Surveying the field: the popular origins of art history in nineteenth-century Britain and France

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Content SURVEYING THE FIELD: THE POPULAR ORIGINS OF ART HISTORY

IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY BRITAIN AND FRANCE

by

Amy M. Von Lintel

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(ART HISTORY)

May 2010

Copyright 2010 Amy M. Von Lintel

ii

Acknowledgments

It is with great pleasure that I acknowledge the organiziations and individuals who
made this dissertation possible. Generous support from the Art History Department and the
Visual Studies Graduate Certificate at the University of Southern California, as well as the
Council for European Studies at Columbia University, enabled research trips to London, Paris,
Edinburgh, Caen, New York, and Washington, D.C. A Visiting Scholar Fellowship from the
Yale Center for British Art provided an invaluable opportunity for writing revisions and
further research. An American Dissertation Fellowship from the American Association of
University Women offered crucial support in the final stages of my writing. I would like to
thank the librarians, curators, and archivists at a number of institutions—the Getty Research
Institute, the Huntington Library, L’Institut Mémoires de l’Edition Contemporaine in Caen,
L’Institut d’Histoire de l’Art and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, the National Art Library
in London, the British Library, the National Library of Scotland, the University of Reading
Special Collections, the Library of Congress, and the New York Public Library—for their
guidance and assistance during my archival research. My work has greatly benefited from
conversations with Marcia Reed, David Brafman, Katja Zelljadt, Antony Griffiths, Stephen
Bann, Jan Piggott, Philippe Sénéchal, Robert Nelson, Patricia Mainardi, André Derval, Debora
Silverman, Rowan Watson, Elizabeth James, Saloni Mathur, Thierry Gervais, Shelley Bennett,
and Tim Barringer. I also thank Michel Melot, Anne Higonnet, Kim Rhodes, and Victoria
Cain for inviting me to present aspects of my research at symposia and conferences. I am
grateful to Paris artist Devorah Boxer, as well as the organizers of the Book History Workshop
at Cushing Memorial Library in College Station, Texas, for teaching me to love making prints
and books as much as studying them.
iii
Being part of the USC Art History and Visual Studies community has been
foundational for my growth as a scholar. I owe much to the dedicated mentorship of my
committee members. I thank Malcolm Baker for his crucial involvement during the early
stages of my research. I am indebted to Sean Roberts for his careful comments, his invaluable
perspective on book and print history, and his ongoing professional advice. Vanessa
Schwartz’s rigorous historical method, her critical questioning of reigning paradigms, and her
profound love of teaching have inspired me since the day we met, now nearly ten years ago, at
SMU. But above all else, Nancy Troy’s continuous belief in my ideas, her ceaseless
willingness to offer creative suggestions and pivotal advice, not to mention her truly amazing
energy as a mentor, enabled this dissertation to exist. I also owe a huge debt of gratitude to
my USC colleagues, whose collegiality and friendship have made all the difference. I wish to
thank Rachel Middleman for her ever-insightful suggestions and her unending kindness; my
Paris cohort of Anca Lasc, Catherine Clark, and Brian Jacobson for keeping me from missing
home; my fellow dissertation writing group members for creating an indispensable source of
feedback, deadlines, and emotional support; and the many other graduate students at USC who
provided an environment ripe for intellectual exchange. I also thank my Yale colleagues and
friends for making my two months in New Haven both productive and hugely fun. Numerous
people have hosted me in my travels as an impoverished graduate student: Meghan and Doug
Dahl, Dan Wynn, Jen Sorenson and Ryan Malloy, Sarah and Vince Rupp, and Debbie Steele.
I thank all of you for offering me a home away from home. Finally, I could not have come
this far without my loving and supportive family: Thomas (in memory), Marq, and Megan
Von Lintel, Larry Rupp, Deb and Wes Welch, and the rest of the Welch clan. But the one
who takes the prize for his daily patience, lack of judgment, and unstoppable good humor is
my husband Matt Welch. I owe him both my sanity and my success.
iv
Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ii

List of Figures v

Abstract xii

Introduction 1

Chapter 1: Art History for the People: Charles Knight’s Pictorial Gallery of Arts 36

Chapter 2: Art History on Display: Illustrated Surveys in Mid-Century Britain 111

Chapter 3: Art History in Modern Life: The Bibliothèque des Merveilles 187

Chapter 4: Art History in Print: Teaching Art’s History in the French Third Republic 257

Chapter 5: The Mothers of Art History? Women and the Production of Popular
Art History 317

Conclusion 376

Bibliography 381

Appendix 1: The Illustrators of Art History 422
Appendix 2: The Survey Canon 438
Appendix 3: Art History Monuments at the Sydenham Crystal Palace 468
Appendix 4: Artists Represented at the Manchester Art-Treasures Exhibition 472

v
List of Figures

Figure 1: Illustration of the Laocoon from Louis Viardot, Les Merveilles de la 34
sculpture (Paris, 1869), wood engraving by J. Petot and C. LaPlante

Figure 2: Page with illustration of an Assyrian Winged Bull, from Viardot, Les 34
Merveilles de la sculpture

Figure 3: Page with illustration of François Rude’s La Marseillaise, from Viardot’s 35
Les Merveilles de la sculpture

Figure 4: Page from Wilhelm Lübke’s History of Art, trans. Fanny Elizabeth Bunnètt 35
(London, 1868)

Figure 5: Page from Charles Bayet’s Précis d’histoire de l’art (Paris, 1886) 35

Figure 1.1: Cover of Penny Magazine from 1832 with wood engraving of the Laocoon 101

Figure 1.2: Illustration of the Laocoon from the Pictorial Gallery of Arts, vol. 2 101
(London, 1847)

Figure 1.3: Detail of a page from the Denkmäler der Kunst (Stuttgart, 1845-56) with 101
engraved image of the Laocoon

Figure 1.4: Broadsheet with woodcut image from 1780 102

Figure 1.5: Cover of Penny Magazine with wood engraving of Raphael’s Madonna 102
of the Chair, signed John Jackson

Figure 1.6: Illustration from the Penny Magazine of the Egyptian Temple of Luxor 102

Figure 1.7: Illustration from the Penny Magazine of the Cave Temple at Elephanta 103
in India

Figure 1.8: Page from the Penny Magazine with illustration of the Dying Gladiator 103

Figure 1.9: Illustration of Notre Dame in Paris from the Penny Magazine 104

Figure 1.10: Illustration of Notre Dame from the Magasin pittoresque 104

Figure 1.11: Pages from Longman’s New Testament (London, 1865) with illustration 105
of Leonardo’s Last Supper

Figure 1.12: Leather binding of Longman’s New Testament with gilt design 105

Figure 1.13: Text page from the Pictorial Gallery of Arts 105

vi
Figure 1.14: Illustration page from the Pictorial Gallery of Arts with Leonardo’s 106
Last Supper

Figure 1.15: Cloth binding from Knight’s Pictorial Gallery of Arts 106

Figure 1.16: Example of Knight’s “Illuminated Print” process from the Pictorial 106
Gallery of Arts, vol. 1

Figure 1.17: Page of engraved images from the Denkmäler der Kunst 107

Figure 1.18: Page of wood-engraved images from the Pictorial Gallery of Arts 107

Figure 1.19: Paper wrapper from a later edition of the Pictorial Gallery of Arts 108

Figure 1.20: Illustration of Stonehenge from the Pictorial Gallery of Arts 108

Figure 1.21: J. M. W. Turner, Stonehenge, 1825-28, watercolor, Salisbury and South 108
Wiltshire Museum, Salisbury

Figure 1.22: John Constable, Stonehenge, 1836, watercolor, Victoria and Albert 109
Museum, London

Figure 1.23: Gilded design of Stonehenge from binding of Old England 109

Figure 1.24: “Advertisement” page from Old England with image of Stonehenge 109

Figure 1.25: Illustration of the Egyptian Temple of Edfu from the Pictorial Gallery 110
of Arts

Figure 2.1: Color lithograph of the Crystal Palace at Sydenham from Matthew Digby 174
Wyatt’s Views of the Crystal Palace (London, 1854)

Figure 2.2: Color print of the Manchester Art-Treasures Exhibition from the 174
Art-Treasures Examiner, 1857

Figure 2.3: Pages from the Egyptian Court Handbook for the Sydenham Crystal 174
Palace, 1854

Figure 2.4: Page from the Art-Treasures Examiner with wood engraving of 175
Constable’s Salisbury Cathedral

Figure 2.5: Page from James Fergusson’s Illustrated Handbook of Architecture 175
(London, 1855)

Figure 2.6: Color lithograph of the Prehistoric Animals Exhibit at the Sydenham 175
Crystal Palace from Wyatt’s Views

vii
Figure 2.7: Color lithograph of the Egyptian Court at the Sydenham Crystal Palace 176
from Wyatt’s Views

Figure 2.8: P. H. Delamotte, photograph of Abu Simbel figures at the Sydenham 176
Crystal Palace

Figure 2.9: Color lithograph of the Alhambra Court from Wyatt’s Views 176

Figure 2.10: Plan of the Alhambra Court, from the Crystal Palace Guidebook, 1879 177

Figure 2.11: Detail of color lithograph of the Greek Court from Wyatt’s Views 177

Figure 2.12: Detail of color lithograph of the Roman Court from Wyatt’s Views 177

Figure 2.13: P. H. Delamotte, photograph of the Italian Court at the Sydenham 178
Crystal Palace

Figure 2.14: General guidebook to the Sydenham Crystal Palace, 1854 178

Figure 2.15: Page from the Crystal Palace guidebook with wood engraving of the 178
Parthenon

Figure 2.16: Page from the Egyptian Court Handbook with translation of hieroglyphs 179

Figure 2.17: Color lithograph of the Pompeii Court from Wyatt’s Views 179

Figure 2.18: Color lithograph of the Assyrian Court from Wyatt’s Views 179

Figure 2.19: Wood engraving after a drawing by James Fergusson that appeared in 180
Palaces of Nineveh and Persepolis Restored (1851), the Assyrian Court
Handbook for the Sydenham Crystal Palace (1854), and the Illustrated Handbook
of Architecture (1855)

Figure 2.20: “Unpacking the Art-Treasures at the Exhibition Building, Manchester,” 180
from the Illustrated London News, 2 May 1857

Figure 2.21: Oscar Rejlander, Two Ways of Life, 1857, composite photograph 180

Figure 2.22: Illustration of Gainsborough’s Blue Boy in the Art-Treasures Examiner 181

Figure 2.23: Illustration of Leonardo’s Mona Lisa in the Art-Treasures Examiner 181

Figure 2.24: Page from Wilhelm Lübke’s Geschichte der Architektur (Leipzig, 1855) 181
with illustrations of the tomb of Ipsambul in Egypt

Figure 2.25: Page from Fergusson’s Illustrated Handbook of Architecture with 182
illustration of the Kailasanatha in Ellora, India, labeled as a sketch by
the author
viii
Figure 2.26: Page from Lübke’s Geschichte der Architecktur, 3rd ed. (1865) with 182
illustration of the Kailasanatha

Figure 2.27: Page from Fergusson’s Illustrated Handbook of Architecture with 183
image of Chartres Cathedral

Figure 2.28: Page from the English translation of Franz Kugler’s Handbook 183
of Painting (London, 1851) with image of Holbein’s Meyer Madonna

Figure 2.29: Page from Fergusson’s Illustrated Handbook with a detail view and plan 184
of the Mayan Palace in Zayi (Sayil)

Figure 2.30: View of the Kailasanatha, from Oriental Scenery, 1795-1808, drawn by 184
James Wales, engraved by and under the direction of Thomas Daniell,
hand-colored aquatint

Figure 2.31: View of Temple of Edfu, from Egypt and Nubia, 1846-49, drawn by 185
David Roberts, lithographed by Louis Haghe, hand-colored lithograph

Figure 2.32: Page from Fergusson’s handbook with illustration of the Temple of Edfu 185

Figure 2.33: Comparison of David Roberts’ Egypt and Nubia to Fergusson’s 186
handbook

Figure 3.1: Edouard Manet, The Railway, 1872-73, oil on canvas, National Gallery 245
of Art, Washington, D.C.

Figure 3.2: Detail of Manet’s The Railway 245

Figure 3.3: Paper cover from Louis Viardot’s Les Merveilles de la peinture 246

Figure 3.4: Pages from Viardot’s Les Merveilles de la peinture, with illustration 246
of Dürer’s Four Apostles, signed Paquier

Figure 3.5: Page from the Magasin pittoresque with illustration of Raphael’s 246
Portrait of Pope Leo X

Figure 3.6: Page with illustration of the Egyptian pyramids from Lucien Augé’s 247
Voyage aux sept merveilles du monde (1878)

Figure 3.7: Illustration of the Chateau of Fontainebleau from Les Merveilles de 247
l’architecture, Bibliothèque des Merveilles (1867) and Fontainebleau,
Guides Joanne (1867)

Figure 3.8: Illustration designed by Charles-François Daubigny, from Elisée 247
Reculs’ Londres illustré, Guides Joanne (1862)

ix
Figure 3.9: Illustration designed by Daubigny of Jean Goujon’s Tomb of Louis de 248
Brézé in Rouen Cathedral from Viardot’s Les Merveilles de la sculpture
(1869)

Figure 3.10: Detail of Daubigny’s signature from Fig. 3.9 248

Figure 3.11: Illustration of the Temple of Karnac from Lefèvre’s Les Merveilles de 248
l’architecture (1865), signed Alexandre de Bar

Figure 3.12: Illustration of the Kailasanatha at Ellora, India from Lefèvre’s Les 249
Merveilles de l’architecture, signed Bertrand

Figure 3.13: Illustration of the Treasury of Atreus and the Lion’s Gate in Mycenae 249
from Lefèvre’s Les Merveilles de l’architecture, signed Bertrand

Figure 3.14: Illustration of Rembrandt’s Night Watch from Viardot’s Les Merveilles 250
de la peinture, vol. 2 (1872), signed Paquier and J. Ansseau

Figure 3.15: Page with illustration of Egyptian sculptures from Viardot’s Les 250
Merveillede la sculpture

Figure 3.16: Illustration of prehistoric monuments from Les Merveilles de l’architecture 250

Figure 3.17: Illustration of the Erechtheum from Les Merveilles de l’architecture, 251
signed E. T.

Figure 3.18: Illustration of Hagia Sophia from Les Merveilles de l’architecture, signed 251
Cordier

Figure 3.19: Illustration of the Viaduc de Chaumont from Les Merveilles de 251
l’architecture

Figure 3.20: Frontispiece illustration of Titian’s St. Peter Martyr from Viardot’s Les 252
Merveilles de la peinture, vol. 1, signed Paquier

Figure 3.21: Size comparison of Knight’s Pictorial Gallery of Arts (left) and Viardot’s 252
Les Merveilles de la sculpture as an octodecimo.

Figure 3.22: Cloth cover of Les Merveilles de l’architecture 253

Figure 3.23: Folio volumes of Charles Blanc’s Histoire des peintres de toutes 253
les écoles

Figure 3.24: Page from Blanc’s Histoire des peintres de toutes les écoles with 253
Murillo’s Immaculate Conception

Figure 3.25: Pages from Les Merveilles de la sculpture with illustration of the Niobe 254
group, signed J. Petot
x
Figure 3.26: Paper cover of Le Meraviglie della pittura, Biblioteca delle Meraviglie 254
(Milan, 1874)

Figure 3.27: Cloth cover of Wonders of European Art (London, 1871) 255

Figure 3.28: Illustration of the Battle of Issus Mosaic from Pompeii from Les 255
Merveilles de la peinture, vol. 1, signed Paquier and Ettling

Figure 3.29: Illustration of the Battle of Issus from Le Meraviglie della pittura 255

Figure 3.30: Woodbury-type illustration of Holbein’s Meyer Madonna from The 256
Wonders of European Art (London, 1871)

Figure 3.31: Illustration of the Battle of Issus from N. D’Anvers’ Elementary 256
History of Art, 2nd ed. (1882), with electrotype plate cropped slightly on
both sides, signed Ettling (the signature of Paquier has been cropped out)

Figure 4.1: Edgar Degas, Mary Cassatt at the Louvre: The Etruscan Gallery, 1879-80, 310
etching, softground etching, drypoint, and aquatint

Figure 4.2: Digital photograph of the Man and Wife Sarcophagus, Etruscan, 310
6th century BCE, Louvre Museum, Paris

Figure 4.3: Illustration of the Man and Wife Sarcophagus from Charles Bayet’s Précis 311
d’histoire de l’art (Paris, 1886), signed Ch. Kreutzberger

Figure 4.4: Cover of Bayet’s Précis d’histoire de l’art with cloth binding 311

Figure 4.5: Illustration of a woodblock print by Hokusai from Bayet’s Précis 311

Figure 4.6: Edgar Degas, Mary Cassatt at the Louvre: The Paintings Gallary, 312
1879-80, etching

Figure 4.7: Page with drawn illustration of Donatello’s David from Bayet’s 313
Précis (1886)

Figure 4.8: Page with photographic illustration of Donatello’s David from Bayet’s 313
Précis (1908)

Figure 4.9: Page with drawn illustration of Velazquez’s Drinkers from Bayet’s 314
Précis (1886)

Figure 4.10: Page with photographic illustration of Velazquez’s Drinkers from 314
Bayet’s Précis (1908)

Figure 4.11: Page with photographic illustration of the Laocoon from Bayet’s 315
Précis (1908)

xi
Figure 4.12: Page with drawn illustration of the Agrippina from Bayet’s Précis 315
(1886)

Figure 4.13: Page with drawn illustration of the Colosseum from Bayet’s Précis 316
(1886)

Figure 4.14: Page with photographic illustration of the Colosseum from Bayet’s 316
Précis (1908)

Figure 5.1: Wood engraving of a woman sewing book pages together from Charles 370
Knight’s Pictorial Gallery of Arts, vol. 1 (1845)

Figure 5.2: Wood engraving designed by Harriet Ludlow Clarke, from Knight’s 370
Pictorial Gallery of Arts, vol. 2, of a detail from Raphael’s Marriage
of the Virgin, signed H. L. Clarke

Figure 5.3: Page with wood engraving of the Assyrian Winged Bulls from Fanny 371
Elizabeth Bunnètt’s translation of Wilhelm Lübke’s History of Art
(London, 1868)

Figure 5.4: Page from Nancy Bell’s Elementary History of Art (London, 1874) with 371
illustration of the Winged Bulls

Figure 5.5: Autotype illustration of Giotto’s Raizing of Lazarus fresco from the 372
Arena Chapel at Padua, as bound into Mary Margaret Heaton’s
Concise History of Art (London, 1873)

