Young Husband: First Marketing

The decade of the 1850s was, for many, a period of a satisfying coming of age. The Industrial Revolution, which had developed in the United States a bit later than in England, had matured, and the nation was on its way to being a global economic presence (despite a financial depression in 1857). The Gadsden Purchase in 1853 transferred Mexican land (this time without going to war) to the US...

~~Among art historians, a new connoisseurship has replaced the old. Connoisseur: an expert; one who knows, who speaks with authority; who understands the techniques and principles of an art and is competent to act as a critical judge. The old connoisseurship was the practice of passing judgment on art or artist according to...

In turning an examination of American genre painting to representations of women, we find patterns that are both predictable and surprising. The genre painters discussed thus far were male, participating as citizens with the relative freedom of discussion and self-definition that white males enjoyed. These painters devoted their imagery to issues and nuances that embodied the sphere of public life as they and New York patrons, viewers, and critics perceived it. Although discussion about women’s …