Details

Subject(s)

• Painting, American—19th century [Browse]

Series

Routledge research in art history [More in this series]

Summary note

This is the first sustained study of pendant paintings: discrete images designed as a pair. It opens with a broad overview that anchors the form in the medieval diptych, religious history, and aesthetic theory and explores its cultural and historical resonance in the 19th-century United States. Three case studies examine how antebellum American artists used the pendant format in ways revelatory of their historical moment and the aesthetic and cultural developments in which they partook. The case studies on John Quidor's Rip Van Winkle and His Companions at the Inn Door of Nicholas Vedder (1839) and The Return of Rip Van Winkle (1849) and Thomas Cole's Departure and Return (1837) shed new light on canonical antebellum American artists and their practices. The chapter on Titian Ramsay Peale's Kilauea by Day and Kilauea by Night (1842) presents new material that pushes the geographical boundaries of American art studies toward the Pacific Rim. The book contributes to American art history the study of a characteristic but as yet overlooked format and models for the discipline a new and productive framework of analysis focused on the fundamental yet complex way images work back and forth with one another.

Notes

Originally presented as the author's thesis (Ph.D.)--Harvard University.

Bibliographic references

Includes bibliographical references (pages 173-184) and index.

Contents

• Introduction: opening the space between: antebellum American pendant paintings
• Putting the "rip" in Rip Van Winkle: historical absence in John Quidor's pendant paintings
• Taking a contemplative look: visual devotion in Thomas Cole's The Departure and The Return
• The missing Pacific: the expeditionary blank in Titian Ramsay Peale's Kilauea landscapes
• Epilogue: after the antebellum: pendants during the Civil War and postbellum era.

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ISBN

• 9781472475589 (hardback)
• 1472475585 (hardback)

OCLC

975371148

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