Figure 5.6: Pages from Wilhelm Lübke’s Grundriss der Kunstgeschichte 372
(Stuttgart, 1860)

Figure 5.7: Pages from Nancy Bell’s Elementary History of Art 373

Figure 5.8: Page from Bell’s Elementary History of Art with illustration of the Cave 373
Temple at Elephanta in India

Figure 5.9: Page from André Lefèvre’s Merveilles de l’architecture (Paris, 1865) 374
with illustration of the Chateau of Chenonceaux

Figure 5.10: Page from Bell’s Elementary History of Art (new ed. 1882) with same 374
illustration of Chenonceaux

Figure 5.11: Page from Bell’s Elementary History of Art (1874) with illustration 375
of a detail of the Column of Trajan

Figure 5.12: Page from Bell’s Elementary History of Art (new ed. 1882) with 375
illustration of the Column of Trajan

xii

Abstract

The field of art history has often been criticized for its elitism; its beginnings are most
commonly traced to German aesthetic theory that emerged in erudite circles of the nineteenth-
century university. Yet, this dissertation contends that art history was a significant part of
modern popular culture that was dramatically shaped by the rise of industrialization, mass
communication, railroad networks, global travel, and imperial expansion. Focusing on the
contexts of Britain and France between 1830 and 1900, I examine inexpensive illustrated
books and public exhibitions that provided historical overviews or “surveys” of art history for
non-specialist audiences. New printing and illustration technologies in the 1800s enabled the
production of affordable published surveys, while such books were widely distributed via
steamship and railroad lines across national and linguistic borders. Not only were art histories
sold in train stations as travel reading, but public exhibitions also enabled virtual travel to art
monuments around the world. My focus on art history’s popular developments opens onto a
constellation of issues. It enables a close analysis of modern reproductive technologies and
the wide variety of media in circulation (from wood engraving, to plaster casts, to
photography), while also addressing the significance of illustrations for teaching art history
and other fields of general education. It provides a means of tracing the development of art
canons in the context of global exploration and imperialism. In a period marked by intense
national rivalries, popular surveys reveal a parallel rise of internationalism, especially among a
growing cosmopolitan public with an interest in world art. Finally, a new consideration of
introductory art histories allows for recognition of the crucial contribution of nineteenth-
century women as art history educators.
1
Introduction

Modernity in the West is most often characterized by the rise of industrialization and
mechanization, the building of railroads and iron architecture, and the democratization of
education and print culture. What might come as some surprise is that art history—a field
often regarded as elitist and even insignificant in the numbers of people it engages—played a
role in these broader developments of modernity. In the nineteenth century, the history of art
became an important field of general education, disseminated to millions through penny
magazines, railroad libraries, and displays inside iron and glass crystal palaces. This
dissertation examines the broad popularization of art and its history in affordable illustrated
publications and public exhibitions in Britain and France between 1830 and 1900. I focus on
the illustrated art history “survey,” a genre defined in this period with the primary purpose of
introducing new audiences to the history of art. Though surveys are now usually identified
with illustrated books, the genre also encompassed related displays of art objects and plaster
casts in the nineteenth century. These survey books and displays traced the development of
artistic production from prehistoric and ancient eras to the modern period, presenting a canon
of art objects through their visual illustrations.
Where the history of the nineteenth century is largely told from distinctly national
perspectives, my focus on the illustrated survey highlights the international character of this
period. Surveys integrated Europe into a history of world civilizations; the canons they
created comprised objects from the Middle East, Asia, and Meso-America in addition to
ancient and modern Europe. Not only did these art histories cover much of the world—seen,
to be sure, through a Western European, imperialist lens—the surveys themselves also crossed
national and linguistic borders. On the one hand, published survey books produced by the
major houses of London and Paris circulated beyond Britain and France to Spain, Italy,
2
Poland, Russia, and the United States. Cheap, portable stereotype and electrotype plates
enabled the mass reproduction of the illustrations in these books and their reuse in later
editions and translations, thereby spreading the same images of famous artworks to a wide
cosmopolitan audience. On the other hand, commercially funded exhibitions organized as
surveys—including the Fine Arts Courts at the Sydenham Crystal Palace (opened 1854) and
the Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition (opened 1857)—attracted multi-national audiences
numbering not in the thousands, but in the millions. Focusing in particular on British and
French contexts in the nineteenth century, and the ways which they open onto more global
contexts, can reveal the crucial but still underappreciated popular origins of art history.
What made a history of art appealing for new audiences in this period? As popular
educator and publisher Charles Knight argued in his Penny Magazine (est. 1832) and in his
later survey The Pictorial Gallery of Arts (1845-47), art history constituted a subject of
“useful knowledge” for several reasons. First, it allowed people to engage with human history
through its material remains. In a period that saw a growing public fascination with history
broadly conceived—when archaeological digs became headline news events, historical theater
productions ran continuously sold-out shows, and historical novels became the bestsellers of
the day—art history emerged as a way for modern audiences to engage with eras past.
1
Works
of art were understood as a means to connect people to history, offering an imagined
experience of travel across time. Through illustrated histories of art, the public could be
transported to the prehistoric monoliths of Stonehenge, the ancient cave temples of India, or
the vast palaces of Assyria during biblical times.

1
On the rise of a popular interest in history in the 1800s, see Stephen Bann, Romanticism and the Rise
of History (New York: Twayne, 1995); Petra Chu, “Popular Culture in the Making: The Romantic
Craze for History,” in The Popularization of Images: Visual Culture under the July Monarchy
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 166-88; Maurice Samuels, The Spectacular Past:
Popular History and the Novel in Nineteenth-Century France (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004);
and Frederick Bohrer, Orientalism and Visual Culture: Imagining Mesopotamia in Nineteenth-Century
Europe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
3
Second, the development of art history—both in its popular and academic forms—was
intimately connected with the rise of travel in the nineteenth century.
2
In addition to
professional art historians making a living from their scholarship, a rapidly expanding non-
specialist public became interested in works of art as part of the travel experience.
3
With the
possibility of railroad and steamship travel, an exponentially larger number of people could
visit local museums and exhibitions as well as art found in distant places. The thriving
guidebook market in this period witnesses this burgeoning desire for travel to view works of
art. Travel guidebooks highlighted famous art landmarks among the “must-see” aspects of a
visit.
4
Even for audiences who could not afford to travel to see works of art in person, an
increasing number of illustrated publications, including art history surveys, provided
knowledge of these travel-worthy objects. In its connections to travel, art history became
more than a subject for professional scholarship, as it promised a source of enjoyment for the
actual and virtual voyager.
While serving to delight and distract, the history of art also offered nineteenth-century
audiences a means for self-betterment. Alongside John Ruskin’s internationally influential
ideas about how art could morally transform society, art history education emerged as a

2
On the boom in travel in the nineteenth century, see Jeffrey Alan Melton, Mark Twain, Travel Books,
and Tourism: The Tide of a Great Popular Movement (London: University of Alabama Press, 2002);
John Pemble, The Mediterranean Passion: Victorians and Edwardians in the South (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1987); and James Buzard, The Beaten Track: European Tourism, Literature, and the Ways to
Culture, 1800-1918 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993).

3
On the importance of travel for academic art historians in Germany, see Dan Karlholm, Art of Illusion:
The Representation of Art History in Nineteenth-Century Germany and Beyond (Berlin: Peter Lang,
2006), 141-82 and Gabriele Bickendorf, “The Berlin School and the Republic of Letters,” in Histoire de
l’histoire de l’art en France au XIXe siècle, ed. Roland Recht et al. (Paris: Documentation Française,
2008), 35-46.

4
Among the most widely disseminated guidebook collections, were those of Karl Baedeker, John
Murray, and Louis Hachette’s Guides Joanne. For further discussion of these series, see Chapters 2 and
3 of this dissertation.

4
parallel but independent means of social progress.
5
Non-specialists could learn, by studying
surveys of art history, to identify and appreciate standards of excellence in art. Edouard
Charton, editor of the French Magasin pittoresque (est. 1833) as well as a series of art history
surveys published in Paris, explained how learning the canons of art history offered an
appropriate basis for the appreciation of aesthetic beauty. Enhancing the taste for beauty—a
taste that Knight, Charton, and others argued could be learned—defined a direct route to a
pleasurable yet moral life. Rather than the highly specialized skills of connoisseurship, which
included making attributions and judging the quality of historical and contemporary art, the
study of canonical objects became a more manageable way for the public to acquire taste.
These uplifting benefits of art history were by no means mutually exclusive with the field’s
more amusing elements; rather, for nineteenth-century audiences, a “useful” art history
encompassed both edification and entertainment.
In addition to a field of study for the wealthy collector, the studious connoisseur, and
the professional scholar, art history became a subject of interest to a much broader audience in
the nineteenth century. As I show in the following pages, this audience included literate
mothers seeking to teach their children about history and beauty, skilled craftsmen expanding
their knowledge through self-instruction, railroad travelers passing the time on a journey, and
visitors spending a day of leisure at a pleasure palace. Art history was as much for “the
people,” Knight provocatively claimed, as it was for the elite.
6
This populist attitude
continued to develop throughout the century. Nancy Bell’s Elementary History of Art, an
illustrated survey published in London in 1874, described a growing demand for art history
education:

5
On Ruskin’s influence and ideas, see Linda Dowling, The Vulgarization of Art: The Victorians and
Aesthetic Democracy (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1996).

6
See advertisement for Knight’s Pictorial World series in The Times (London), 3 Mar. 1845, 2.

5
At a time, when some knowledge of painting and architecture, of statues and of music,
is becoming indispensable to those who desire to share in the culture of the day—
when the architecture of public and private buildings is constantly attracting
attention—when the galleries of this country are being thrown open to the public—
and when many thousands of our countrymen and countrywomen visit the Continent
each year—the History of Art has a great claim to be studied.
7

For Bell, learning art’s history provided a primary means for the public to “share in the culture
of the day.” According to Bell’s preface, this demand for art history was not restricted to the
most educated or financially endowed art lovers, or the “foremost” scholars, but instead
defined an emphatically “popular movement.”
8

My focus on art history’s popular origins provides perspective on a number of issues.
For example, it raises questions about the boundaries of art history as a developing field. Was
“art history” the same as a “history of art” or a “history of art objects” in the nineteenth
century? How did studying the chronological and geographical developments of art
production differ from the study of world history, the history of civilization, or archaeology?
How did art’s history intersect with histories of nature and science, of the bible and religion,
and of national heritage? In a context beyond the university—where separate scholarly
disciplines were only just being defined and institutionalized—these various fields of popular
knowledge remained more porous and interwoven. This dissertation examines “art history”
and “the history of art” not as pre-determined and discrete categories, but as fluid concepts in
the process of being defined; at the same time, it seeks to highlight art history’s
interdisciplinary—or rather, proto-disciplinary—beginnings.
Viewing the history of art within the context of the illustrated survey, moreover,
demands an ongoing engagement with art’s canons. How do such canons form? Is it through
consensus on the part of respected scholars or the collection of certain objects by renowned

7
Nancy Bell (as N. D’Anvers), Elementary History of Art (London: Asher and Co, 1874), xii.

8
Ibid., x.
6
museums? Or is it through the repetition and circulation of these objects in the form of
copies? While canons of recognized masterpieces were nothing new in the nineteenth century,
the introduction of general art history surveys in this period solidified the notion of a single
canon of art history. Bringing together art from a variety of museum collections and from
locations around the world, surveys consolidated these works into a general canon, which they
then circulated through their widely accessible illustrated formats. In the chapters that follow,
I investigate the changing shape of this general canon, while I also take on the issues of canon
construction itself.

Histories of Art History: A More Complete Picture
Art historians commonly trace the origins of their discipline to erudite academic
circles in nineteenth-century Germany. After Giorgio Vasari and J. J. Winckelmann, the most
recognized modern founders of art history are German-speaking men, such as G. W. F. Hegel,
Franz Kugler, Jacob Burckhardt, and Heinrich Wölfflin, who were university trained and who
subsequently taught art history in institutions of higher education.
9
A number of recent studies
have questioned this Germanic focus while acknowledging the international foundations of art
history. Scholarship on the early modern period has examined how connoisseurs, collectors,

9
Such institutions included universities, as well as art and architecture academies and polytechnic
institutes. Burckhardt, for example, taught art history at the Polytechnic Institute in Zurich. The
literature on these and other German-speaking academic art historians in the nineteenth century (Johann
Fiorillo, Wilhelm Lübke, Anton Springer, Gustav Waagen, Alois Riegl) is vast. See, for instance,
Heinrich Dilly, Kunstgeschichte als Institution: Studien zur Geschichte einer Disziplin (Frankfurt am
Main: Suhrkamp, 1979); Michael Podro, The Critical Historians of Art (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1982); Wilhelm Waetzoldt, Deutsche Kunsthistoriker (Berlin: Spiess, 1986); Hubert Locher,
“Das ‘Handbuch der Kunstgeschichte”: Die Vermittlung kunsthistorischen Wissens als Anleitung zum
ästhetischen Urteil,” in Memory & Oblivion, eds. Wessel Reinink and Jeroen Stumpel (Boston: Kluwer
Academic Publishers, 1999), 69-87; Karlholm, Art of Illusion; Karen Lang, Chaos and Cosmos: On the
Image in Aesthetics and Art History (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006); and María Ocón
Fernández, “Handbook, Outline, or Textbook of Art History? The Emergence of German Art and
Architecture and the Relationship Between Image and Text,” in Imag(in)ing Architecture: Iconography
in Nineteenth-Century Architectural Historical Publications, ed. Zsuzsanna Borocz and Luc Verpoest
(Leuven: Acco, 2008), 72-91.

7
and dealers from various European nations influenced art historical practice. For example,
studies devoted to the Italian collector Sebastiano Resta and the French dealer Edme-François
Gersaint have expanded the historiographic lens to consider wider European communities of
art historical scholarship.
10

Scholarship concerning art history in the nineteenth century has likewise questioned
the designation of Germany as the exclusive site for art history’s disciplinary beginnings.
Lyne Therrien, for instance, has provided the first comprehensive study of the field’s
academic developments in France, while Craig Hugh Smyth and Peter Lukehart examine
similar disciplinary beginnings in the United States.
11
Gabriele Bickendorf directly challenges
Germany’s leadership in art history, arguing that this leadership was actively constructed by
German-speaking academics in the nineteenth century.
12
Bickendorf describes how these
scholars suppressed contributions from foreign art historians, creating the “myth” of art
history as a predominantly German discipline. To be sure, the state-supported infrastructure
for art history scholarship—including the founding of public art museums that worked in close
concert with academic departments to train professional art historians—was more advanced at
mid-century in German-speaking regions than elsewhere in Europe. This infrastructure
undoubtedly contributed to the amount and quality of art historical scholarship produced in
German. Yet, Bickendorf seeks to retrieve the influences of “a cosmopolitan republic of

10
See, for example, Genevieve Warwick, The Arts of Collecting: Padre Sebastiano Resta and the
Market for Drawings in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000);
Andrew McClellan, “Watteau’s Dealer: Gersaint and the Marketing of Art in Eighteenth-Century
Paris,” Art Bulletin 78, no. 3 (1996): 439-53; and Guillaume Glorieux, A L’Enseigne de Gersaint:
Edme-François Gersaint, marchand d’art sur le Pont Notre-Dame, 1694-1750 (Seyssel: Champ Vallon,
2002), as well as Christopher Baker, Caroline Elam, and Genevieve Warwick, eds., Collecting Prints
and Drawings in Europe 1500-1750, (Brookfield, VT: Ashgate, 2003).

11
Lyne Therrien, L’Histoire de l’art en France: genèse d’un discipline universitaire (Paris: Editions du
CTHS, 1998) and Craig Hugh Smyth and Peter M. Lukehart, The Early Years of Art History in the
United States: Notes and Essays on Departments, Teaching, and Scholars (Princeton: Department of
Art and Archaeology, 1993).

12
Bickendorf, “The Berlin School and the Republic of Letters.”
8
letters” on German art historians and thereby to demonstrate the trans-national profile of
nineteenth-century art history.
Still missing from this picture is recognition that these significant international origins
of art history were not limited to elite circles of academics, collectors, and connoisseurs.
Rather, the field of art history simultaneously emerged within a popular culture of cheap
publications and public exhibitions. At the very moment when state-supported museums and
art history programs were first established in Germany, private endeavors in other European
nations disseminated art historical knowledge to a broad audience. In Britain, starting in the
1830s, the technology of wood engraving enabled the production of affordable illustrated art
history publications, a development exploited by the leading publishers of London. By the
1850s, private companies of British businessmen were funding large-scale exhibitions that put
art history on display for a socially and culturally diverse audience. In France, art history
books became a new choice for railroad reading in the 1860s, while the cheap art histories on
sale in French train stations were translated and circulated throughout the West.
To this day, the collaborative (and competing) institutions of the academy and the
museum continue to frame historiographic studies of the field, as Charles Haxhausen’s edited
volume The Two Art Histories: The Museum and the University demonstrates.
13
This
dissertation proposes that a third art history deserves attention. Alongside publicly funded
museums and university departments, private commercially driven projects—including both
publications and exhibitions—promoted the study of art history in the nineteenth century.
These projects reached out to the broadest audiences, as they had economic stakes in such a
general appeal; their financial success depended on it. And, unlike the resolutely nationalist
concerns of museums and universities, these private endeavors were often international in

13
Charles Haxhausen, ed., The Two Art Histories: The Museum and the University (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2002).

9
orientation.
14
Publishers from multiple countries worked in conjunction to circulate art history
books to the widest audiences possible, while exhibition organizers sought to lure both foreign
and native visitors to buy tickets to view their displays. Looking beyond the narratives of the
German nationalist and academic beginnings of art history, this dissertation demonstrates that
the field was also constructed through international networks of popular culture.

Surveying the Field: A Portable, Affordable, and Trans-National Genre

The rise of the general survey as a genre proved central to art history’s development
and popularization.
15
Although earlier scholarship provided broad studies of art history across
particular periods, including Winckelmann’s Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums (Dresden,
1764) and Séroux d’Agincourt’s Histoire de l’art par les monuments (Paris, 1811-23), these
publications cannot be classified as general surveys.
16
Winckelmann’s book covered only
ancient art of Egypt, Greece, and Rome, while d’Agincourt’s work discussed the art of the
Middle Ages. In contrast, surveys written in the nineteenth century sought to cover the history

14
On the nationalist ideals of these institutions, see Bickendorf; Karlholm; Therrien; Andrew
McClellan, Inventing the Louvre: Art, Politics, and the Origins of the Modern Museum in Eighteenth-
Century Paris (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994); Carol Duncan and Alan Wallach, “The
Universal Survey Museum,” Art History 3, no. 4 (1980): 448-69; and Douglas Crimp, “The End of Art
and the Origin of the Museum,” Art Journal 46, no. 4 (1987): 261-66.

