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3 1 Introduction THE PHILADELPHIA PICTORIALS AND AMERICAN VISUAL CULTURE IN THE 1840S In January 1844, publisher Louis A. Godey offered to his “fair patrons” of The Lady’s Book a frontispiece engraving of a flower garland–draped vase surrounded by books and a decorative fan prepared by the artist, William Croome (see plate 1). Godey used his editorial column that month to remind his “kind and constant readers” of the tremendous expense of providing them with the “numerous beautiful engravings” and the work of the “first writers in America.” Importantly, Godey greets Croome as an artist familiar to both the publisher and his readers: “Our talented friend, Mr. Croome, has furnished an embellishment for the present number of the Lady’s Book, which affords an additional evidence of his exquisite taste and skill in design.” Godey continues his praise of Croome by noting that the artist’s depictions of historical subjects are as adept as his “beautiful creations of Flora.” Godey concludes, “We are gratified that our magazine should afford a field for the display of his brilliant and versatile talent” (The Lady’s Book, January 1844, 56). The following holiday season, for his January 1845 issue, Louis A. Godey offered another Croome design, an exquisite hand-colored frontispiece engraving entitled Bowl of Fruit. In his “Editor’s Book Table” column at the end of this issue, he explains: “By the aid of our accomplished friend Croome, we are enabled to treat our friends to a dessert of fruit, served up in a cutglass fruit-basket in a style suitable to the season. . . . It gives us great pleasure to present so rich a dessert, and in doing it, we hail our friends, far and near, with the old-fashioned but heartfelt wish of a MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR” (“Editor’s Table,” January 1845, 48). 4 PHILADELPHIA PICTORIALS AND AMERICAN VISUAL CULTURE, 1840S Godey’s 1844 and 1845 New Year’s greetings to his subscribers offer a window into an important venue for the circulation of original American art in the middle decades of the nineteenth century: the illustrated monthly magazines .1 A parsing of Godey’s greetings introduces the major themes underlying this study. First, Godey’s description of Croome’s engravings indicates that Godey has commissioned them exclusively for publication in his magazine. Unlike earlier illustrated magazines that frequently featured secondhand plates reproducing the work of Continental artists, Godey’s featured engravings of original American artwork, created exclusively for the magazine. In referring to artist William Croome as his “talented” and “accomplished” friend, Godey therefore hints at his own assumption of the role of patron and promoter of American art. Second, Godey refers to his readers as his “over thirty thousand friends,” establishing both the size of his subscription list in the mid-1840s, and Godey’s established editorial persona—one that assumes cozy familiarity with his readers. This strategy of constructing a familiar editorial persona would prove critical to Godey’s success in staving off the increased competition his magazine encountered from other illustrated American monthlies in the 1840s, a decade in which Philadelphia surpassed all other cities in monthly magazine circulation.2 Third, in describing the “richness” of the dessert, Godey references not only the artistic beauty and lifelike verisimilitude of the fruit, but the implicit value of this engraved and colored plate as a desirable home decoration. In offering the plate as a Christmas “treat” for his “friends,” Godey’s comments here underscore another major theme in this study—the importance of these magazines in establishing American periodical art engravings as desirable and affordable middle-class commodities in the 1840s.3 By 1845, Godey’s Lady’s Book had become one of the leading illustrated monthly magazines of the era. Louis Godey (see fig. 1.1) established his Philadelphia magazine in 1830, and had acquired his most important asset, editor Sarah Josepha Hale (see fig 1.2), in 1837 with the purchase of her Ladies’ Magazine, a Boston contemporary.4 During the 1830s, Godey steadily introduced improvements to both the quality of paper, type, and printing ink, and to the literary content of the magazine. For the decade of the 1830s, Godey’s Lady’ Book remained relatively unchallenged as America’s leading illustrated monthly magazine, featuring the latest innovations to the graphic arts, as his presentation of the Christmas present engraving, Croome’s Vase, indicates. By decade’s end, however, Godey faced challengers. [3...

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