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Description: Marble Queens and Captives: Women in Nineteenth-Century American Sculpture

BOOKMarble Queens and Captives: Women in Nineteenth-Century American Sculpture

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-31595

When nineteenth-century Americans looked at a statue of a nude woman in chains, or a shipwrecked mother and child, what did they see? When they talked or wrote about them, what did they say?

In this fascinating book, Joy S. Kasson argues that there was a connection between the popularity of artworks such as these, which derive from a sentimental literary culture, and the rapidly changing social, economic, and political environment that was beginning to raise questions about women's nature and role in society. By exploring the once-popular genre of ideal sculpture, with its focus on female subjects and its insistence on narrative content, Kasson is able to shed light on conventional assumptions about gender roles, as well as the tensions that lay behind these beliefs. Kasson reconstructs the intellectual, aesthetic, and literary contexts in which these sculptures were viewed and traces the social history of their production and reception. She shows that sculptors and audiences repeatedly idealized women as fragile, endangered, and vulnerable.

Immoral or powerful women, such as Eve, Pandora, or Medea, were presented in a web of sentimental narrative that hinted at moral redemption in order to reassure viewers that woman's true nature would remain domestic and maternal. Kasson looks closely at a number of sculptures that exemplified these themes—from Hiram Power's The Greek Slave to works by the most prominent female sculptor of the period, Harriet Hosmer. Resurrecting these forgotten artworks and explicating their narrative context, she provides fresh insights into the cultural construction of gender in nineteenth-century America.

*This eBook is available exclusively on the A&AePortal.*

Author

PublisherYale University Press

Print publication date September 1990 (out of print)

Print ISBN 9780300045963

EISBN 9780300276916

Copyright© 1990 by Yale University

Illustrations 103

Print Status out of print

Publisher (out of print)

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List of illustrations

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Description: Marble Queens and Captives: Women in Nineteenth-Century American Sculpture

Marble Queens and Captives: Women in Nineteenth-Century American Sculpture

Contents

Author

PublisherYale University Press

Copyright© 1990 by Yale University

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-31596

Free

Description: Marble Queens and Captives: Women in Nineteenth-Century American Sculpture

Marble Queens and Captives: Women in Nineteenth-Century American Sculpture

Illustrations

Author

PublisherYale University Press

Copyright© 1990 by Yale University

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-31597

Free

Acknowledgments

Description: Marble Queens and Captives: Women in Nineteenth-Century American Sculpture

Marble Queens and Captives: Women in Nineteenth-Century American Sculpture

Like everyone who attempts to be a scholar and a parent at the same time, I am especially grateful for the gift of time. During most of the decade I worked on this book, I relied on the devoted childcare provided by Mrs. Charlotte Regester. I would like to thank the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for the support provided by a Pogue Leave in...

Author

PublisherYale University Press

Copyright© 1990 by Yale University

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-31598

Description: Marble Queens and Captives: Women in Nineteenth-Century American Sculpture

Marble Queens and Captives: Women in Nineteenth-Century American Sculpture

This book examines the cultural history of a group of art objects and their reception in nineteenth-century America.An exploration of the assumptions shared by viewer and...

Author

PublisherYale University Press

Copyright© 1990 by Yale University

Related print edition pages: pp.1-4

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-31599

Chapter subject tags:Sculpture, American--19th centuryWomen and gender in art--United States--19th centuryPowers, Hiram, 1805-1873Palmer, Erastus Dow, 1817-1904Women sculptors--United States--19th century

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1. Ideal Sculpture: Artists and Patrons

Description: Marble Queens and Captives: Women in Nineteenth-Century American Sculpture

Marble Queens and Captives: Women in Nineteenth-Century American Sculpture

The social history of nineteenth-century American art is still being...

Author

PublisherYale University Press

Copyright© 1990 by Yale University

Related print edition pages: pp.5-20

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-31600

Chapter subject tags:Sculpture, American--19th centuryWomen and gender in art--United States--19th centuryArt patronage--United States--19th CenturySculpture, American--Classical influences

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2. Viewing Ideal Sculpture: Contexts and Audiences

Description: Marble Queens and Captives: Women in Nineteenth-Century American Sculpture

Marble Queens and Captives: Women in Nineteenth-Century American Sculpture

Although nineteenth-century American sculptors supported themselves primarily by sales of artworks to individual buyers, they also earned money and gained fame by exhibiting their works publicly. To understand the cultural significance of these works, we must know more about who viewed them, under what circumstances, and with what assumptions about art and what...

Author

PublisherYale University Press

Copyright© 1990 by Yale University

Related print edition pages: pp.21-45

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-31601

Chapter subject tags:Sculpture, American--19th centuryWomen and gender in art--United States--19th centurySculpture, American--19th century--ExhibitionsSculpture--Private collections--United StatesCentennial Exhibition (1876 : Philadelphia, Pa.)

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3. Narratives of the Female Body: The Greek Slave

Description: Marble Queens and Captives: Women in Nineteenth-Century American Sculpture

Marble Queens and Captives: Women in Nineteenth-Century American Sculpture

No nineteenth-century artwork tells us more about the cultural construction of gender than Hiram Powers’ The Greek Slave of 1844 (fig. 16). This life-sized standing nude woman...