15
It was only much later that “the survey” became the primary means of describing an introductory
lecture course of art history. I use the term “genre” here as a specific literary form enabled by historical
conditions that addresses a particular desire in its audience. While such genres are not fixed or stable,
and continue to evolve over time, they can be identified by these criteria. On this definition, see
Barbara Benedict, Making the Modern Reader: Cultural Mediation in Early Modern Literary
Anthologies (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996): 14-15.

16
Johann Joachim Winckelmann, Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums (Dresden: Waltherisch, 1764)
and J. B. L. G. Séroux d’Agincourt, Histoire de l’art par les monuments depuis sa décadence au IVe
siècle jusqu’à son renouvellement au XVI (Paris: Treuttel et Wurtz, 1811-23).

10
of art in “all times and all places.”
17
Indeed, the category of “art” expanded in the 1800s to
include not only ancient and modern Europe, but also new areas and eras, such as prehistoric
periods and the ancient cultures of Assyria, Central America, and India. In this expanded
field, the global survey of art history emerged in the form it continues to take today.
However, objects still considered to be of ethnographic rather than aesthetic value in the
nineteenth century, such as African masks or Native American carvings, remained outside the
purview of nineteenth-century surveys.
Several recent studies have identified Franz Kugler’s Handbuch der Kunstgeschichte
(1840) as the first general survey of world art history.
18
Kugler’s handbook included 900
pages of written narrative outlining the history of art from prehistoric and ancient eras to the
present day. However, Kugler’s survey was not illustrated. I argue, in contrast, that the
survey genre came into its own only after the inclusion of images within the textual narrative,
a change that occurred not in Germany, but in Britain with the publication of Charles Knight’s
Pictorial Gallery of Arts. My first chapter of this examines Knight’s Pictorial Gallery as a
key work in defining the survey as a distinctly visual genre.
Of course, Knight’s book was not the first illustrated history of art, a claim that could
be made for Vasari’s 1568 edition of the Lives of the Artists. This second edition included
woodcut portraits of the artists featured in Vasari’s history of Renaissance art.
19
Other

17
For example, see James Fergusson’s Illustrated Handbook of Architecture: Being a Concise and
Popular Account of the Different Styles of Architecture Prevailing in All Ages and Countries (London:
John Murray, 1855).

18
See, for instance, Karlholm; Bradford R. Collins, “Rethinking the Introductory Art History Survey,”
Art Journal 54, no. 3 (1995): 23; Mitchell Schwarzer, “Origins of the Art History Survey Text,” Art
Journal 54, no. 3 (1995): 24-29; Robert Nelson, “Living on the Byzantine Borders of Western Art,”
Gesta 35, no. 1 (1996): 3-11; Locher, “Das ‘Handbuch der Kunstgeschichte;” and Fernández,
“Handbook, Outline, or Textbook of Art History?”

19
On Vasari’s second edition as an illustrated history of art, see Patricia Rubin, Giorgio Vasari: Art and
History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995) and Sharon Gregory, “‘The Outer Man Tends to be
a Guide to the Inner’: The Woodcut Portraits in Vasari’s Lives as Parallel Texts,” in The Rise of the
11
influential art histories, including Winckelmann’s Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums and
d’Agincourt’s Histoire de l’art par les monuments, were also published with illustrations.
Winckelmann’s book incorporated a few dozen engravings, mostly head- and tailpieces
depicting the iconography of well-known gems and reliefs, which would have been
recognizable to the antiquarians who were Winckelmann’s original audience.
20
D’Agincourt’s
six-volume Histoire comprised three volumes of delicately engraved plates depicting the
architecture, sculpture, and painting of the Middle Ages.
21
Knight’s book, in contrast to these
earlier publications, joined the general survey narrative with a comprehensive set of
illustrations in a cheap and accessible format.
Following upon precedents set in Knight’s publication, the illustrated survey quickly
became a primary means for new audiences to visualize the history of art. Not only did this
genre offer a broad sweep of history, it also brought that history before the eyes of the public.
In this, the word “survey” described both an over-view, as in a quick summary of the topic,
and an over-view, as in a visual presentation of this summary. My second chapter discusses
the use of the term “survey” in art history, which, I argue, first emerged in the context of
James Fergusson’s handbook of architecture at mid century.
22

Image: Essays on the History of the Illustrated Art Book, ed. Rodney Palmer and Thomas Frangenberg
(Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003), 51-85.

20
On Winckelmann’s book as an illustrated collector’s volume and other eighteenth-century illustrated
art books—including those of d’Hancarville, Montfaucon, and Caylus—see François Lissarrague and
Marcia Reed, “The Collector’s Books,” Journal of the History of Collections 9, no. 2 (1997): 277. For
a list of the illustrations in the volume, see Winckelmann, History of the Art of Antiquity, trans. Harry
Francis Mallgrave (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2006), 81-85.

21
On d’Agincourt’s work as crucial for the development of illustrated art histories, see Daniela
Mondini, Mittelalter im Bild: Seroux d’Agincourt und die Kunsthistoriographie um 1800 (Zurich:
Zurich InterPublishers, 2005) and Henri Loyrette, “Séroux d’Agincourt et les origines de l’histoire de
l’art médiéval,” Revue de l’art 48 (1980): 40-56.

22
The term, therefore, was employed during the 1800s to describe books of this type and function.
However, many other terms also described this genre during the period, including, in English,
“handbook,” “elementary history,” and “concise history,” and in French, “précis” and “histoire
12
The notion of the “handbook” of art history, another common designation for
published surveys, points in particular to the availability of art history for new audiences. By
the 1850s, art history was placed literally “in the hands” of the public in a new way. Rather
than lining the shelves of a gentleman’s library, these new art history handbooks could be
stored in a small urban apartment and easily transported for reading “on the go.” Not only did
these compact and portable books become pocket volumes for railroad reading, they were also
increasingly affordable. Unlike the luxury, multi-volume publications that long predominated
for art histories, including d’Agincourt’s six-volume work that cost at least 600 francs, these
new general surveys could be obtained for as little as a few shillings or francs. In 1860s
London, a loaf of bread was around 8 pence (d) or 2/3 of a shilling (s), as there were 12 pence
in a shilling. Or, as one scholar has calculated, 1 shilling in the mid-nineteenth century was
around £1.75 or $3.50 in today’s currency, making the price of these surveys between $7 and
$10 today.
23
Based on exchange rates in business contracts from the period, 1 shilling was
around 1.25 francs (F) in value. Such a cost was easily affordable for a middle class family,
whose income averaged around 150 shillings per month, whereas a maid, whose income was
closer to 20 shillings per month, might have to spend a full fifth of her earnings to afford this
purchase.
The art history survey has rarely been the subject of serious scholarship, perhaps
because of its status as an introductory, didactic genre. Yet, recent studies by Robert Nelson,
James Elkins, and others have examined surveys as sites for the institutional critique of art

générale.” Throughout this dissertation, I discuss the range of such descriptors for the survey. Despite
this variety of terms, however, these books all functioned as surveys, providing brief histories of art
with exemplary illustrations.

23
See Paul Goldman, Victorian Illustrated Books, 1850-1870: The Heyday of Wood Engraving
(London: British Museum Press, 1994), 40 and 66. See also Alexis Weedon, Victorian Publishing: The
Economics of Book Production for a Mass Market, 1836-1916 (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003), 114.
13
history.
24
Nelson has reviewed surveys from the nineteenth century on, examining the
position of Byzantine art as it was either included within or ostracized from the Western
tradition. Through surveys, Nelson highlights the ideological construction of art history’s
“maps” and boundaries.
25
Elkins has similarly employed surveys as evidence of the enduring
Western biases of art history.
26
Even as the field continues to expand its purview to cover ever
more cultures and traditions, it remains, Elkins argues, a Western discipline of study. Looking
comparatively at the number of surveys issued in the West versus the few from other global
regions, Elkins convincingly concludes that the survey genre reveals a Euro-American control
of art history.
In the majority of this insightful scholarship, the history of the survey as a genre is
traced solely to nineteenth-century Germany. Nelson, for instance, cites the German surveys
of Hegel, Kugler, Schnaase, Lübke, and Springer, while Elkins mentions only Hegel’s work
before moving to Gombrich’s Story of Art, Gardner’s Art Through the Ages, and other
twentieth-century publications.
27
My project demonstrates in contrast that the beginnings of
the survey genre were by no means limited to Germany; rather, the nineteenth-century survey
was resoundingly cross-cultural in its developments, with surveys emerging in the majority of
European countries and in the U.S. This explosion of the survey genre in the 1800s provides a

24
See Nelson, “Living on the Byzantine Borders” and “The Map of Art History,” Art Bulletin 79, no. 1
(1997): 28-40; and James Elkins, Stories of Art (New York: Routledge, 2002) and “Canon and
Globalization in Art History,” in Partisan Canons, ed. Anna Brzyski (Durham: Duke University Press,
2007), 55-78. See also Patricia Hills, “Art History Textbooks: The Hidden Persuaders,” Artforum 14
(1976): 58-61; Collins; Schwarzer; Mark Miller Graham, “The Future of Art History and the Undoing
of the Survey,” Art Journal 54, no. 3 (1995): 30-34; and Kymberly N. Pinder, “Black Representation
and Western Survey Textbooks,” Art Bulletin 81, no. 3 (1999): 533-38.

25
Nelson, “Living on the Byzantine Borders” and “The Map of Art History.”

26
Elkins, Stories of Art.

27
Nelson, “Living on the Byzantine Borders,” and Elkins, Stories of Art.

14
unique lens for studying the development of the Western field of art history, especially the
standardization and dissemination of its objects of study.

Canons, Copies, and Circulation
During the nineteenth century, access to knowledge about the history of art and its
canons of masterpieces expanded dramatically. This was due in large part to the opening of
public museums, which put the most valued and famed objects on display for both specialist
and non-specialist audiences. An expanding access to art history also grew out of the
increased circulation of copies after these same famous works. As Walter Benjamin has
pointed out, the 1800s saw a boom of new technologies for reproducing art—from
lithography, to photography, to film.
28
Beyond the media discussed by Benjamin, an even
wider variety of reproductive media proliferated at the time, including wood engravings, new
techniques of plaster casting, electrotyping of both prints and sculpture, and the plethora of
photomechanical techniques that developed in the final decades of the century.
Of course, copying and disseminating masterpieces of art has been in practice since
antiquity, while prints and casts, as well as painted and sculpted copies, were all in circulation
long before the nineteenth century. However, access to these copies was often limited to
particular groups in the early modern period. Artists employed them as teaching tools and
source materials, especially in art academies; copies after prints and casts have long been
central elements of academic art education.
29
Wealthy collectors purchased albums of

28
Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” in Illuminations, ed.
Hannah Arendt (New York: Schocken Books, 1968), 217-51.

29
On the role of prints in the training of Renaissance artists, see Lisa Pon, Raphael, Dürer, and
Marcantonio Raimondi (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004). The best-known examples of casts
in art academies were those in Florence, Paris, and London, but other European and American art
schools had extensive cast collections as well. See Betsy Fahlman, “A Plaster of Paris Antiquity:
Nineteenth-Century Cast Collections,” Southeastern College Art Conference Review 12, no. 1 (1991): 3
15
engravings, architectural models, or sculptural casts that copied famous works of art.
30

Aristocrats on the Grand Tour, for example, defined one of the most avid groups of such
collectors.
31
Eighteenth-century scholars such as Winckelmann, Lessing, and Goethe likewise
based their art writings on copies more often than originals, accessing them above all in
private libraries. But the collecting of such copies remained expensive, as the copies
themselves amounted to luxury art objects.
In the nineteenth century, however, copies after art objects became items available for
consumption by a general public. For the low price of a few shillings or francs, people could
purchase an illustrated art history survey with images of many canonical objects brought
together in one compact format. They could take this book and its collection of images into
their home, owning it for their personal, private, and continuous use. Or, for a single
shilling—the same price as a ticket to the Panorama in Leicester Square or an installment of a
Charles Dickens’ novel—visitors to the Sydenham Crystal Palace could access displays of
plaster casts after art objects from around the world. For just a half-shilling more, they could
buy an illustrated guidebook to the palace that would educate them about the art historical
importance of the exhibition’s displays. Copies of art were no longer exclusively art objects
themselves, but instead became objects of popular culture.

and James K. McNutt, “Plaster Casts After Antique Sculpture: Their Role in the Elevation of Public
Taste and in American Art Instruction,” Studies in Art Education 31, no. 3 (1990): 158-67.

30
On the collection of print albums, see Francis Haskell, The Painful Birth of the Art Book (New York:
Thames and Hudson, 1987). On that of architectural models, see Werner Szambien, Le Musée
d’architecture (Paris: Picard, 1988). On collecting casts, see Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny,
Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture, 1500-1900 (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1981) and McNutt, 159-61.

31
See Lissarrague and Reed, 276-77 and Clare Hornsby, The Impact of Italy: The Grand Tour and
Beyond (London: British School of Rome, 2000).

16
Moreover, illustrated surveys—both in books and on display—uniquely presented a
collective canon of copies to their diverse audiences. For the first time, hundreds of
thousands, even millions of viewers experienced the same collections of art history images
and objects, including art from a variety of famous museums and from sites around the globe.
Such repetition and circulation of art history canons has shaped the field in dramatic ways. As
art historian Robert Jensen attests, canons are above all “forms of consensus built up over
time.”
32
Nineteenth-century surveys allow us trace the layers of this consensus in art history.
While art canons often claim to be based principally on qualitative judgments, and thereby to
present the “best” works in existence, they are just as much quantitatively constructed. Jensen
and psychologist James Cutting convincingly argue that repeated exposure has done the most
for the creation of art canons, a development manifested especially in the dissemination of
popular surveys.
33

Illustrating Art’s History

Among art historians, the most recognized medium for the repeated exposure of
canonical art objects has been photography. A consensus of recent scholars—including
Robert Nelson, Ivan Gaskell, Frederick Bohrer, and Helene E. Roberts—sees the birth of
modern art history in the possibility of photographic reproduction.
34
The history of art, in

32
Robert Jensen, “Measuring Canons: Reflections on Innovation and the Nineteenth-Century Canon of
European Art,” in Partisan Canons, ed. Anna Brzyski (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007), 28.

33
Jensen ibid., and James Cutting, “Mere Exposure, Reproduction, and the Impressionist Canon,” in
Partisan Canons, 79. See also Michael Camille, “Prophets, Canons, and Promising Monsters,” Art
Bulletin 78, no. 2 (1996): 198-201.

34
See Robert Nelson, “The Slide Lecture, or the Work of Art ‘History’ in the Age of Mechanical
Reproduction,” Critical Inquiry 26, no. 3 (2000): 415; Ivan Gaskell, Vermeer’s Wager: Speculations on
Art History, Theory, and Art Museums (London: Reaktion, 2000), 16; Frederick Bohrer, “Photographic
Perspectives: Photography and the Institutional Formation of Art History,” in Art History and Its
Institutions: Foundations of a Discipline (New York: Routledge, 2002), 246; and Helene E. Roberts,
“Preface,” in Art History Through the Camera’s Lens (Amsterdam: Gordon and Breach, 1995). On
17
André Malraux’s now famous words, has been “the history of that which can be
photographed.”
35
In contrast, other reproductive media that introduced large publics to art
history in the 1800s—particularly wood-engraved illustrations and plaster casts—are often
dismissed as the archaic precursors to the more successful technology of photography.
William Ivins wrote in the 1950s that wood engravings were “little more than travesties of the
objects they purported to represent.”
36
Cast collections that once dominated the spending
budgets and exhibition spaces of museums throughout Europe and North America now
resonate as quaint curiosities of an earlier era, which have been largely relegated to
storerooms, hallways, and trash-bins.
37
Malcolm Baker has written on the “reproductive
continuum” of the nineteenth century, emphasizing the broad spectrum of media crucial to art

photography’s importance in art history, see also William Ivins, Prints and Visual Communications
(Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1969; original edition 1953); Estelle Jussim, Visual Communication
and the Graphic Arts: Photographic Technologies in the Nineteenth Century (New York: R. R. Bowker,
1974); Dilly, Kunstgeschichte als Institution, 149-60; H. B. Leighton, “The Lantern Slide in Art
History,” History of Photography 8, no. 2 (1984): 107-18; Wolfgang M. Freitag, “Early Uses of
Photography in the History of Art,” Art Journal 39, no. 2 (1979-80): 117-23; Trevor Fawcett, “Graphic
versus Photographic in the Nineteenth-Century Reproduction,” Art History, 9, no. 2 (1986): 185-212;
Anne McCauley, “Art Reproduction for the Masses,” in Industrial Madness (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1994), 265-300; and Anthony Hamber, “‘A Higher Branch of the Art:’ Photographing
the Fine Arts in England 1839-1880 (Amsterdam: Gordon and Breach, 1996).

35
André Malraux, “Museum without Walls,” in Voices of Silence, trans. Stuart Gilbert (Garden City,
NY: Doubleday, 1953), 30.

36
Ivins, 39.

37
By 1890, the Royal Museum of Berlin had acquired 2, 271 casts, the University Museum at
Strasbourg had 819, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston had 777. See Fahlman, 8. A few
institutions have restored and exhibited their nineteenth-century cast collections, including the Victoria
and Albert Museum in London, the Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine in Paris, the Slater Memorial
Museum of Art in Norwich, Connecticut, and Yale University’s collection, which is now dispersed
throughout Paul Rudolph Hall. On this revived interest in cast collections, see Malcolm Baker, The
Cast Courts, Victoria & Albert Museum Pamphlet (London: V&A Museum, 1982), online at
www.vam.ac.uk and Actes des rencontres internationales sur les moulages (Montpellier: Université
Montpellier III, 1999). The most recent conference dedicated to the study and history of plaster casts
was held at the V&A Museum, 12-13 March 2010.

