Columbia. Hopkinson’s’ chorus proclaimed: Firm, united, let us be, Rallying around our liberty, As a Band of Brothers joined, Peace and safety we shall find. My brief search through the sheet music collection of the Library of Congress gave me the impression that this song was far more popular in the nineteenth century than the Star Spangled Banner, which eventually became the national anthem in 1931. Before, during, and particularly after the Civil War, the phrase “band of brothers” was used in speeches and published materials in both the North and the South, cementing its American usage.

The Favorite New Federal Song, Adapted to the Presidents March, Library of Congress Music Division; 1909 Memorial Day souvenir card.

Back in Britain, the phrase was still Shakespearean, and most definitely one inspiration for Winston Churchill’s famous “the few” speech given in 1940 in the midst of the Battle of Britain, when Britain was most definitely standing alone: Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few. I would expect (but didn’t really have enough time to confirm) that the band of brothers theme was used to emphasize the bond between British troops and their allies, both in the Commonwealth and outside, as the “we’re in this together” message is artfully employed in wartime propaganda.

Two examples of British wartime propaganda from the great exhibit at the UK National Archives, The Art of War: “Together” by William Little, 1940 & “Back against the Wall” by Illingworth, 1941.

It’s no accident that Sir Laurence Olivier chose to produce a stylized film version of Henry V during the war, indeed, the project was partially funded by the British government and originally dedicated to the “Commandos and Airborne Troops of Great Britain the spirit of whose ancestors it has been humbly attempted to recapture”. And there is the direct connection between Shakespeare’s romanticized war and an all too real one. I do recall the inclusion of Shakespeare’s words in Spielberg’s and Hanks’ Band of Brothers (as well as Stephen Ambrose book on which it is based), but it doesn’t matter; by this point in time, the title says it all.

A fifteenth-century manuscript brought to life/film: the recently-restored Henry V (1944).

8 Comments | tags: Art, England, holidays, Literature, Renaissance, Shakespeare | posted in Culture, History

May 19, 2013

Two Churches and a Park

By daseger

Apologies for posting multiple pictures of the park across from my house in the space of a few weeks, but the flowering trees have been particularly beautiful this year. Since this space is constantly within my view, I am always trying to picture what it looked like in the past, when not just one but two churches successively occupied the space. Even though I’m a great admirer of the built landscape (when it is well-built), I think I prefer the empty space, especially in the midst of densely-settled Salem. Although if Samuel McIntire’s majestic first South Congregational Church was still standing, I might change my mind—but its 166-foot-high steeple would certainly dwarf my house! That’s the main effect that I’m constantly trying to conjure up–I may ask my husband to make a rendering one day.

The park today and the two churches: Samuel McIntire’s Church was built in 1804-5 and destroyed by fire in 1903, and quickly replaced by the Gothic Revival structure that you see below, which itself burned down in 1950. Quite the contrast! The word on the street is that there were hopes of erecting a third church on the site (this time by a Greek Orthodox congregation), but one prominent resident foiled those plans by purchasing it himself and donating it to the neighborhood association. All the householders on Chestnut Street now pay dues to maintain the park, which is open to everyone.

I think I’ve shown these images of the churches as well (The amazing Frank Cousins photograph is from 1891; the postcard of the “new” church is from 1910) before as well (I’m nearly reblogging here!), but I do have some interior shots of both churches which I just found, and a salvaged capital from McIntire’s church: can you imagine the struggle to salvage precious pieces of wood while the fire raged? It might have been someone from my house that ran over there and grabbed this! That’s a moment (not so pleasant) that I try to imagine: what it must have been like to wake up in the middle of the night and see this blazing inferno just outside my bedroom window; no doubt there was real fear that the fire would spread and the famous spire would collapse onto the house–my house. What a scary, horrible night that must have been. 110 years later, all is calm over there this morning.

All historic photographs from the New York Public Library Digital Gallery, with the exception of the last one, which is from the Estey Organ Company in Vermont, which maintains a virtual museum and an archive of all of its organs.

10 Comments | tags: Architecture, Chestnut Street, Frank Cousins, landscape, Photography, Samuel McIntire | posted in History, Houses, Nature, Salem

May 15, 2013

Marshes and Mountains

By daseger

Last week, I discovered yet another Salem-born artist of the mid- and later nineteenth century in the usual way–by browsing through auction archives (a relatively new pastime of mine that I’ve got to nip in the bud, as it is very time-consuming!) This particular artist, Sylvester Phelps Hodgdon (1830-1906) did not dwell in Salem in his adulthood, but I continue to be amazed at the creative environment that existed in this era, another aspect of Salem’s history that is overwhelmed by its Witch City reputation.

Hodgdon was the son of a wealthy Salem currier who had married into one of Salem’s older families, which explains the prominent Phelps in his name (although he usually signed his paintings “S.P. Hodgdon”). He appears to have moved to Boston in his early 20s, where he studied with the well-traveled Boston artist Benjamin Champney and worked for the L.H. Bradford lithography firm. For most of his life, he lived in the Dorchester section of Boston, and maintained a studio at the Tremont Studio building downtown, along with a host of prominent artists and architects. He was clearly part of the Boston art scene and community, teaching classes and exhibiting his work at the Boston Art Club in its heyday. But like so many Boston-based artists of this era, Hodgdon was drawn to northern New England for his subject matter: there are few streetscapes among his works, but rather gilded landscapes of marshes, valleys, and mountains–predominately in New Hampshire. Therefore he is generally characterized as one of the “White Mountain Painters”, along with Champney, who created one of America’s first art colonies by inviting a succession of painters, including Hodgdon, to come to his summer residence in North Conway from the 1850s on. This was clearly Hodgdon’s preferred milieu, but I did manage to find a few local scenes among his digitized works.

On the Marsh/A Salem, Massachusetts landscape,1861, Skinner Auctions Archive; Long Beach, Nahant, 1861, Carlsen Gallery Auctions Archive; Echo Lake, Franconia Notch, 1858, Collection of John J. and Joan R. Henderson. Photograph courtesy of the New Hampshire Historical Society. All the sources indicate that Hodgdon preferred to work at the “extremes” of the day, in the early morning and at dusk.

This last painting is among the most acclaimed of his White Mountains works, and as you can see, it dates from early in his career, while he was still in his 20s and working as a lithographer by day/artist by night (and summer). I was able to gather a few other images to add some context to Hodgdon’s life, including some examples of his lithography for the Bradford firm and a photograph of the Tremont Studio building in Boston: all traces of his past that are now sadly gone.

Hodgdon’s lithographs for L.H. Bradford: “Old Man on the Mountain”, Franconia Notch (whose visage crumbled to the ground in 2003) American Antiquarian Society; Tabernacle Church, Salem, 1854, Boston Athenaeum, and the Tremont Studio in Boston, New York Public Library: gone, gone & gone.