Table of Contents

Introduction: "American Louvre"
Democratic Proclivities
"The Unity of Art"
"Art Fever"
"Harrahed for the Union"
"Laborers in the Field of the Beautiful"
"An Easier and Surer Path"
"A Combination of Adverse Circumstances"
List of Abbreviations
Notes
Index
Acknowledgments

Promotional Information

Between 1850 and 1880, thousands of women moved to New York City to study art and pursue careers as painters, designers, illustrators, and engravers. This book reconnects their accomplishments to the city's conspicuously democratic art institutions, its burgeoning illustrated press, and the prevailing aesthetic ideal known as the Unity of Art.

About the Author

April F. Masten is Associate Professor of History at Stony Brook University.

Reviews

"This fascinating and deeply researched book speaks to important questions in the fields of women's labor history, cultural history, the social history of art, and, in its largest frame, to questions about the human meaning of work in the industrial age. Masten links together a trans-Atlantic set of social theories about workers with art theories from men like John Ruskin to assert that artists can maintain their art in an era of mechanization."--Patricia Cline Cohen, author of The Murder of Helen Jewett: The Life and Death of a Prostitute in 19th Century New York