18
historical scholarship.
38
Other recent studies, such as the work of Stephen Bann and Ségolène
Le Men, have likewise recognized the print technologies working in concert with photography
to shape art history.
39
This dissertation builds on such studies, arguing that casts and printed
illustrations did as much as photography to define art history’s canons of objects and methods
of instruction in the critical years of the nineteenth century.
While they served in part as reproductions of original objects, printed images and
plaster casts specifically enabled the illustration of art’s history in the 1800s. Coupled with
textual explications more often than photographs, which long remained expensive to publish
in books alongside text, these non-photographic media functioned more effectively in the
context of the nineteenth-century illustrated survey. Published surveys predominantly
included printed images—most often wood engravings—inserted within the text, allowing the
history of art to unfold both visually and verbally for readers. The plaster cast collections at
Sydenham were accompanied with textual descriptions in the form of hand-held guidebooks,
which themselves included wood-engraved illustrations within their pages. Illustration in the
context of these surveys, moreover, closely aligned with their instructional purposes. When

38
Malcolm Baker, “The Reproductive Continuum: Plaster Casts, Photographs, Paper Mosaics, and
Alternative Modes of Reproduction in the Nineteenth-Century Museum,” in Plaster Casts: Making,
Collecting, and Displaying from Antiquity to the Present, eds. Rune Fredericksen and Eckart Marchand
(Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2009). In addition to casts and photographs, watercolor copies of stained
glass, paper mosaics after the mosaics of Ravenna and Rome, architectural models, and electrotypes of
sculpture.

39
See Stephen Bann, Parallel Lines: Printmakers, Painters, and Photographers in Nineteenth-Century
France (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001) and Ségolène Le Men, “Trois regards sur le
Laocoon: la caricature selon Daumier, la photographie selon Braun, le livre d’histoire de l’art selon
Ivins,” in Le Laocoon, eds. Décultot, Le Rider, and Queyrel, 195-220. Robert Nelson makes similar
arguments regarding the canonical status of one specific monument—Hagia Sophia—which was
constructed in the nineteenth century by the circulation of copies in the form of color lithographs,
illustrated volumes, and painted panoramas, as much as by photographs. See Nelson, Hagia Sophia
1850-1950: Holy Wisdom Modern Monument (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004). To his
credit, Trevor Fawcett provides one of the most detailed discussions available of the range of media in
the period, although he concludes with an assertion of the revolutionary impact of photography. See
Fawcett, “Graphic versus Photographic.”

19
describing the Sydenham cast courts, for instance, organizers of the displays repeatedly
insisted on their illustrative role in the visual education of art history.
Yet, the word “illustration” now has negative connotations in the fields of history and
art history. Works of art that serve as illustrations are traditionally of the lowest value for art
historians, as they are thought incapable of creating “their own discourse rather than merely
exemplifying [a] text’s.”
40
Likewise, with the pictorial turn in history, scholarship that treats
images as “mere illustrations” of historical realities is now seen as retrograde.
41
In this
dissertation, I demonstrate that there was nothing “mere” about illustrations in nineteenth-
century art history. Even today, the role of illustrations in art historical scholarship—both in
presentations accompanied with digital slides and publications packed with visual images that
illustrate the arguments—is unquestionably central. Beyond photography and the supposed
reproductive revolution that medium brought to art history, the crucial function of art history’s
illustrations across a range of media needs to be acknowledged.
I invoke the notion of “illustration” here specifically to encompass the complex
relationship of images, texts, and objects at work in nineteenth-century art history surveys.
The printed images in published surveys, for instance, exist within a context of written
historical narratives and therefore serve to “illustrate” that narrative through visual examples.
At the same time, however, these images have a representational relationship to the original
art objects they depict. Even when dramatically abstracted through their lack of color and
linear rendering, these images still refer directly to existing art objects. One might say they
illustrate these objects, and in turn, these objects themselves illustrate the written narratives of

40
Rodney Palmer and Thomas Frangenberg, The Rise of the Image: Essays on the History of the
Illustrated Art Book, 1. This volume takes the function of illustrations in art history seriously in ways
few studies do, although its focus is limited to books on Italian art.

41
On this pictorial turn, see Peter Burke, Eyewitnessing: The Uses of Images as Historical Evidence
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001).
20
art history. To complicate things further, plaster casts, like those at Sydenham, existed within
an object-object-text-image relationship; the casts were themselves three-dimensional objects
linked, on the one hand, to the absent originals, and on the other, to the written texts and
printed illustrations that appeared in guidebooks for the palace. While “reproductions” tend to
be more narrowly determined by image-object correspondences, “illustrations” can resonate
with art history’s networks of verbal, visual, and material media.
The theoretical approach of semiotics offers some useful tools for conceptualizing the
word-image relationships in art history. The work of Norman Bryson and Mieke Bal, for
instance, employs semiotics to examine the visual-verbal hybridities of painting.
42
Beyond art
history, W. J. T. Mitchell’s numerous studies examine text-image dialectics in a trans-
historical context, arguing for the central significance of these dialectics to the development of
Western culture.
43
While such scholarship has connected the word-image formats of surveys
to broader debates in art history and other related fields, it falls short of providing a method to
analyze the specific role of illustration in art history. As they operate in surveys, illustrations
cannot be reduced to text-image dialogues. Louis Marchesano, in contrast, investigates
illustrations as “visual resources” in art history, an approach that reaches “far beyond the
somewhat tired text/image conundrum.”
44
He defines illustrations as “a class of images which
reproduce works of art and facilitate the study of those works.”
45
In other words, he focuses

42
Norman Bryson, Word and Image: French Painting of the Ancien Régime (New York: Cambridge
University, 1981); Mieke Bal, Reading “Rembrandt”: Beyond the Word-Image Opposition
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).

43
See, for example, W. J. T. Mitchell, Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1986) and Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1994).

44
Louis Marchesano, “Introduction,” Visual Resources, Special Issue on Illustrations as Visual
Resources 17, no. 1 (2001): xvi.

45
Ibid.

21
on the functionality of illustrations, as didactic tools that mediate between viewers, original
objects, and interpretive texts, a definition particularly useful in the context of art history
surveys.
However, beyond dealing with text-image questions, semiotics also offers an
important recognition of the many layers of meaning that can exist in cultural forms.
46
Even
within a pocket-sized survey, the density of signs at work is often staggering—from the
thousands of words, to the hundreds of images, to the multitude of art objects invoked by these
printed words and images. The conceptual connections between these signs are similarly
complex. The images are in dialogue not only with their surrounding text and the objects they
depict, but also with words and images in other surveys published and displayed in the period.
Such intricate webs of association can be seen, for example, if we focus on a specific image:
the wood engraving of the Laocoon in Louis Viardot’s Les Merveilles de la sculpture (Paris,
1869) (Fig. 1). In this printed representation, the ancient sculpture presses forward into the
space of the viewer through the tilted perspective of the plinth and the placement of the work
against a stark black background. The carefully rendered highlights and shadows in the print
draw attention to the sculpture’s undulating surfaces.
This visually arresting image of the Laocoon in a widely disseminated art history
survey was immediately contextualized for its original audiences through its surrounding
texts, both the caption beneath the image and the nearby discussion in Viardot’s book. The
caption identifies the famous sculpture and its current location in Rome, a label that transports
the reader beyond the pages of the book and into the collections of the Vatican. The
description on an adjoining page builds a further context for the image, and, by extension, the
sculpture it represents. It describes the intense physical agony expressed in the figures,

46
Bryson and Bal, “Semiotics and Art History,” Art Bulletin 73, no. 2 (1991): 174-208.
22
discusses the celebrated rediscovery of the work in Rome in 1506, and connects the reader to
the art historical writings of Pliny, Lessing, and Diderot that praised the sculptural group.
This description also emphasizes that “all imitations and copies” of the work “are so inferior
to the original that the first introduction to its real beauty is almost an unexpected surprise,”
which again points Viardot’s reader to Rome, tempting her to make the journey and
experience this “surprise” for herself.
While intimately tied to these texts, which instruct the reader about the Laocoon’s
position in the history of art, the wood engraving of the sculpture joins conceptually with the
other images in the survey, from the stately profile of a winged bull from ancient Assyria to
the dynamic figural relief of François Rude’s La Marseillaise from the Arc de Triomphe in
Paris (Figs. 2 and 3). Together these printed images define and display the broader canons of
art history. Viardot’s Laocoon—which is in fact draftsman J. Petot and engraver C.
LaPlante’s Laocoon, as can be seen in the signatures that appear in the image—also connects
directly to translations of the volume published in London, New York, and St. Petersburg (on
these and other wood engravers of art history surveys, see my Appendix 1). Through
electrotyped copies of the wood engraving sent by Viardot’s publisher Hachette to foreign
publishing firms, an identical copy of this striking Laocoon image appeared in all of these
versions of the book. Francophone, Anglophone, and Russophone audiences alike could
therefore view the same detailed and descriptive images of the Laocoon and its fellow
canonical objects, while they read a similar narrative contextualizing these objects within the
history of art. Beyond Petot and LaPlante, another authorial source for the Laocoon image in
Viardot’s survey has been identified as commercial photographer Adolphe Braun, whose
23
similarly composed photograph of the sculpture most likely offered a guide for Petot as
draftsman, bringing photography into this network of meaning as well.
47

Finally, this image of the Laocoon functions in concert with depictions of the statue
featured in dozens of nineteenth-century surveys, from Knight’s Pictorial Gallery (London,
1845-47), to Wilhelm Lübke’s Grundriss der Kunstgeschichte (Stuttgart, 1860) and its
numerous translations, to Charles Bayet’s Précis d’histoire de l’art (Paris, 1886), to Bell’s
Elementary History of Art (London, 1874) (Figs. 4 and 5). Although they all render the
sculpture in an emphatically linear composition, the differences across these images also
resonate. For example, they all lack the striking black background of Viardot’s image, yet
each employs the blank paper for highlights and built-up ink for shading to emphasize the
sculpture’s curves and movement. The various images additionally register different moments
in the life of the Laocoon, such as the numerous restorations of the priest’s right arm.
Unpacking all of these layers of significance demonstrates not only the complex functions of
illustrations in art history surveys, but more importantly their role in disseminating art history
knowledge to a wide international audience.

Chapter Summary
My first chapter, “Art History for the People: Charles Knight’s Pictorial Gallery of
Arts,” examines the emergence of the illustrated art history survey as a genre in nineteenth-
century Britain. It was in London that new technologies of publishing and new means of
distribution—steam presses, paper-making machines, and wood engravings, as well as
stereotyping, railroads, and the penny-post delivery—were first put to use in educating a non-
specialist public about art history. My chapter addresses the earliest global survey to include a

47
On this connection to Braun, see Le Men, “Trois regards sur le Laocoon.”
24
comprehensive set of wood-engraved illustrations, the Pictorial Gallery of Arts. Issued by
Charles Knight, a recognized leader of popular illustrated publishing with his Penny Magazine
that reached hundreds of thousands of readers in the 1830s, the Pictorial Gallery of Arts
published between 1845 and 1847 presented a history of architecture, sculpture, and painting
accompanied by images of major monuments. With this publication, Knight made explicit his
belief in the pedagogical importance of wood engravings: they provided “real illustrations of
the text, instead of fanciful devices—true eye-knowledge, sometimes more instructive than
words.”
48
Sold for the low price of one shilling per monthly installment, this survey made the
traditionally elite subject of art history available in a newly popular format. Part of the series
“The Pictorial World,” Knight’s Pictorial Gallery of Arts joined other educational illustrated
books on natural history, British history, and the literature of Shakespeare, demonstrating how
art history constituted a parallel subject of general knowledge. Beyond design education for
artisans, which deeply concerned public officials in mid-century Britain and has therefore
received much scholarly attention, art history instruction targeting a broader audience emerged
in the private realm of British commerce.
My second chapter, “Art History on Display: Illustrated Surveys in Mid-Century
Britain,” addresses the numerous efforts to popularize art history in 1850s Britain. This
decade saw the organization of two large-scale exhibitions at Sydenham and Manchester that
highlighted the fine arts. Rivaling the original 1851 Crystal Palace in size and in number of
visitors, these displays were designed explicitly as chronological surveys for teaching art
history. While Sydenham employed plaster casts to instruct audiences about the histories of
architecture and sculpture, Manchester displayed original works of art, especially paintings,
hung chronologically to present a history of that medium. These exhibitions also provided a

48
Charles Knight, Passages of a Working Life During Half a Century, vol. 2 (London: Bradbury and
Evans, 1864-5), 262.
25
context for furthering art history education through illustrated publications, including the
introduction of new smaller formats for art history books. Such illustrated “handbooks” were
produced not only to accompany visitors to the displays at Sydenham, but also as general-
market publications. In 1855, the established London firm of John Murray, best known for its
bright red travel handbooks, issued James Fergusson’s Illustrated Handbook of Architecture:
Being a Concise and Popular Account of the Different Styles of Architecture Prevailing in All
Ages and Countries. Similar to Knight’s publications, Fergusson’s handbook employed
hundreds of wood engravings inserted into the text pages, further solidifying the text-image
dialogue that still predominates in today’s art history surveys. Both Fergusson’s books and
the displays at Sydenham and Manchester included many of the same art monuments as
Knight’s Pictorial Gallery, thereby further establishing art history’s objects of study and
creating enduring canons of the field. Finally, this chapter investigates in detail the categories
of reproduction and illustration, arguing that the latter was increasingly central to the art
history survey with its goals of visual education.
My next chapter, “Art History in Modern Life: The Bibliothèque des Merveilles,”
shifts from Britain to France, where art history also became a significant component of
modern visual culture. From the 1830s, Paris began taking cues from London in popular
illustrated publishing. Directly inspired by Knight’s Penny Magazine, Edouard Charton
founded the Magasin pittoresque in 1833, which similarly employed illustrated texts to
educate the public about subjects of general knowledge, including the history of art. By the
1860s, Charton began collaborating with the renowned publishing firm of Louis Hachette et
Cie on a series of educational illustrated handbooks, the “Bibliothèque des Merveilles.” My
third chapter focuses on this series, which is better known today for its science books, but
which also included surveys of art history, again revealing the cross-disciplinary nature of
26
popular art history at this time. The books were compact and portable, were sold for the
unprecedentedly low price of a few francs, and, like their British precursors, integrated wood-
engraved illustrations into the text. These French surveys circulated more widely than any
previous art histories, reaching into the very spaces of modern life through Hachette’s
monopoly of railroad bookstores in France. The surveys in the Merveilles series also crossed
national and linguistic boundaries through translations into at least five European languages.
In all of these versions, the same original black and white illustrations were reused, further
shaping and disseminating the canon of international art objects that endures in surveys to this
day.
During the Third Republic in France, popular art history instruction reached a new
level; it became a subject taught in French public schools. My fourth chapter, “Art History in
Print: Teaching Art’s History in the French Third Republic,” examines the “Bibliothèque de
l’Enseignement des Beaux-Arts” (initiated in 1883), a series of affordable illustrated art
history books that emerged in the context of government education legislation under the
Republicans. I focus in particular on Charles Bayet’s Précis d’histoire de l’art, the general
survey that appeared in the series in 1886. Responding to new laws that incorporated art
history into secondary education programs, Bayet’s survey provided an accessible overview of
art history for French students, especially female students. It was in the curricula of girls’
schools that art history first appeared as a required subject. Art historians have long been
interested in the state programs of design education in nineteenth-century France, but, as in
Britain, tend to overlook advances in art history pedagogy. In its numerous editions, Bayet’s
survey also registers significant shifts in the survey’s profile and presentation, both in its
inclusion of a reconceptualized “modern art” and in its introduction of photographic
illustration media. The book’s later editions incorporate “the new art of the nineteenth
27
century,” including the works of Manet and the Impressionists, thereby redefining the very
definitions of “the modern” for art history. Bayet’s survey likewise reveals a shift in
illustration media from wood engravings, to photomechanical processes, to halftone
photographs, thereby demonstrating the variety of art history’s image technologies prior to the
domination of photographic reproduction in the twentieth century.
Each of my other chapters considers the circulation of art history among new
audiences, including women and young girls. My final chapter, “The Mothers of Art History?
Women and the Production of Popular Art History,” examines the contributions of women as
art history’s producers in the nineteenth century. In Britain in particular, dozens of women
gained recognition as critics and historians of art, as well as translators of foreign art history
scholarship. Anna Jameson, for instance, began publishing articles on Italian art in the Penny
Magazine in 1843; Eliza Foster provided the first translation of Vasari’s Lives of the Artists
into English in 1850, a publication issued as a set of affordable handbooks in H. G. Bohn’s
Standard Library series; and, in 1874, Nancy Bell published The Elementary History of Art,
the first general illustrated survey of art history written by a woman, which predated the
better-known work of Helen Gardner, Art Through the Ages, by more than fifty years. This
chapter recognizes the work of more than thirty women, but it focuses specifically on Nancy
Bell’s Elementary History of Art, which appeared in six editions published simultaneously in
London and New York between 1874 and 1906. I aim in this chapter to highlight the
neglected role of women art historians in a discipline still entirely dominated by its “founding
fathers” and their academic scholarship. Though denied access to university degrees and
institutional positions, British women formed a significant part of the scholarly community for
the developing field of art history. Like the accessible illustrated surveys they provided, these
28
women deserve a place in the historiography of art history—not despite their popularity, but
because of it.

Method and Approach
In my engagement with materials and issues that bridge the supposed divide between
high art and popular culture, my project takes an interdisciplinary approach. I have turned to
scholarship in visual studies—especially the work of Vanessa Schwartz, Anne Friedberg, and
Stephen Oettermann—for conceptualizing the intersections between art history surveys and
other forms of modern spectacular entertainment, including illustrated newspapers,
panoramas, and universal exhibitions.
49
The field of book history has been especially useful
for analyzing published surveys as composites of literary, visual, and material culture, as well
as objects of capitalist consumption. While bibliographers such as Philip Gaskell have offered
methods of material analysis for investigating books as objects, social historians of the book,
including Robert Darnton, Frédéric Barbier, and Alexis Weedon, have provided models for
understanding the societal impact of books, their markets, and their circulation.
50
Scholarship

49
See, for example, Vanessa Schwartz, Spectacular Realities: Early Mass Culture in Fin-de-siècle
Paris (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998); Schwartz and Jeannene Przyblyski, The
Nineteenth-Century Visual Culture Reader (New York: Routledge, 2004); Anne Friedberg, Window
Shopping: Cinema and the Postmodern (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993); and Stephen
Oettermann, The Panorama: History of a Mass Medium (New York: Zone Books, 1997).

50
On bibliographic approaches to book history, see Philip Gaskell, A New Introduction to Bibliography
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972). On the social history of the book, see Robert Darnton, The
Business of Enlightenment: A Publishing History of the Encyclopédie, 1775-1800 (Cambridge, MA:
The Belknap Press, 1979) and The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France (New York: W.
W. Norton and Co., 1996); Frédéric Barbier, L’Empire du livre: le livre imprimé et la construction de
l’Allemagne contemporaine (1815-1914) (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1995), and Alexis Weedon, Victorian
Publishing: The Economics of Book Production for a Mass Market, 1836-1916 (Burlington, VT:
Ashgate, 2003), as well as Henri-Jean Martin and Roger Chartier, Histoire de l’édition française (Paris:
Promodis, 1983); Isabelle Olivero, L’Invention de la collection: de la diffusion de la littérature et des
savoirs à la formation du citoyen au XIXe siècle, In Octavo (Paris: Institut Mémoirs de l’Edition
Contemporaine, 1999); and Simon Eliot and Jonathan Rose, A Companion to the History of the Book
(Oxford: Blackwell, 2007).

