Period Painters

[prestontoprail]

Cliff Hicks had turned me onto a couple of 19th century contemporary artists and I found the whole world to be really intriguing. You can get a good idea of the way people were pereceived and get an idea of their wardrobe color or what they were for given situations. I thought it would be cool to start off with some paintings by:

William Sidney Mount

At a time when other American artists adhered to European models, Mount successfully transferred these traditions into imagery specific
to American life. He was the first in this country to focus on scenes of everyday life. Many of his paintings also include vividly realistic images of his friends and neighbors from Setauket and Stony Brook. His personal belief regarding his work, "Never paint for the few but for the many," gave average Americans the chance to view themselves, for the first time, as subjects of art. His paintings struck a sympathetic chord with both the public and critics, who pronounced the artist one of the most talented of his time.

The Herald in the Country, 1853




Long Island Farmer Husking Corn, 1833-34



Dancing on the Barn Floor, 1833



The Sportsman's Last Visit, 1835



Farmers Nooning, 1836



Catching Rabbits, 1839



Dance of the Haymakers, 1845



Sportsman at the well, 1848



California news, 1850



Bar Room scene 1855



Catching Crabs, 1865



Banjo Player 1856



Any Fish today? 1857



Bones Player, 1856



banjo player, 1852



Horse dealers, 1828'

[tenfed1861]

Thanks Preston.These paintings are great,not only in the since of helping up study the dress,daily activities,ect. of the day,but also just for culture in general.Great art."Any fish today"(?) is great because it's possible that if the boy in the painting was based on someone real,he might have gone on to fight in the war.Helps us see what our firper characters would have done as children.
These painting will help me escpeically since my character is of the upper middle class,or "gentlemen soldier" as it is put in Killer Angels.It will help me figure out the dress,facial hair,and just daily activity of my "19th Century self".
Cullen

[prestontoprail]

Some Nice works from George Caleb Bigham

Raftsmen playing cards, 1847



The county election!!



The Squatters, 1850



Waterwheel, 1853



Mississippi River, 1850



Canvasing for a vote, 1851-52




Boatmen

[Timothy Arnold]

The County election one has some drunks in it. It seems that someone may have been making a point that there were people voting drunk... or maybe being 'lickerd-up' and then carried to vote, as I see one guy being carried in that painting.....

[prestontoprail]

Reading of the War with Mexico on the mississippi, 1840's

[williampicking]

Hello fellas,
These are great referance materials and Iam glad to see others are taking note of the material culture found in them. Besides the clothing and demeanor of the models I would like to point out something that I see seveerely lacking in our own interpretation of those we seek to emulate. That is simply, notice there hair. Observe the hair styles, and length. Take notice of these two things in correlation with the models age and where he was being painted. What geographic area are the models in? (Different regions have Different styles)How old is the person?(Then like now people tended to finid there style in their early years and carry it with them) Just look at the photos of soldiers in the diffrent theaters of the war an dwhere the unit is from and you'll see what I mean. This is an area we all tnd to neglect.
Yours in the quest for the truth,
William "Naitive"Picking
Fightingboys mess
[e-mail]
661-619-8347

[charlesheath]

The Harewood Photographs are great tools for examining period hairstyles (facial and scalp), at least those of federal soldiers.

Maintaining that billard coif,

[Preston Todd]

Was going back through our older conversations and topics in this "authenticity discussions" folder and not only did I re-recall many interesting chats from knowledgeable folks in the hobby (damn I really miss Charles Heath) and I wanted to kick this one back up for recognition. As stated above there's a huge wealth of knowledge and detail to gather from these antebellum artists. Clothing, hair styles and activities are very much worth noting for our "impressions" as men who lived in the antebellum America. The only thing I have to constantly be aware of is the fact that an artist CAN and WILL add brighter colors to his paintings to give canvas some interest. Nothing too interesting in those days to see a group of men in drab brown/black clothes sitting around a room reading newspapers. Although some of the colors on the clothing may be exact, there's no proof that they are and while we might be looking at these garments just as they were, we also might be seeing that "artistic license" of adding more focus to a painting by putting a man with light blue pants and a red shirt in the center, draws your focus to it and can "complete" the composition.

I also stumbled across a couple more interesting specimens from Junius Brutus Stearns. He has a couple of vignette paintings from the late 1850's which show interesting specimens.

This one entitled "A fishing party off Long Island" shows a whole crew of civilian men wearing flannel overshirts with color designs that match what we know of from descriptions and surviving original garments. As you all know, flannel overshirts were becoming the rage around the late 1850's (seen all over the gold rush photos) and I think this painting shows a neat representation of that, with the use of blue, red and checkered flannel shirts. They wear them simply as a jacket substitute for recreation while still wearing fine white cotton shirts with cravats. I like the hats and one fella is breaking the trend by wearing a traditional vest with this white shirt/cravat. It's just nice to see more presentation of red flannel shirts being used since we've been finding out alot about red flannel lately in regards to the material culture of the 1840's, 50's and 60's. It's not hard to see how or why the army's private contractors during the war started supplying them with "contract issue shirts" which simply replicate the civilian design of the flannel over shirt cut "on the square". One might say that the tin buttons applied to the contract shirts distinguishes them from civilian. But I have seen gold rush photos of civilian flannel overshirts that clearly have the silver tin buttons commonly seen on military garments. When I can get a proper scanner, I'll try to throw up a ton of gold rush photos to dig into as well.




"Trout Fishing"



And speaking of the 49'ers time frame, I stumbled across this Daguerreotype of a fellow which has to have one of the most extreme cases of "lazy eye" that I have ever seen in a photo. I've seen plenty, but this one takes the cake. VERY cool hairdo!



Do these guys look like they're after your pocket books OR WHAT!?



Our very own Samuel Clemens at the age of 15! Seems very lifelike with the way they touched up the tinting in the 1850's. He was 15 years old when he made this photo, apparently he placed the letters of his name backwards so that it would show up correctly.



This rare daguerreotype diptych shows Cornelius Conway Felton (1807–1862), Eliot Professor of Greek Literature at Harvard University, reaching for his felt hat and duster.

Source: John Adams Whipple: [Cornelius Conway Felton with His Hat and Coat] (1997.382.41) | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art



Issac J. Williams. Williams was a hatter before enlisting in the 23rd Conneticut in 1862. His obituary states his trade and claim Williams "was one who in the early days of hatting was acoustomed to take fur and manipulate it, until it became a perfect hat."



Most of you guys would know how happy I'd be in this guys room.



Here's the link to some of these photographs. Truly some stunning stuff in there, it's amazing what you can find digging around the old web.
www.flickr.com/photos/78442073@N00/sets/72157600072992801/

[Timothy Arnold]

awesome fishing photos... gonna have to get back to work on that impression. I was looking at some of my civilian stuff this morning, thinking about getting back to work on the period fishing gear... Keep em comin'!