Author

PublisherYale University Press

Copyright© 1990 by Yale University

Related print edition pages: pp.46-72

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-31602

Chapter subject tags:Sculpture, American--19th centuryWomen and gender in art--United States--19th centurySculpture, American--Classical influencesPowers, Hiram, 1805-1873. Greek slaveGreece--History--War of Independence, 1821-1829Exoticism in art

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4. Between Two Worlds: The White Captive

Description: Marble Queens and Captives: Women in Nineteenth-Century American Sculpture

Marble Queens and Captives: Women in Nineteenth-Century American Sculpture

The tremendous popularity of The Greek Slave inspired other American sculptors to explore the subject of the endangered but ennobled female captive. Striving for artistic recognition and social respectability, these sculptors created works that told stories of fear and desire. Captive women, caught between two worlds, raised the question of the stability of...

Author

PublisherYale University Press

Copyright© 1990 by Yale University

Related print edition pages: pp.73-100

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-31603

Chapter subject tags:Sculpture, American--19th centuryWomen and gender in art--United States--19th centurySculpture, American--Classical influencesPowers, Hiram, 1805-1873. Greek slavePalmer, Erastus Dow, 1817-1904Captivity narratives in art

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5. Death and Domesticity: Shipwrecked Mother and Child

Description: Marble Queens and Captives: Women in Nineteenth-Century American Sculpture

Marble Queens and Captives: Women in Nineteenth-Century American Sculpture

A fascination with female victimization dominated American ideal sculpture in the mid–nineteenth century, most notably in such captivity subjects as The Greek Slave, but also in a variety of works that represented women in peril.Randolph...

Author

PublisherYale University Press

Copyright© 1990 by Yale University

Related print edition pages: pp.101-140

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-31604

Chapter subject tags:Sculpture, American--19th centuryWomen and gender in art--United States--19th centurySentimentalism in art--United States--19th centuryDeath in art--United States--19th centuryCemeteries--United States--History--19th centuryMount Auburn Cemetery (Cambridge, Mass.)Motherhood in art--United States--19th century

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6. The Problematics of Female Power: Zenobia

Description: Marble Queens and Captives: Women in Nineteenth-Century American Sculpture

Marble Queens and Captives: Women in Nineteenth-Century American Sculpture

Nineteenth-century spectators, male and female, read in ideal sculpture compelling narratives of gender. In a variety of female subjects they saw qualities and situations that they associated with their real-life attempts to understand woman’s nature and place in society. But did men and women interpret these sculptures in the same way? Or did their differing...

Author

PublisherYale University Press

Copyright© 1990 by Yale University

Related print edition pages: pp.141-165

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-31605

Chapter subject tags:Sculpture, American--19th centuryWomen and gender in art--United States--19th centurySculpture, American--Classical influencesHosmer, Harriet Goodhue, 1830-1908Captivity narratives in art

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7. Woman’s Other Face: Eve and Pandora

Description: Marble Queens and Captives: Women in Nineteenth-Century American Sculpture

Marble Queens and Captives: Women in Nineteenth-Century American Sculpture

During the years of its greatest popularity, ideal sculpture provided an occasion for its makers, purchasers, and viewers to elaborate a narrative central to nineteenth-century culture: the story of woman’s nature and woman’s destiny. Transformed into a spectacle in the most literal sense, the sculptured woman invited responses that tapped her...

Author

PublisherYale University Press

Copyright© 1990 by Yale University

Related print edition pages: pp.166-202

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-31606

Chapter subject tags:Sculpture, American--19th centuryWomen and gender in art--United States--19th centurySculpture, American--Classical influencesPoe, Edgar Allan, 1809-1849Captivity narratives in artEve (Biblical figure) in art--United States

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8. Domesticating the Demonic: Medea

Description: Marble Queens and Captives: Women in Nineteenth-Century American Sculpture

Marble Queens and Captives: Women in Nineteenth-Century American Sculpture

Popular writer Grace Greenwood articulated the horror many mid-century American men and women felt about the possibility that women might display a dark and passionate, even demonic nature...

Author

PublisherYale University Press

Copyright© 1990 by Yale University

Related print edition pages: pp.203-240

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-31607

Chapter subject tags:Sculpture, American--19th centuryWomen and gender in art--United States--19th centurySculpture, American--Classical influencesStory, William Wetmore, 1819-1895Mythology, Greek in art--United States--19th centuryCentennial Exhibition (1876 : Philadelphia, Pa.)

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Conclusion: Gender and Power

Description: Marble Queens and Captives: Women in Nineteenth-Century American Sculpture

Marble Queens and Captives: Women in Nineteenth-Century American Sculpture

The taste for ideal sculpture was already beginning to wane when William Wetmore Story exhibited Medea at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876, and in the next few years American sculpture moved toward the more elegant beaux-arts...

Author

PublisherYale University Press

Copyright© 1990 by Yale University

Related print edition pages: pp.241-244

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-31608

Chapter subject tags:Sculpture, American--19th centuryWomen and gender in art--United States--19th century

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Selected Bibliography

Description: Marble Queens and Captives: Women in Nineteenth-Century American Sculpture

Marble Queens and Captives: Women in Nineteenth-Century American Sculpture

Selected Bibliography

Author

PublisherYale University Press

Copyright© 1990 by Yale University

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-31609

Free

Description: Marble Queens and Captives: Women in Nineteenth-Century American Sculpture

Marble Queens and Captives: Women in Nineteenth-Century American Sculpture

Index

Author

PublisherYale University Press

Copyright© 1990 by Yale University

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-31610

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