29
concerning nineteenth-century illustrated books has been essential for positioning art history
surveys within the broader developments of modern mass-market publishing.
51

While other disciplines, especially the history of science, have acknowledged the
popularization of knowledge during the 1800s, art historians remain slow to recognize parallel
developments in their discipline. As Bernard Lightman, Daniel Raichvarg, Jean Jacques,
Anne Secord, and other historians of science have observed, the popular pedagogy of
scientific studies was largely based on visual approaches, including both illustrated
publications and popular spectacles.
52
The same is true for the non-specialist instruction of art
history; visual methods of teaching, including book illustrations and displays of art objects and
plaster casts, were fundamental to the spread of art history knowledge in the 1800s. However,
the literature on visual pedagogy in the modern period, especially in the field of art history,
remains surprisingly underdeveloped.
53
My focus on illustrated art histories offers an
opportunity to enrich our understanding of visual education as a significant component of
modernity.
In recognizing how scholarship in other disciplines has inflected my investigations of
art history, this dissertation also addresses tensions within the history of art itself, tensions that

51
Examples of such studies include Maurice Samuels, The Spectacular Past; Keri A. Berg, “Contesting
the Page: The Author and the Illustrator in France, 1830-1848,” Book History 10 (2007): 69-101; and
Ségolène Le Men, “Book Illustration,” in Artistic Relations: Literature and the Visual Arts in
Nineteenth-Century France, ed. Peter Collier and Robert Lethbridge (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1994), 94-110.

52
Bernard Lightman, Victorian Popularizers of Science: Designing Nature for New Audiences
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007); Daniel Raichvarg and Jean Jacques, Savants et
Ignorants: Une histoire de la vulgarisation des sciences (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1991), 172-232; and
Anne Secord, “Botany on a Plate: Pleasure and the Power of Pictures in Promoting Early Nineteenth-
Century Scientific Knowledge,” Isis 93 (2002): 28-57.

53
Beyond the studies in the history of science mentioned above, the most useful sources on visual
pedagogy are in French. See Jean Adhémar, “L’Enseignement par l’image,” Gazette des Beaux-Arts 97
and 98 (1981): 53-60 and 49-60 and Ségolène Le Men, “La Pedagogie par l’image,” in Les Abécédaires
français illustrés du XIXe siècle (Paris: Promodis, 1984), 141-99.

30
the new field of visual studies has helped to identify but has by no means resolved.
Scholarship within art history—such as the work of Patricia Mainardi, Martha Ward, and
Nancy Troy on the institutional connections between art, commerce, and public life—has
shown me ways of expanding the field from inside its disciplinary borders.
54
Illustrated
surveys from the nineteenth century can similarly challenge oversimplified notions of high
and low by illuminating the popular roots of art history.
My research has drawn heavily on publishers’ archives, a rich and underappreciated
resource for art historians. These archives include the records of major nineteenth-century
publishing firms, such as Louis Hachette in France and John Murray in Britain, which have
provided valuable documentation on the production, marketing, and circulation of art history
books. Moreover, the surveys themselves—their material, visual, and textual formats—also
constitute crucial evidence for my work. Copies of these widely disseminated surveys
continue to be readily accessible in European and American libraries. Many of them sit dusty
and untouched on open-stack shelves, rather than being housed as rare books in Special
Collections. Some are even being de-accessioned from public libraries due to their lack of
use. This dissertation argues for a new attention to these now obsolete volumes, as they were
pivotal for the development of art history in the nineteenth century.
The survey exhibitions from the nineteenth century that I examine, in contrast, are no
longer extant. The Manchester Art-Treasures lasted for only a part of 1857 before it was
closed and disassembled. The Sydenham Crystal Palace remained open much longer,
enduring for more than eighty years before it was destroyed by fire. To analyze their
significance as art history surveys, it was therefore necessary to reconstruct these displays

54
Patricia Mainardi, The End of the Salon: Art and the State in the Early Third Republic (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1993); Martha Ward, Pissarro, Neo- Impressionism, and the Spaces of the
Avant-Garde (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996); and Nancy Troy, Couture Culture: A Study
in Modern Art and Fashion (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003).
31
through published descriptions, visual representations, and reviews. Appendices to this
dissertation provide comprehensive lists of the art history displays in both exhibitions,
offering a source of valuable information for future studies of non-academic art history in the
nineteenth century.
In order to demonstrate the popularity of nineteenth-century surveys and their role in
disseminating art canons to new audiences, I have employed some quantitative data in my
study. I have tried to trace whenever possible the numbers of copies of surveys in circulation,
the size measurements of their formats, and their prices. Regarding exhibitions, I address both
the numbers of attendees and the costs of entrance tickets and guidebooks. I have also
recorded the repetitions of illustrations between various surveys, as well as the repeated
appearances of specific art objects in a representative sample of surveys (on this continued
canon of objects in sample surveys, see my Appendix 2). As Robert Jensen notes, art
historians generally avoid quantitative methods, sharing in a “recent humanist distrust of
scientific methods and of the positivism they typically express.”
55
Jensen, in contrast,
advocates the systematic and verifiable approach that quantitative data can bring to art
historical research, especially when dealing with densely illustrated surveys and the canons
they construct. What better way to “measure” art canons, Jensen asks, than to start counting
illustrations in surveys?
Yet, quantitative data also needs to be approached with caution. Edition sizes, for
example, can be somewhat unreliable in that they show only how many books were printed,
not if they were purchased and, more importantly, actually read.
56
The numbers of visitors
who attended the exhibitions at Sydenham and Manchester, likewise, did not all necessarily

55
Jensen, 27.

56
On the benefits and limitations of quantitative data for studies on the popularization of knowledge in
the nineteenth century, see Savants et Ignorants, 12-13.

32
visit the art history displays, nor experience them specifically as a survey. While numbers of
books and people can point to a popular status for the art histories I discuss, they do not offer a
detailed picture of the public’s response to these art histories. Such a response has been
especially difficult to determine. For evidence of reception, I have often looked to reviews in
published literature, a resource that registers the recognition of other authors and not a
response to surveys on the part of a broader public. As Laurel Brake and others have pointed
out, reviews are often “puffery,” or implicit advertisements, rather than an unbiased response
to the material under review.
57
According to historians of science Raichvarg and Jacques, a
better witness to the wide positive reception of books that popularized knowledge in the 1800s
was their translation into foreign languages.
58
Nineteenth-century surveys were very often
translated, and I have presented these versions as evidence of their circulation among a large
international audience. However, this audience remains but an abstracted entity, rather than a
specific collective of voices. Retrieving these voices is regrettably beyond the scope of this
dissertation. Only after mapping the popular origins of art history in its material forms (books
and exhibitions) can we begin to reconstitute a more concrete public reception.
Finally, to claim that art history has popular roots necessitates a discussion of the
“popular” itself in the nineteenth century. This term, both pervasively employed and variously
defined, warrants close investigation. Popular art history in the 1800s was an affordable,
accessible, and widely circulated art history; it was designed for the non-specialist; and it was
marketed to the general public for a commercial profit. In the chapters that follow, I examine
how the field of art history intersected with other elements of popular culture in the nineteenth
century, including mass-market (as opposed to luxury) publishing and general (as opposed to

57
Laurel Brake, Print in Transition 1850-1910: Studies in Media and Book History (New York:
Palgrave, 2001), 15.

58
Raichvarg and Jacques, 13.
33
academic) education. Indeed, it is in a historically specific notion of the popular that art
history merged with the broader developments of modernity.
34

Fig. 1. Illustration of the Laocoon from Louis Viardot, Les Merveilles de la sculpture (Paris,
1869), wood engraving by J. Petot and C. LaPlante.

Fig. 2. Page with illustration of an Assyrian Winged Bull, from Viardot, Les Merveilles de la
sculpture
35

Fig 3. Page with illustration of François Rude’s La Marseillaise, from Viardot’s Les
Merveilles de la sculpture

Fig. 4. Page from Wilhelm Lübke’s History of Art, trans. Fanny Elizabeth Bunnètt (London,
1868)

Fig. 5. Page from Charles Bayet’s Précis d’histoire de l’art (Paris, 1886)
36
Chapter 1: Art History for the People: Charles Knight’s Pictorial Gallery of Arts
In 1875, London publisher George Routledge spoke at a ceremony honoring his late
colleague Charles Knight (1791-1873). Knight, he stated, succeeded in making “knowledge a
common possession” for British readers, “instead of an exclusive privilege.” This success,
Routledge continued, was due to Knight’s innovative efforts in “combining literature and art”
and appreciating “how great a boon we have in illustrated works.”
59
Since the nineteenth
century, scholars have continued to credit Knight with these accomplishments: John Harthan’s
History of the Illustrated Book, for instance, names Knight a “pioneer of popular education
and cheap literature.”
60
However, Knight’s parallel role as an innovator in the field of art
history has gone largely unnoticed: he was the first publisher to offer affordable illustrated
texts to teach a non-specialist public about art history.
61
His Penny Magazine, issued from
1832 to 1845 at the unprecedented price of a penny per weekly issue, included dozens of
illustrated articles about canonical art monuments (Fig. 1.1). With his later Pictorial Gallery
of Arts (1845-47), Knight provided an illustrated general survey of art history and, in so doing,
instigated a new genre of art history books. Using many illustrations recycled directly from
the Penny Magazine (Fig. 1.2), which he combined with newly produced images and a
narrative text, Knight created a history of world art from prehistory to the nineteenth century.

59
The Times (London), 15 June 1875. This same speech was also quoted in The Publishers’ Circular,
16 June 1875, 419. For similar views of Knight by his contemporaries, see also William Andrew
Chatto, “Wood-Engraving: The History and Practice,” Illustrated London News, 22 June 1844, 406; and
Edward Marston, After Work: Fragments from the Workshop of an Old Publisher (London: William
Heinemann, 1904), 323-30.

60
John Harthan, The History of the Illustrated Book: The Western Tradition (London: Thames and
Hudson, 1981), 174. See also C. T. Courtney Lewis, The Story of Picture Printing in England during
the Nineteenth Century (London: Sampson Low, Marston, and Co., 1928), 11-12 and Michel Melot et
al., Prints: History of an Art (New York: Rizzoli, 1981), 103.

61
Only one scholar has recognized Charles Knight’s role in popular art history education. See Patricia
J. Anderson, “Pictures for the People: Knight’s Penny Magazine, an Early Venture in Popular Art
Education,” Studies in Art Education 28, no. 3 (1987): 133-40 and “The New Printed Image: The Penny
Magazine and the Mass Circulation of Illustration 1832-1845,” in The Printed Image and the
Transformation of Popular Culture 1790-1860 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 50-83.
37
This chapter begins with a discussion of the Penny Magazine and its revolutionary role in the
popularization of art history. Then, I shift focus to examine Knight’s later Pictorial Gallery of
Arts as arguably the first art history survey that was both comprehensively illustrated and
widely accessible.
Recent studies have credited two German publications with introducing the general
survey and its accompanying images. These include Franz Kugler’s unillustrated Handbuch
der Kunstgeschichte (Handbook of Art History) from 1841-2 and the separate image atlas, the
Denkmäler der Kunst (Monuments of Art), published beginning in 1845 to illustrate Kugler’s
history (Fig. 1.3).
62
What makes Knight’s Pictorial Gallery distinctive was its use of wood-
engraved images to include the survey’s text and illustrations together in a single affordable
publication. But because Knight was not a university-trained art historian like Kugler, and
because his book was intended for a public with basic levels of education rather than for more
serious scholars, his significance for art history has been overlooked. As Knight’s recent
biographer Valerie Gray aptly observes, “it is seldom the fate of popularisers to find much
favour with academics.”
63

While German advances in art history during the nineteenth century have been widely
recognized, British contributions from the same period are largely missing from the history of

62
For the most detailed study on these German publications, see Dan Karlholm, Art of Illusion: The
Representation of Art History in Nineteenth-Century Germany and Beyond (Berlin: Peter Lang, 2006).
See also Mitchell Schwarzer, “Origins of the Art History Survey Text,” Art Journal 54 no. 3 (1995):
24-29; Hubert Locher, “Das ‘Handbuch der Kunstgeschichte”: Die Vermittlung kunsthistorischen
Wissens als Anleitung zum ästhetischen Urteil,” in Memory & Oblivion, eds. Wessel Reinink and
Jeroen Stumpel (Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999), 69-87; and María Ocón Fernández,
“Handbook, Outline, or Textbook of Art History? The Emergence of German Art and Architecture and
the Relationship Between Image and Text,” in Imag(in)ing Architecture: Iconography in Nineteenth-
Century Architectural Historical Publications, ed. Zsuzsanna Borocz and Luc Verpoest (Leuven: Acco,
2008), 72-91.

63
Valerie Gray, Charles Knight: Educator, Publisher, Writer (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006), 1.

38
the field.
64
Britain did not have academic art history departments until the twentieth century,
and the Slade Professorships at Oxford and Cambridge, held by John Ruskin and others, were
in fact lectureships rather than university programs to train professional art historians, as in
German universities.
65
Nikolaus Pevsner, an architectural historian educated in Germany who
taught mainly in British universities, even referred to the teaching of art history as a
thoroughly “un-English activity.”
66
As an editorial in the British art periodical Burlington
Magazine succinctly summarizes, “until the Courtauld Institute was founded in 1931...art
history was never regarded as a serious subject in British Universities.”
67
Yet, it was in
London, arguably the center of the nineteenth-century publishing industry, that new printing
technologies and new means of distribution—including steam presses and paper-making
machines, as well as the railroad, steamship, and the modern mail networks—came together to
educate audiences about art history.
68

64
On the disciplinary history of art history in Germany in the nineteenth century, see especially
Heinrich Dilly, Kunstgeschichte als Institution: Studien zur Geschichte einer Disziplin (Frankfurt am
Main: Suhrkamp, 1979); Michael Podro, The Critical Historians of Art (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1982); as well as the studies mentioned in note 4. In contrast to the dozens of German-speaking
scholars from the nineteenth century mentioned in Udo Kultermann’s The History of Art History, only a
few British names appear (such as Ruskin, James Fergusson, J. A. Crowe, and Walter Pater). See
Kultermann, The History of Art History (New York: Abaris Books, 1993).

65
The Slade Professorships were founded through a financial donation of the late art collector Felix
Slade, who died in 1868. The first chair at Oxford went to art critic John Ruskin, the chair at
Cambridge University went to architect and art historian Matthew Digby Wyatt in 1869, and the chair at
University College, London went to painter Edward Poynter in 1871. See Stuart Macdonald, The
History and Philosophy of Art Education (New York: American Elsevier Publishing Co., 1970), 269.

66
Nikolaus Pevsner, “An Un-English Activity? Reflections on Not Teaching Art History,” The Listener,
30 Oct. 1952, 715-16.

67
“Teaching of Art History in British Universities,” Burlington Magazine 103, no. 698 (1961): 163. See
also Helen Rees Leahy, “‘For Connoisseurs’: The Burlington Magazine 1903-11,” in Art History and its
Institutions: Foundations of a Discipline, ed. Elizabeth Mansfield (New York: Routledge, 2002), 233.

68
On Britain and specifically London as the world leader of publishing in the 1800s, see Gerry Beegan,
The Mass Image: A Social History of Photomechanical Reproduction in Victorian London (New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2008); Jean-Yves Mollier and Marie-Françoise Cachin, “A Continent of Texts:
Europe 1800-1890” and David Finkelstein, “Globalization of the Book: 1800-1970,” in A Companion to
39
My focus on Knight and his publications enables a rethinking of art history’s history
to include its non-academic beginnings in Britain. The details of these beginnings are, I argue,
as significant for the field’s development as its academic origins. In Knight’s works, we
discover the crucial function of illustrations in the history of art. Important pedagogical
practices based principally on illustrations—from museum displays that combine visual and
verbal formats to inform the public, to the slide lectures that dominate art history courses—can
be traced back to Knight’s publications.
69
Whereas the history of art history is most often told
from national perspectives, Knight’s works shed important light on the field’s international
roots. Not only does the canon of monuments in Knight’s publications incorporate art from
various national museum collections and a range of global locations, the circulation of this
canon reached far beyond British boarders, especially through the sharing of images between
Knight and foreign publishers. Knight also defined a popularly accessible art history in his
publications. His works reached an unprecedented number of people with their wide
dissemination and low prices, presenting an art history that was more experiential than
theoretical, more sensational than intellectual, and thus brought art from around the world into
the minds of readers. The history of art in Knight’s Penny Magazine and Pictorial Gallery of
Arts was not a narrow and specialized discipline; rather, it was part of a broader field of
knowledge. Alongside science, religion, literature, history, and geography—all of which were

the History of the Book, eds. Simon Eliot and Jonathan Rose (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), 305 and 329;
and Mollier, Louis Hachette (1800-1864): Le Fondateur d’un empire (Paris: Fayard, 1999), 295.

69
The slide lecture in art history is most often traced to the university courses of Hermann Grimm and
Heinrich Wölfflin. Grimm became full professor at the University of Berlin in 1873, and in the 1880s,
began using lantern slides for his lectures. Wölfflin succeeded Grimm as chair of art history in 1901 and
likewise lectured with slides, introducing the technique of the double-projection comparison. On this
history, see Robert Nelson, “The Slide Lecture, or the Work of Art ‘History’ in the Age of Mechanical
Reproduction,” Critical Inquiry 26, no. 3 (2000): 414-34; Trevor Fawcett, “Visual Facts and the
Nineteenth-Century Art Lecture,” Art History 6, no. 4 (1983): 442-60 and “Graphic Versus
Photographic in the Nineteenth-Century Reproduction,” Art History 9, no. 2 (1986): 185-212; and Horst
Bredekamp, “A Neglected Tradition: Art History as Bildwissenschaft,” Critical Inquiry 29 (2003): 418-
28.
40
subjects Knight included in his compendia of pedagogical illustrated publications—art history
became a subject of general education for nineteenth-century audiences.

The Unprecedented Penny Magazine
Knight’s weekly Penny Magazine has been called a “landmark event” in publishing
history.
70
It provided the first truly cheap illustrated magazine, sold at one penny (1d) per
issue, a price that remained uniform throughout Britain.
71
“No one who wishes for a copy of
the Magazine, whether in England, Scotland, or Ireland” would have trouble obtaining one,
declared the introduction to the first volume; “The ‘Penny Magazine’ is still a Penny
Magazine all over the country.”
72
The distribution of the magazine took advantage of modern
shipping systems, avoiding the need for higher prices to deliver copies outside of London and
beyond the biggest cities.
73
The beginning of the magazine coincided with the earliest railroad
lines: the Liverpool and Manchester Line, the world’s first freight and passenger line, was

70
Scott Bennett, “The Editorial Character and Readership of The Penny Magazine: An Analysis,”
Victorian Periodicals Review 17, no. 4 (1984): 127.

71
The Penny Magazine was published in association with the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge (SDUK), an organization founded in 1826 by lawyer and Parliament member Henry
Brougham to provide “useful information to all classes of the community, particularly to such as are
unable to avail themselves of experienced teachers, or may prefer learning by themselves.” Although
Knight was never a member, he worked with the organization between 1827 and 1845 as the
superintendent of their publications. The majority of the decisions on content and composition, as well
as the funding of the magazine, were Knight’s responsibility. One of his particular roles was ensuring
that the content of the magazine was comprehensible for a general audience without being
condescending. See Gray, 43-46; and Patricia Anderson, “Charles Knight,” in British Literary
Publishing Houses 1820-1880, eds. Patricia J. Anderson and Jonathan Rose (London: Gale Research
Inc., 1991), 164-70. On Brougham, see Robert Stewart, Henry Brougham 1778-1868: His Public
Career (London: Bodley Head, 1985).

72
Penny Magazine (hereafter PM), “Preface,” 1 (1832).

73
The magazine includes a list of cities where wholesalers received weekly copies. These include Bath,
Birmingham, Bristol, Carlisle, Derby, Devonport, Doncaster, Exeter, Falmouth, Leeds, Lincoln,
Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Norwich, Nottingham, Oxford, Plymouth, Portsea, Sheffield,
Staffordshire, Worcester, Dublin, Edinburgh, and Glasgow.

41
operational starting in 1830.
74
The penny-post system, founded in 1840, also enabled mailing
based on a standard fee of one penny per half ounce no matter the distance of travel within
Britain.
75
The magazine made use as well of the latest inventions in printing, including the
cylinder press driven with steam engines (first used by the London daily newspaper The Times
in 1814), paper-making machines, and the process of stereotyping, which transferred pages of
type to metal plates, allowing several copies of the pages to be printed at the same time.
76
The
firm of William Clowes and Sons, the most advanced printer in London at the time, executed
the magazine’s printing.
77

But it was in fact the combination of these new printing practices with the use of
wood-engraved illustrations that made the Penny Magazine such a resounding success. Prior
to this period, cheap publications, including broadsides, song sheets, chapbooks, and religious
tracks, had included a few, often rather crude, illustrations for the price of a few pennies (Fig.
1.4).
78
Yet, the Penny Magazine’s large, detailed, and numerous images in each issue, all for

74
For a good summary of railroad development in Britain, see Ian Kennedy and Julain Treuherz, The
Railway: Art in the Age of Steam (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008).

75
Michael Twyman, Printing 1770-1970: An Illustrated History of its Development and Uses in
England (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1970), 15.

76
The first steam press used at The Times office was designed by the German inventor Koenig. In
1818, Edward Cowper’s cylinder machine press replaced Koenig’s design at the Times. Cowper’s
model was the press used by the Penny Magazine printers. See Charles Knight, Knowledge is Power
(London: John Murray, 1855), 335-42. The machine for making paper was invented in 1803. On these
machines, see Twyman, 49-55; Alexis Weedon, Victorian Publishing: The Economics of Book
Production for a Mass Market 1836-1916 (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003), 64; and Rob Banham, “The
Industrialization of the Book 1800-1970,” in A Companion to the History of the Book, eds. Simon Eliot
and Jonathan Rose (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), 274-76.

77
Knight’s daughter was also married to Clowes’ son, forming a family relationship between publisher
and printer. On Clowes’ firm, see W. B. Clowes, Family Business 1803-1953 (London: William Clowes
and Sons, 1953); “The Commercial History of a Penny Magazine, no. 3: Compositors’ Work and
Stereotyping,” PM, monthly supplement, 31 Oct. to 30 Nov. 1833, 465-72; “The Commercial History
of a Penny Magazine, no. 4: Printing Presses and Machinery, Bookbinding,” PM, monthly supplement,
30 Nov. to 31 Dec., 1833, 510; Marston, 110; and Weedon, 175-77. This firm was also the printer for
the first edition of the Pictorial Gallery of Arts.

78
See Twyman, 95 and Percy Muir, Victorian Illustrated Books (London: B. T. Batsford, 1971), 14.
42
the price of a single penny, would have seemed revolutionary to the public in the 1830s (Fig.
1.5). Readers quickly took advantage of this new offering; after one year of publication, the
Penny Magazine had begun to sell a phenomenal 200,000 weekly issues and reached many
more readers through shared copies in libraries and reading rooms.
79
As the preface to the
magazine’s first volume states, “It is not, however, to be forgotten that some of the
unexampled success of this little work is to be ascribed to the liberal employment of
illustrations, by means of [wood engraving].”
80
According to Knight’s biographer Gray, the
illustrations undoubtedly constituted the “best-selling feature” of the publication.
81

The medium of wood engraving allowed for this explosion of images in an affordable
publication. As Knight explained to the magazine’s readers, wood engraving was “peculiarly
and essentially that branch of engraving which is applicable to cheap publications” and
therefore, it made “the general diffusion of knowledge” more possible than with any other
print media.
82
Unlike copper and steel engraving, lithography, and, after 1839, photography,

79
On this total, see PM, “Preface,” 1 (1832); Charles Knight, Passages of a Working Life During Half a
Century, vol. 2 (London: Bradbury and Evans, 1864-65), 184; Anderson, The Printed Image, 3; Gray,
63 and 154; Anderson, “Charles Knight,” 167. The general consensus is that the magazine reached at
least one million actual readers. This total can also be compared to more literary magazines, such as the
Quarterly Review, which had a circulation of 7000, or the radical working class journal The Poor Man’s
Guardian, which had at most 15,000. See Bennett, 128 and Anderson, The Printed Image, 80.

80
PM, “Preface.” Knight uses the term “wood-cuts” here rather than wood engraving. During the
nineteenth century, these terms were often interchangeable, with little differentiation made between the
traditional woodcut and the later wood engraving, or the use of the burin on the end grain of the wood.
Indeed, numerous practicing wood engravers, such as John Jackson and William Andrew Chatto, wrote
histories of the medium—calling it by both names—that connected woodcuts to the more recent wood
engraving process and linked their artistic trade to celebrated masters such as Dürer, Cranach, and
Holbein. See Jackson and Chatto, A Treatise on Wood Engraving: Historical and Practical (London:
Charles Knight and Co., 1839) and Chatto, “Wood-Engraving” in the Illustrated London News in 1844.
This article was ongoing between April 20 and July 6. See also Rodney K. Engen, Dictionary of
Victorian Wood Engravers (Cambridge: Chadwyck-Healey, 1985), x. For clarity, I will use the term
“wood engraving” to signify the use of this newer process.

81
Gray, 57. See also Bennett, 129.

82
“The Commercial History of a Penny Magazine, no. 2: Wood-cutting and type-founding,” PM,
monthly supplement, 30 Sept. to 31 Oct. 1833, 420. The articles in the PM were anonymous, as was
43
all of which had to be printed separately from metal type, wood engravings “were executed by
the typographical process.”
83
In other words, as relief prints, they could be inserted within the
page frames or “chased in” alongside the type and printed simultaneously, the ink application
and the pressure from the printing cylinder being uniform for both text and image. As print
historian B.E. Maidment remarks, “the interdependence of the emergence of mass circulation
popular literature and the rise of the commercial wood engraving” is one of the “key historical
narratives” of the period.
84
One scholar even sees the invention of boxwood engraving as
rivaling the steam engine in its importance for the Victorian Age.
85

British illustrator Thomas Bewick most often receives credit for defining and
promoting the use of wood engraving for book illustration in the late eighteenth century.
86
Of

common practice in the period. See Laurel Brake, Print in Transition 1850-1910: Studies in Media and
Book History (New York: Palgrave, 2001), 4 and 15-16.

83
PM as in Ibid. Like wood engraving, lithography was invented in the late eighteenth century (1796),
and came of age in the nineteenth. Allowing for hand-drawn images to be multiplied rather than first cut
into metal or wood, this medium revolutionized the production of certain kinds of images, like musical
scores, maps, and posters. Yet, it had little impact on the mass-market book trade until offset
lithography in the twentieth century. Lithographs still had to be printed separately from written text,
making them no more efficient for book illustrations than etching and engravings. See Banham, “The
Industrialization of the Book 1800-1970,” 284.

84
B. E. Maidment, Reading Popular Prints 1790-1870 (New York: Manchester University Press,
1996), 16. He also aptly observes that “in our own age of sophisticated photo-reprographic methods,
where layers of typeset images and texts can be overlaid or superimposed at will, it is hard to recover
the force and centrality of the wood engraving revolution in mass image making.” Although he
mentions the importance of the medium for topographic, zoological, botanical, and technological
illustrations, Maidment never discusses wood engravings after works of art as part of this “revolution.”
See 15 and 146.

85
Eric de Maré, The Victorian Woodblock Illustrators (London: Gordon Fraser, 1980), 7.

86
Bewick’s first books published with wood engravings include General History of Quadrupeds (1790)
and History of British Birds (1797-1804). While others had practiced end-grain engraving on wood, it
was undoubtedly Bewick who made the process known as a method of illustrating books. On Bewick,
see Jackson and Chatto, A Treatise on Wood Engraving, 559-609; Charles Rosen and Henri Zerner,
“The Romantic Vignette and Thomas Bewick,” in Romanticism and Realism: The Mythology of
Nineteenth-Century Art (New York: Viking, 1984), 73-96; Iain Bain, Thomas Bewick: An Illustrated
Record of his Life and Work (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: The Laing Gallery, 1979); de Maré, 30-34; John
Brewer, Pleasures of the Imagination: English Culture in the Eighteenth Century (New York: Farrar,
44
course woodcuts had been employed for book illustrations since the ninth century in China
and the fifteenth century in Europe, and Bewick’s process used essentially the same technique:
creating a relief print in wood. However, Bewick instituted a new method that combined the
material of boxwood blocks, the tools of traditional engraving, and the technique of cutting
against the wood’s grain. Boxwood was chosen because of its availability, its light color ideal
for drawing surfaces, and its hardness.
87
Engraving tools, such as the burin, enabled more
precise and detailed lines than the knives used for traditional woodcuts. And finally, the use
of these tools on the end grain of the woodblock, that is, perpendicular to the way the tree
grows, provided a harder surface to receive the cuts without splintering. Bewick’s method
quickly caught on in England, both through his pupils in Newcastle and through rival schools
of wood engravers in London, as the advantages for illustrated publishing were quickly
recognized. As Knight observed, the introduction of wood engravings meant that images
could be included in publications “in a style that had been previously considered to belong
only to expensive books.”
88
It was Bewick’s process that dominated the nineteenth-century
market for affordable illustrated publications.
Wood engravings could also be used with steam presses, which were newly available
when Knight began printing his Penny Magazine in the 1830s. The steam press made it
possible for Knight to print tens of thousands of copies of his magazine per day, and,
therefore, the hundreds of thousands of copies being sold weekly. In contrast, presses for

Straus, and Giroux, 1997), 499-531; and Remi Blachon, La Gravure sur bois au XIXe siècles: l’âge du
bois debout (Paris: Les Editions de l’Amateur, 2001), 22-27.

87
Boxwood grows in locations worldwide, and the trunks are usually slender, reaching no more than
twelve inches in circumference. The large-scale production of blocks for wood engraving in the
Victorian period rarely produced those wider than 6 inches. For larger images, boxwood blocks would
be bolted together by either wooden or metal bolts. Boxwood was also worm resistant, unlike the pear,
apple, holly, or beech wood blocks used by earlier woodcutters like Dürer. See de Maré, 42.

88
“Preface,” PM.

45
other print media still operated manually, with a much lower output of hundreds to at most a
thousand copies per day.
89
As William Andrew Chatto explained in his treatise on wood
engraving published in the Illustrated London News in 1844, “the peculiar powers of wood-
engraving” allow its “graphic language” to be “multiplied by means of the steam-press”
almost with “the rapidity of thought.”
90
Wood engraving quickly became associated with
speed and mass production, and was therefore viewed as the cutting edge of illustration
technology in the nineteenth century.

The Penny Magazine and Art History
The widely popular Penny Magazine made art history education a particular priority.
It offered a collection of articles and illustrations presenting the “finest Works of Art” across
the world. In addition to information on natural history, manufacturing, the biographies of
worthies, travel narratives, health, and English grammar, the magazine taught readers about
Egyptian temples, Greek statues, Roman amphitheaters, Indian cave temples, Islamic
mosques, Gothic cathedrals, and modern paintings (Figs. 1.6 and 1.7). As Knight explained,
An attempt was made by the means of woodcuts to familiarise the people with great
works of art. Then were presented to them engravings...of such subjects as the
Laocoon, the Apollo Belvedere, the [Raphael] Cartoons, and the great Cathedrals,
British and foreign.
91

89
Ibid. In another comparison, Celina Fox juxtaposes the 12,000 prints per hour possible with a steam
press versus 100 prints per hour with a hand press. See Fox, Graphic Journalism in England during the
1830s and 1840s (New York: Garland, 1988), 56.

90
Chatto, “Wood-Engraving,” 425.

91
Charles Knight, Passage of a Working Life, 184. There is a rather large literature on the significance
of wood-engraved illustrations for periodicals, books, and other publications in the nineteenth century.
However, very few studies have considered the importance of the medium for art history publications.
On wood engravings in illustrated periodicals, see Fox, Graphic Journalism and Joshua Brown, Beyond
the Lines: Pictorial Reporting, Everyday Life, and the Crisis of Gilded-Age America (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2002). On wood engravings in different book genres, including history
books and fiction, see Maurice Samuels, The Spectacular Past: Popular History and the Novel in
Nineteenth-Century France (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004) and Keri Berg, “Contesting the
Page: The Author and the Illustrator in France, 1830-1848,” Book History 10 (2007): 69-101. On wood
46
An article in the magazine reiterates this purpose: “And thus a fine specimen of art can be
placed within the reach of thousands, instead of being confined to the cabinets of a very
few.”
92

Although the lessons about canonical art monuments in the Penny Magazine were not
arranged in an historical progression—they are somewhat randomly dispersed throughout the
issues—each article dedicated to a work of art described elements of the object’s historical
importance, such as date and place of creation, artistic style and general periodization, subject
matter, excavation, and provenance. For example, the article on the Laocoon, which was
printed directly beneath a nearly full-page image of the sculpture (Fig. 1.1), described the
mythological subject matter of the work, noted the sculpture’s rediscovery in Rome in the
early sixteenth century, quoted Pliny on the identity of the three sculptors Agesander,
Polydorus, and Athenodoros from Rhodes, observed that Pliny was mistaken in his account of
this work as from a single block of marble, and cited Winckelmann and Lessing on the
debated dating of the work.
93

In The Printed Image and the Transformation of Popular Culture, print historian
Patricia Anderson observes the significance of this art historical information presented in the
Penny Magazine:
The examples of art...introduced readers to an array of cultural knowledge previously
inaccessible to them. Reproducing art works in detail, often quoting authorities

engravings in religious publications, see David Morgan, Protestants and Pictures: Religion, Visual
Culture, and the Age of American Mass Production (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).

92
“The Commercial History of a Penny Magazine, no. 2,” 421.

93
PM, 10 Nov. 1832, 313-14. Johann Joachim Winckelmann was the librarian and antiquarian scholar
of Cardinal Albani in Rome from 1758, then the Prefect of Papal Antiquities from 1763. His History of
Ancient Art (1764) was widely acclaimed, was translated from German into French, Italian, and
English, and became one of the most influential art history books ever published and arguably the first
history of art. See especially Alex Potts, Flesh and the Ideal: Winckelmann and the Origins of Art
History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994). Gotthold Ephraim Lessing published his well-
known study of the sculpture, Laokoon, oder über die Grenzen der Malerei und Poesie, in 1766.

47
verbatim, these pictures and texts transmitted imagery, aesthetic theories, art history,
and criticism with faithful exhaustiveness. Interested readers thus became acquainted
with the working methods of Leonardo, Winckelmann’s opinion on the date and
provenance of the Laocoön, Hogarth’s originality and sense of beauty, “the sweetness,
brilliancy, harmony and freshness” of the colour in Murillo’s Beggar—and so on.
94

She also mentions that “readers who wished to understand and enjoy art” were informed about
the styles of Rubens and Correggio, Titian’s use of color, and Rembrandt’s chiaroscuro.
95

However, Anderson’s study is primarily concerned with examining the moral messages in the
magazine’s coverage of works of art. About the pitiful but heroic figure of the Dying
Gladiator (Fig. 1.8), for instance, she writes:
No longer just a figure of antiquity, [the sculpture] had become as well a role-
model for the contemporary reader-viewer. For here was one who was also a
worker, who therefore suffered, but who endured his suffering in a “manly” way.
96

Anderson interprets the Louvre Diana as “[illustrating] chastity and maidenly modesty,”
Leonardo’s Last Supper as revealing “seemly behaviour in trying circumstances,” Murillo’s
Beggar Boy as physically rough because of his immorality, and the Laocoon as lacking proper
emotional restraint.
In the process of conveying such moral lessons, the articles dedicated to these
masterpieces taught readers many now familiar details of art history. They identified the
Diana sculpture as one of the finest statues of the Greek goddess of the hunt and pointed to the
work’s current location in Paris.
97
They described the Last Supper in its poor state of repair in

94
Anderson, The Printed Image, 73.

95
Ibid.

96
Ibid., 58 and “Pictures for the People,” 136. The identity of this sculpture as a gladiator began to be
questioned as early as the seventeenth century, and it has often been referred to as the Dying Gaul, a
possibility raised in the early nineteenth century. Its status as a copy or derivation of a Greek sculpture
was seriously considered only in the late 1800s. See Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny, Taste and the
Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture 1500-1900 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981), 224-
27.

97
PM, 3 Jan, 1835, 4.

48
the Milan Church of Sta. Maria delle Grazie, then related an anecdote of how the church was
shockingly used for military quarters during the Napoleonic wars. And they informed readers
that the Beggar Boy was emblematic of the Spanish School of painting.
98

This art historical information, moreover, appeared in a “condensed” and easily
comprehensible format that could be read without “considerable effort.”
99
The images were
large and clear, often commanding half and full-page positions, and the articles were short
with no more than 2000 words each.
100
The magazine emphasized its role as a starting point
for learning, a means to prepare the reader for the reception “of more elaborate and precise
knowledge.”
101
Thus, while not an historical “survey” of art, the Penny Magazine indeed
provided its readers with popular instruction about art history. Leaving in-depth discussions
of aesthetic theory aside, the journal appealed to the audience’s pleasure, wonder, and delight
in learning about works of art. With a combination of succinct, vivid language and easily
legible images, which provided visual examples of art objects in the mind of readers, the
magazine introduced readers to art history as a subject worthy of their attention. At the same
time, the Penny Magazine’s version of art history intersected with the other fields of study
covered within the periodical’s pages, including science, technology, geography, religion, and
history. Categorized as part of the history of human creation, art history coincided with
developments in science and technology. Comprised of monuments from around the world,
art history complemented the subjects of geography and travel. And as artifacts, works of art
provided a tangible context for biblical as well as cultural histories. Thus, as art history

98
The articles on the Last Supper and Beggar Boy both appeared in 1834.

99
“Reading for All,” PM, 31 Mar. 1832, 1. This is the first article of the magazine.

100
Bennett, 130. As Bennett notes, this length is much shorter than the general literary periodical, such
as The Quarterly Review or The Edinburgh Review.

101
“Reading for All,” 1.
49
gained the status of an independent academic discipline in German-speaking universities, a
very different profile of the history of art was taking shape in Britain.
While clearly divergent from the more elite developments of university art history,
Knight’s Penny Magazine aligned with the efforts of museums in educating the public about
historical works of art. One of the oldest public museums in Britain—the British Museum
(est. 1753)—was, much like Knight’s magazine, an pre-disciplinary institution. Founded in
the mid-eighteenth century as a collection of natural history specimens, rare books,
manuscripts, and antiquities, the museum was by no means an exclusive space for fine art. In
the nineteenth century, it remained divided between art, ethnographic objects, and zoological
specimens, indeed mirroring the very organization of the Penny Magazine.
102
Only after the
acquisitions of Egyptian antiquities, the Parthenon marbles, and other important works of
ancient sculpture in the early nineteenth century did the British Museum become a leading art
museum of Europe.
103

With the founding of the Louvre Museum in 1793 during the French Revolution, the
“public museum” in Europe took on a new meaning: not only open to the public, as were
many princely collections in the eighteenth century, the museum came to represent the
property of ordinary citizens.
104
This sense of a publicly owned art museum became even
more prominent during the Napoleonic Wars, when French armies looted art objects from

102
It is worth noting that the British Museum did display objects from Africa, Meso-America, South
America, East Asia, and the Pacific Islands in the mid-nineteenth century, but as ethnographic objects
rather than high art, in contrast to Egyptian, Greek, Etruscan, Roman, and Assyrian objects.

103
For a summary of this history from the period, see Knight’s Cyclopaedia of London (London:
Charles Knight, 1851), 697-720.

104
On the history of public art museums and the revolutionary Louvre, see Carol Duncan and Alan
Wallach, “The Universal Survey Museum,” Art History 3, no. 4 (1980): 452-54 and Andrew McClellan,
Inventing the Louvre: Art, Politics, and the Origins of the Modern Museum in Eighteenth-Century Paris
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994).

50
Italy, Germany, Spain, and the Netherlands. As many of these objects were returned in 1815
after the defeat of Napoleon, the looted art “came to symbolize the national heritage rather
than merely the property of the king,” a changing attitude that contributed to the founding of
public art museums in Berlin, Munich, Amsterdam, and Madrid.
105

It is in this context that Knight reminds readers of the Penny Magazine that they need
not hesitate to visit the British Museum and other seemingly exclusive local temples of art.
An article in 1832 quoted an imagined “working man,” who argued that he had “passed by the
British Museum” where “there are two sentinels at the gateway and the large gates are always
closed.” “Will they let me in?” the man asks, “Is there nothing to pay?” To this, the article’s
anonymous author responds, “But here there is nothing to pay. Knock boldly at the gate; the
porter will open it...Do not fear any surly looks or impertinent glances from any person in
attendance. You are upon safe ground here. You are come to see your own property. You
have as much right to see it, and you are as welcome therefore to see it, as the highest in the
land.”
106

However, the ability to visit these newly public art museums did not guarantee
education about the art on display. Writing about the Louvre, art historian Andrew McClellan
observes the gap between access to the works of art and access to information about them:
Enjoyment of the fruits of revolution required no aesthetic sophistication, and
more than access in and of itself supplied the theoretical and historical grounding
necessary to see the art and decipher its systematic presentation. If people came away
from the museum confirmed in their devotion to the state, only some could fathom the
art historical lessons inscribed on the walls.
107

105
Douglas Crimp, “The End of Art and the Origin of the Museum,” Art Journal 46, no. 4 (1987): 262.

106
“The British Museum,” PM, 7 Apr. 1832, 13-14.

107
McClellan, 9-12.

51
Though their doors had been opened to the people, museums had not yet abolished the
exclusivity of knowledge about art.
What the public needed, according to Knight, was guidance about the “art historical
lessons” in their museums. In the 1830s, the Penny Magazine provided readers with just that.
Articles dedicated to the British Museum, the National Gallery, the Louvre, the Munich
Glyptothek and Pinacothek, and the Vatican Museum educated audiences about art in these
collections through both written texts and visual images, including maps of the museums’
floor plans and illustrations of the works.
108
This intention of the magazine was described in
an 1832 article: “That we may assist the diffusion of this taste, we shall give in future numbers
some representations of the more remarkable of these remains [in museums], with brief
observations on their particular merits.”
109
As Pierre Bourdieu has argued, the capacity to
“see” a work of art is a function of having knowledge about the work. In institutions of high
culture including art museums, this knowledge is often not readily available to the general
public.
110
Knight’s Penny Magazine sought to make information about art more widely
available, and thereby counteracted the elitism of art history and its museums.
The Penny Magazine also addressed contemporary concerns among British political
leaders that the nation’s museums were lagging behind continental institutions in their
outreach to the general public. Quoting the minutes of the Committee of the House of

108
The British Museum is covered in numerous issues, including six in 1832; three in 1833; and one in
both 1835 and 1836. Likewise, the National Gallery is the subject of four articles in 1832, one in 1833,
and one in 1836. On the Louvre, see PM, monthly supplement, 31 Oct. to 30 Nov. 1836, 467. On the
Vatican, see PM, 17 Oct. 1835, 406-8. On the Glyptothek, see PM, 18 June 1836, 236-7. On the
Pinacothek, see PM, 18 June 1836, 236. At the time, the Munich painting museum was nearly
complete.

109
PM, 3 Nov. 1832, 305-6.

110
Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University press, 1984), 2.

52
Commons on Arts and their Connection with Manufactures, an article in 1836 noted that
museums in Berlin and Munich had recently implemented didactic wall labels to assist new
and untrained viewers, and that the Louvre, open seven days a week, regularly drew visitors
from the lower classes. The committee hoped to make similar strides in the public museums
of Britain.
111
When this article was written, the British Museum was still open to the public
but three days a week (Monday, Wednesday, and Friday) and then only from 10:00 to 4:00.
People who worked for a living could therefore visit only on a holiday. The National Gallery
remained a fledgling institution at the time; established in 1824 with the purchase by
Parliament of Angerstein’s collection of thirty-eight paintings, it was theoretically open to the
public, but lacked a permanent location until 1838.
112
Penny Magazine articles about these
and other museums paved the way to an expansion of informed museum audiences in Britain.
The publication actively attempted to remove the bars to knowledge that might hold back
visitors: “having learned to enjoy them, [viewers] will naturally feel an honest pride in the
possession, by the Nation, of many of the most valuable treasures in Art.”
113
The Penny
Magazine claimed a sort of partnership with public museums in their common aim “to render
[works of art] essentially popular.”
114
As the magazine declared, “The time has gone by when

111
PM, monthly supplement, 31 Oct. to 30 Nov. 1836, 466-72.

112
Even as late as 1851, Knight was complaining about the small number of 220 paintings in the
National Gallery compared to other European museums with more than five times that amount, and the
fact that the many visitors to the gallery were still searching “in vain” for a chronological account of
painting history. See Knight’s Cyclopaedia of London, 723.

113
PM, 7 Apr. 1832, 13-14. To be sure, “learning” at the museum involved a certain protocol of
behavior, which the reader of the magazine was also taught, such as not to touch the objects or speak
aloud.

114
PM, monthly supplement, 31 July to 31 Aug. 1833, 337-38. This article specifically promoted the
“Library of Entertaining Knowledge” volume on the British Museum, another book published by
Knight and the SDUK to advance public knowledge about the museum’s collection.

53
all matters of taste...were hedged in by conventional barriers, and pedantry locked up what
ought to be open to all.”
115

Knight recognized that his magazine could also popularize art history in ways no
museum could. Through the illustrated publication, Knight wrote, “a tolerably correct outline
of the works of great masters” could “find its way into the minds of the population in
general...by conveying instruction to the doors of the people.”
116
As the Penny Magazine
circulated beyond London and other urban centers, it reached readers without immediate
access to museums. Through a combination of text and wood engravings, information about
art became newly available to many people unable to travel to see original objects in person.
Knight’s acknowledgement of the importance of wood-engraved art illustrations was seconded
by arts administrator Henry Cole, writing in 1838:
The great end of the whole art of engraving is to render the spirit and genius of a great
artist accessible to the thousands or the millions, by embodying them in cheap and
portable forms. Wood engraving, professedly the cheapest and most portable of all
the representations of great pictures, excels equally in fulfilling the highest mission of
its art.
117

It is Knight as founder of The Penny Magazine whom Cole credited with employing the
medium to this end. He wrote: “Thanks and praise be to the man who has multiplied and
extended the pleasures of the beautiful where they were scarcely known before.”
118

Moreover, the Penny Magazine presented its readers with a collection of works from
across the globe. It included architectural monuments from a variety of geographical

115
Ibid.

116
“Address to the Readers of the ‘Penny Magazine’ on the Completion of the Fifth Volume,” PM,
monthly supplement, 30 Nov. to 31 Dec. 1836, 515.

117
Henry Cole, “Modern Wood Engraving,” London and Westminster Review 29 (1838): 268-9 and as
quoted in Fox, Graphic Journalism, 7.

118
Cole as in ibid., 269.

54
locations, such as temples in Egypt and India, tombs in China and Asia Minor, mosques in
Spain and Turkey, and churches in Germany and Russia, as well as art from the most famous
European museums—the Elgin Marbles from the British Museum, the statue of Diana and
Murillo’s Beggar Boy from the Louvre, the Laocoon and Raphael’s School of Athens from the
Vatican, the Niobe from the Uffizi, and the Alexander Mosaic from the Naples Museum (for a
list of the canonical objects illustrated in the magazine, see Appendix 2). Although the
various European museums were in fierce competition in the nineteenth century to obtain the
best objects from all periods in art history, and thereby to claim the world’s art as their own
national patrimony, the Penny Magazine effectively brought these museums together as
collaborators in defining a distinctly international art history.
119

The Dissemination of the Penny Magazine’s Art History
While the art historical content of the Penny Magazine was trans-national in scope,
the journal also reached an unprecedented number of international readers. Not only did
hundreds of thousands of people in England, Ireland, and Scotland have access to the
magazine’s texts and illustrations, but large numbers of people in other areas of the globe saw
copies as well. Knight sold stereotypes of his magazine and its illustrations to publishers in
numerous countries. Knight writes:
At this period, 1836, the “Penny Magazine” was producing a revolution in
popular Art throughout the world. Stereotype casts of its best cuts were supplied by
me for the illustration of publications of a similar character, which appeared in eleven
different languages and countries...Germany—France—Holland—Livonia (in Russian
and German)—Bohemia (Sclavonic)—Italy—Ionian Islands (Modern Greek)—

119
On museum collections and competitive national identity see, for instance, Crimp, “The End of Art”
and Todd Porterfield, “The Musée d’Egypte,” in The Allure of Empire: Art in the Service of French
Imperialism 1798-1836 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 81-116. Both studies discuss
how France and Germany attempted to become the heir and caretaker of civilization through their
museum collections.

55
Sweden—Norway—Spanish America—the Brazils. The entire work was also
reprinted in the United States from plates sent from this country.
120

Thus, the Penny Magazine and its versions of art history were adapted for readers in numerous
countries worldwide. Though it would be difficult to trace the exact impact of Knight’s
magazine in each of these contexts, it is clear that the scope of art history instruction was more
global and pervasive than ever before.
The ways in which Knight’s art history information was employed in a non-British
context can be examined in the enduring Magasin pittoresque, published in France between
1833 and 1914.
121
In the first years of the French magazine, the majority of art illustrations in
its issues—from the Parthenon and the mosaics of Pompeii to Hogarth’s Marriage à la mode
and the Arc de Triomphe—were direct copies of Penny Magazine wood engravings, having
been printed from stereotypes of Knight’s original blocks. As we see in the images of Notre
Dame, both the Penny Magazine and Magasin pittoresque views display identical figures and
shadows, and share the same distinct cracking patterns along the bottom frame (perhaps from
a damaged original wood block), as well as the matching signature of “Jackson” (Figs. 1.9 and
1.10). The editors of the Magasin pittoresque openly acknowledged their debt to Knight and
his British magazine in the introduction to their first volume:
We must recognize that we have no right to credit ourselves with the invention of
what is original in the form of this work...it is only after having known the success of
the Magazines in England, and especially that collection published in London under a
high and worthy influence by M. Charles Knight, distinguished writer and economist,

120
Knight, Passages, vol. 2, 223-24. This same list of foreign countries was repeated in Charles
Knight, The Old Printer and the Modern Press (London: John Murray, 1854), 258-9.

121
In addition to this successful French version of the Penny Magazine, which in fact long outlived its
English predecessor, the German Das Pfennig-Magazin was founded in Leipzig in 1833 by French
publisher Bossange. See Frédéric Barbier, L’Empire du livre: le livre imprimé et la construction de
l’Allemagne contemporaine (1815-1914) (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1995), ix.

56
who, by his open relations with us, has contributed to making the first difficulties of
our enterprise less discouraging.
122

Although the editors did not specifically mention their borrowing of images from Knight’s
publication, this practice is implicit in their mention of the British publisher’s “contribution”
to their publication and in the illustrations themselves.
More than anything else, stereotyping—a process invented by Lord Stanhope (who
also invented a widely used printing press) and pioneered in the 1830s by London printers
such as Clowes—made possible this international sharing of art history texts and images.
123

Using plaster of Paris, a mold was taken of either the entire page with text and images
together, or of the wood engraving by itself. Then this mold was baked and used to create a
relief metal plate identical to the full page or the wood engraving alone. Although
stereotyping remained tedious and expensive in this period, its advantages were cost-effective
for high volume printing. First, it allowed the publisher to preserve a form of the pages
separate from the moveable type, which could then be employed elsewhere. Most publishers
had a limited amount of cast type, so quickly freeing it up after each use was important.
Second, stereotyping made possible the simultaneous printing of multiple copies of these
pages, increasing output dramatically. Third, making metal copies of the wood-engraved
blocks created a matrix more durable than wood, allowing the original wood blocks to be set

122
“Nous devons reconnaître que nous n’avons aucun droit à nous attribuer l’invention de ce qu’il y a
d’originalité dans la forme qu’elle à revêtue...c’est seulement après avoir connu le succès des
Magazines en Angleterre, et surtout celui recueil publié à Londres, sous une haute et digne influence,
par M. Charles Knight, écrivain économiste distingué, qui, par ses relations bienveillantes avec nous, a
contribué à rendre moins décourageantes les premières difficultés de notre entreprise.” Magasin
pittoreque, 31 Dec. 1833, ii. In a much later issue of the same magazine, Charton explicitly admits that
he borrowed wood engravings from the PM because in Paris in 1833 there were “hardly eight
engravers” that could produce such wood blocks. See “Extrait des éphémérides d’une histoire du
Magasin pittoresque,” in the “avant-propos” of the 1888 issue of the Magasin pittoresque.

123
On stereotyping, see “The Commercial History of a Penny Magazine, no. 3,” 470-71. See also
Twyman, 22; Philip Gaskell, A New Introduction to Bibliography (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1972), 201-5; Geoffrey Wakeman, Victorian Book Illustration: The Technical Revolution (Newton
Abbot: David & Charles, 1973), 21; de Maré, 48; Weedon, 16 and 73; and Banham, 278-9.
57
aside and used only to print additional copies. Wood was prone to cracking after repeated use,
and this way the original blocks could be preserved. Finally, having numerous copies of both
the full pages and individual images, Knight could sell extra copies to other publishers, with
those working in English using the full pages and those working in other languages using only
the illustrations. As the Penny Magazine pointed out, not only did this practice improve the
overall profit “which accrues from the sale of these casts,” it also allowed Knight’s British
firm to “assist foreign nations in the production of ‘Penny Magazines,’” encouraging both
international cooperation among publishers and common learning among readers.
124

Foreign publishers, such as Edouard Charton of the Magasin pittoresque, bought
stereotypes of Knight’s illustrations because they lacked the ready access to professional wood
engravers that Knight possessed in London.
125
By the time the Penny Magazine began
publication, several British groups of wood engravers had emerged, including Bewick’s
students, such as John Jackson, and the rival “London school” of Robert Allen Branston. For
his magazine, Knight drew upon these established wood engravers, both draftsmen and cutters
(on these artists, see Appendix 1). The large studio of Jackson, who was widely recognized as
“one of the best wood-cutters of [the] day,” was principally responsible for the magazine’s
illustrations, and indeed Jackson’s name appeared on the vast majority of images (Figs. 1.5
and 1.9).
126
The multiple artists working under Jackson would have signed the master’s name
as well. These early wood engravers paved the way for the development of the craft in other
nations.

124
See PM as in ibid.

125
Ibid., 421.

126
“The Commercial History of a Penny Magazine, no. 2,” 420.

58
The influence of British artists on French schools of wood engravers, for example, has
been well documented.
127
In 1816, Charles Thompson, a pupil of Robert Allen Branston,
moved to Paris, began working for the printing firm of Didot, and established himself as a
wood engraver. Eventually, he ran a large and successful studio in Paris, introducing the
English method into France. According to art historian Remi Blachon, Thompson was the
“veritable father of French wood engraving.”
128
Most likely at Thompson’s request, the
English wood engravers John Martin and John Andrew also went to Paris.
129
Andrew later
worked with Frenchmen Jean Best and Isadore Leloir from 1832 to 1843, under the company
name of Andrew, Best, Leloir; some of this company’s best-known work was for the Magasin
pittoresque. A large number of English artists worked on other French publications as well,
including the well-known volumes of Leon Curmer in the 1830s and 40s.
130
According to
Blachon, “not a single illustrated book appeared in Paris between 1835 and 1840 without
some contribution from English engravers, expatriated to Paris or working in London.”
131

Even the use of the term “illustration” to signify an image within a printed text was an

127
Some of the most important French sources on the history of the medium, such as Henri Beraldi’s
dictionary of engravers, made no mention of the debt owed to English wood engravers including
Bewick. Blachon refers to such omissions as xenophobic reactions against the profound influence of
England on this medium. Blachon, 11 and 70. On this influence, see Blachon, “La Tutelle anglaise,”
63-7 as well as Paul Dupont, “Gravure sur bois appliquée à la typographie,” in Histoire de l’imprimerie
(Paris: Dupont, 1854), 370-73; Ambroise Firmin-Didot, Essai typographique et bibliographique sur
l’histoire de la gravure sur bois (Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1863), 281-83; Henri Bouchot, Le Livre (Paris:
Quantin, 1886), 236; Engen, vii; and de Maré, 173.

128
Blachon, 47-61 and 252.

129
Ibid., 63-68.

130
Curmer’s illustrated books include Histoire de l’ancien et du nouveau testament (1835), Les Quatres
evangiles (1836), Paul et Virginie (1839), Les Français peints par eux-mêmes (1840-42), and a
translation of Wordworth’s La Grèce pittoresque et historique (1841). Curmer’s publications have been
well studied. See, for instance, Firmin-Didot, 281-83; Blachon, 65; and John Buchanan-Brown, Early
Victorian Illustrated Books: Britain, France, and Germany 1820-1860 (London: British Library, 2005),
39.

131
Blachon, 65.

59
“anglicism.” This connotation of the term was not prevalent in French, Blachon argues, until
after it was first used to designate English illustrations or the English manner of illustrating
with wood engravings printed along with text.
132

Where British leadership in wood engraving has been recognized, the related
leadership in popularizing art history has not. The art history illustrations that originated with
British artists, Knight, and his magazine reached millions of viewers in numerous nations.
The Penny Magazine brought together a collection of what came to be seen as canonical
works of art history, while it disseminated knowledge about these works more widely than any
previous publication on the subject. As an article in the magazine observes, the sales of
stereotype plates of these images “directs popular reading” on a multi-national level “into the
same channels.”
133
For the first time, this popular reading included information about the
history of art.
Not only did Knight sell art history illustrations to foreign publishers in the 1830s, he
also recycled the same images in his own later publications. In 1846, Knight stopped issuing
his Penny Magazine, largely because of readers lost to the many competing penny weeklies as
well as the excessive financial burden of taxes on newspapers and paper.
134
At that time,
Knight purchased the stereotype plates of the Penny Magazine from the Society of the
Diffusion of Useful Knowledge before it dissolved that same year, and was therefore free to

132
Ibid., 9.

133
“The Commercial History of a Penny Magazine, no. 3,” 471.

134
Knight in particular spoke out against the “Taxes on Knowledge.” See Knight, Struggles of a Book
Against Excessive Taxation (London: Clowes, 1850). On the decline of the Penny Magazine, see
“Address to the Reader,” Knight’s Penny Magazine, 2 (1846): 231 and Gray, 56. According to figures
given in the magazine, it was necessary to sell 60,000 to 70,000 copies to make a profit, while in 1845,
these numbers had dropped to 40,000. Knight in particular lamented the hundreds of “detestable” cheap
weekly magazines that “superceded” the Penny Magazine, claiming that none provide “engravings of
real instruction.” See the introduction to his Pictorial Half-Hours: or Miscellanies of Art (London:
Charles Knight, 1851).
60
use them where he pleased. To be sure, he greatly extended the life of the Penny Magazine art
history images, which were reused in many of his publications between the 1830s and 1850s,
later appearing in everything from pictorial bibles, to natural histories, to histories of England,
to other educational works. For instance, in 1851, he published The Pictorial Half-Hours, or
Miscellanies of Art, a weekly periodical dedicated to providing quality reading material for
families, in which he reused more than eighty of the Penny Magazine art illustrations. In an
announcement of the work, readers are informed that the “Editor and Proprietor [Knight] can
select the most attractive and best executed subjects from many hundreds of woodcuts in his
possession” and thus offer the work at a “rate of unexampled cheapness.”
135
All 104 projected
issues were to cost less than £1 (20s) in total; however, only fifty-two issues were actually
published.
But like the Penny Magazine’s coverage of art, the articles and illustrations in the
Pictorial Half-Hours did not constitute an historical survey; they were distributed throughout
the work without adhering to any sort of chronological progression. However, the Pictorial
Gallery of Arts, published between 1845 and 1847, rearranged the original Penny Magazine
art illustrations into an historical progression, supplementing them with new images and an
accompanying text. It was this publication that arguably defined a new genre of art history
books: the illustrated general survey.
136

135
Pictorial Half-Hours, as in ibid.

136
I have identified more than 100 illustrations from the Pictorial Gallery that originally appeared in
the Penny Magazine. On this overlap, see appendix 2.

61
The Pictorial Gallery of Arts: Teaching Art History in Illustration
The Penny Magazine’s role in the popular press has been well studied.
137
In contrast,
Knight’s later publication, the Pictorial Gallery of Arts, has been generally ignored in the
scholarship on Knight, on popular publishing, and on the history of art history. Thus, its
importance as the first illustrated survey has gone wholly unnoticed.
138
Attention to this
aspect of the Pictorial Gallery not only reveals Britain’s pioneering efforts in promoting art
history as a subject of general study, it also underlines the significance of popular illustrated
publishing for the formation of art history as a field. After the termination of the Penny
Magazine in 1846, Knight continued to produce illustrated publications for a general audience.
In a number of books, he designated this effort with the word “pictorial” in the titles. He
published The Pictorial Bible (1836-38), The Pictorial History of England (1837-44), The
Pictorial Shakespeare (1839-42), The Land We Live In. A Pictorial and Literary Sketch Book

137
According to Gray, more historians have studied the Penny Magazine than any other Knight
publication. See, for example, Richard Altick, The English Common Reader: A Social History of the
Mass Reading Public 1800-1900 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957), 130-32; R. K. Webb,
The British Working Class Reader, 1790-1848 (London: Allen and Unwin, 1955); Patricia Hollis, The
Pauper Press (London: Oxford University Press, 1970); Eric de Maré, The Victorian Woodblock
Illustrators, 74-5; Joanne Shattock and Michael Wolff, eds. The Victorian Periodical Press: Samplings
and Soundings (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1982), 225-57; Bennett, “The Editorial Character
and Readership of the Penny Magazine,” 127-41; Fox, Graphic Journalism; Anderson, The Printed
Image; and Maidment, Reading Popular Prints. There have also been recent efforts to make The Penny
Magazine available online, such as the site established by University of Minnesota English Professors
Laurie Dickinson and Sarah Wadsworth (http://english.cla.umn.edu/PM/PennyMag.html) and the site
by Roger Corrie (www.history.rochester.edu/pennymag/).

138
For example, Buchanan-Brown mentions at least six of Knight’s pictorial publications from the
1840s, but neglects to include the Pictorial Gallery of Arts [hereafter PGA]. See Buchanan-Brown, 36.
Likewise, Gray mentions only the “Useful Arts” volume of the PGA in passing during a brief discussion
of the “New Orbis Pictus” and again in one footnote; this work does not mention the “Fine Arts”
volume dedicated to art history. See Gray, 158 and 122 note 101. Anderson only briefly cites the PGA
in a footnote as evidence of Knight’s knowledge about and interest in art. See Anderson, 69 note 32.

62
of the British Empire (1848-49), and Pictorial Half-Hours of London Topography (1851).
139

He even credited himself with bringing this term into common use:
In hitting upon the word “Pictorial” I felt that I was rather daring in the employment
of a term which the Dictionaries pronounced as “not in use.” It has now been rendered
familiar by frequent employment. I could not have easily found any other word that
would have conveyed the intention to present wood engravings of the scriptural
designs of great painters; of landscape scenes; of costume; of zoology and botony; of
the remains of ancient architecture.
140

Aligned with this determination to provide informational illustrated volumes, Knight
recognized the demand for an illustrated history of art.
The Pictorial Gallery of Arts was published in two volumes between 1845 and 1847.
The first volume treated the “useful arts,” from printmaking and ceramic production, to
agriculture, clock making, and ship building—in other words, the “various processes and
products that have relation to our daily sustenance.”
141
This volume could be compared to the
display of goods that would later appear at the Great Exhibition in 1851; it was in fact reissued
on the occasion of the exhibition as The Arts and Industry of All Nations.
142
The second
volume treated the “fine arts,” and was formulated as an art history survey. It included three
sections tracing the history of architecture, sculpture, and painting, in that order.
143

139
On these pictorial works, see Charles Knight’s obituary in The Times, 10 Mar. 1873 and Knight,
Passages, vol. 1, viii.

140
Knight, Passages, vol. 2, 253.

141
“Works Published by Charles Knight and Co.,” The Times, 3 March 1845, 2.

142
Wakeman, Victorian Book Illustration, 43.

143
The second volume of the PGA was published beginning in 1847 not under Knight’s name, but
under the name of Charles Cox. Knight was still clearly the general editor for this volume, but it is
likely that in 1847 Knight’s firm was having financial difficulties and turned to Cox, another London
publisher with whom he had collaborated on other projects, to provide the backing for this second
volume. Little is known about Cox’s firm, and it does not appear in the sources on British publishers
that I have consulted. Advertisements for the entire “Pictorial World” series also listed Cox’s
establishment as the sales location for the series. See Edinburgh Review, 85, no. 171 (1847): 10; The
Athenaeum, 23 Dec. 1848, 1309; and The Examiner, 29 Jan. 1848, 80.

63
Knight’s Pictorial Gallery of Arts formed part of an encyclopedic illustrated
collection called the Pictorial World, or New Orbis Pictus, in reference to the internationally
renowned publication of Johann Comenius, a seventeenth-century educational theorist.
144

“After the lapse of two centuries,” declared an advertisement for the series, the volume of
Comenius “still [held] its place amongst the educational books of continental Europe.”
145
The
original Orbis Pictus (Nuremberg, 1658) provided elementary lessons on various subjects
(science, philosophy, and religion, for instance) through clear and simple language balanced
by exemplary woodcut images.
According to book historian Ségolène Le Men, Comenius’s Orbis Pictus constituted a
foundational publication of visual pedagogy, responsible in large part for overturning many
conventions of elementary education, such as replacing verbal traditions of rhetoric with more
visually oriented methods.
146
For Comenius, the image conveyed knowledge at its most basic
level, and was a means of increasing the desire to learn on the part of young readers in
particular. Images provided representations of material objects, communicating with the
senses as well as the imagination, and therefore piqued a child’s interest to decipher the
related verbal text, encouraging the learning process in a more pleasant, amusing, and

144
Comenius (1592-1671) was Czech by nationality. His Orbis Pictus was published in numerous
editions (six alone between 1658 and 1660) and was translated into various languages. See Jean
Adhémar, “L’Enseignement par l’image,” Gazette des Beaux-Arts 97 (1981): 53-60. Knight’s “New
Orbis Pictus” included four books for a total of seven volumes: the Pictorial Museum of Animated
Nature in two volumes, The Pictorial Sunday-Book in one volume, Old England in two volumes, and
the Pictorial Gallery of Arts. See Knight, Passages, vol. 3, 18-20. By January 1847, all of these except
the second volume of the PGA were complete. See Edinburgh Review 85 no. 171 (1847): 10. The
advertisement in this journal also lists Old England’s Worthies as part of the series. This ad is located
on page 10 of “Advertisements Connected with Literature and the Arts.”

145
Ibid.

146
Ségolène Le Men, “La pédagogie par l’image,” in Les Abécédaires français illustrés du XIX siècle
(Paris: Promodis, 1984), 141-99.

64
memorable way. Comenius’ publication integrated images into the lessons of his book,
employing these images as “anchors” for explanatory texts.
It is fitting that Knight invoked Comenius as the inspiration for his new pictorial
series. Following the earlier pedagogue, Knight believed that pictures were excellent teaching
tools and set out to educate his audience through illustrated publications. As Knight noted in
his memoirs, the “wood-cuts” in his Pictorial World volumes offered “real illustrations of the
text, instead of fanciful devices—true eye-knowledge, sometimes more instructive than
words.”
147
For Knight, visual images were “the most valuable accessories to knowledge” and
“instruments of education;” “no intelligent teacher...is unconscious of their value.”
148

Nineteenth-century advocates of visual pedagogy also appreciated the ease and speed of
learning through images, in contrast to the “slow and uncertain” process of “the reduction of
verbal descriptions into correct mental images of things;” Knight and other popular educators
believed that the “eye and the brain seize” an image “at once as a whole.”
149

The original Orbis Pictus inspired important developments of modern visual
education, including the publication of Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie, with its
appended volumes of line-engraved plates.

Like both Comenius and Knight, the directors of
the Encyclopédie advocated the power of images to instruct readers. “A single glance on the
object or its representation,” the prospectus of their publication declared, “says more than a

147
Knight, Passages, vol. 2, 262. The Edinburgh Review advertisement for the New Orbis Pictus
mentioned Comenius’s Orbis Pictus as “one of the most popular books of education that Europe has
produced,” and then notes how the “Pictorial World” has carried out what Comenius began, producing
“the largest body of eye-knowledge that has ever been brought together.” See Edinburgh Review 85 no.
171 (1847): 10.

148
“Introduction,” Pictorial Half-Hours.

149
These views were expressed by botanist Hewett Cottrell Watson in The Naturalist 4 (1839): 280-81,
and as quoted in Anne Secord, “Botany on a Plate: Pleasure and the Power of Pictures in Promoting
Early Nineteenth-Century Scientific Knowledge,” Isis 93 (2002): 39-40. Watson’s statement that “a
correct figure must be a better representation of a plant...than the most careful description” sounds
remarkably familiar to the claims of Knight.

65
page of discourse.”
150
Such beliefs in the effectiveness of pictorial instruction also motivated
the production of countless popular books illustrated with wood engravings—including
novels, histories, science books, and art histories alike—that appeared on the international
book market in the 1800s. Publishers of the period, such as Knight, were convinced that
images added both educational value and enjoyment to the reading process. And the
continued high sales of these books with images reassured publishers of this power of
illustrations.
Although Knight’s Pictorial World volumes, and his Pictorial Gallery of Arts within
this series, were not marketed as school texts, they were advertised as tools for the education
of beginning readers. An ad in The Edinburgh Review proclaims the books to be particularly
useful for tutors, governesses, and other educators.
151
They were repeatedly described as
serving “the instruction of the People, particularly of the young.”
152
To be sure, the
educational power of these books lay in their distinctive text-image relationships. The same
Edinburgh Review ad notes, “Every engraving is given in connection with an original text,
forming itself an instructive and amusing introduction to the subject upon which it treats.”
153

The purpose of the publication was to “teach by pictures as well as words” and to encourage
“the expansion of the intellect of all who see and read.”
154
Wood engravings were of course
particularly suited to teach through illustration. As print historian Maidment observes, the

150
“Un coup d’oeil sur l’objet ou sur la représentation en dit plus qu’une page de discours;” as quoted
in Daniel Raichvarg and Jean Jacques, Savants et Ignorants: une histoire de la vulgarisation des
sciences (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1991), 173.

151
The Edinburgh Review 85 no. 171 (1847): 10.

152
This text appeared both in The Times from 3 March 1845 and in the introduction of the PGA.
Therefore, it refers both to the “Pictorial World” series as a whole, and to the PGA specifically.

153
Edinburgh Review 85 no. 171 (1847): 10.

154
As quoted in both The Times and the PGA. . See note 94.

66
medium, rarely employed to provide single, autonomous images, instead “presupposed” a
text-image relationship with its typographic status.
155

Recent studies in the history of science have recognized the importance of instructive
illustrations in books. In science publications, images have long served to train the reader’s
eye in the observation of specimens, to standardize in a visual form the objects of a scientific
field, and to circulate this information among readers. As Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison
argue, scientific illustrations are not “merely ancillary” within books, but instead “command
center stage.”
156
According to Bernard Lightman, this is particularly true for popular science
books in the nineteenth century, such as J. G. Wood’s natural history books illustrated with
wood engravings: Insects at Home (1872), Insects Abroad (1874), and Illustrated Natural
History for Young People (1882).
157
Wood and other science popularizers realized the power
of illustrations to “reveal a wondrous new world” to beginning students and to satisfy what
Lightman calls “the craving for visual images that was the hallmark of mass culture in this
period.”
158

By contrast, art historians have often denigrated informational illustrations. They are
seen as mimetic, literal, and therefore uncreative, a judgment made in comparison to more
imaginative illustrations, especially in books where known artists collaborated with known
writers. Museum exhibitions—such as “Modern Painters and Sculptors as Illustrators”
(MOMA, 1936), “The Artist and the Book, 1860-1960” (Boston MFA, 1961), and “From

155
Maidment, 15.

156
Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, “The Image of Objectivity,” Representations 40 (1992): 85-86.

157
Bernard Lightman, “The Visual Theology of Victorian Popularizers of Science: From Reverent Eye
to Chemical Retina,” Isis 91 (2000): 651-80 and Victorian Popularizers of Science: Designing Nature
for New Audiences (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007).

158
Lightman, “The Visual Theology,” 652 and 658. See also Secord, “Botany on a Plate,” 28-57.

67
Manet to Hockney: Modern Artists’ Illustrated Books” (V&A, 1985)—have focused on the
livre d’artiste as a genre and have defined a relatively stable canon of the illustrated books art
historians take most seriously.
159
Scholarship devoted to British illustrated books has likewise
tended to favor the creative designs of celebrated artists such as William Blake, the Pre-
Raphaelites, William Morris, and Aubrey Beardsley, as well as the well-known children’s
book illustrators Kate Greenaway, Randolph Caldecott, and Walter Crane.
160
In contrast,
reproductive wood engravers, such as those producing the art history illustrations of Knight’s
publications, are rarely studied in art historical scholarship on nineteenth-century illustration.
Moreover, the distinctions between such conspicuously artistic books as the livres
d’artiste and the illustrated literature of the Pre-Raphaelites on the one hand, and Knight’s
Pictorial Gallery of Arts on the other, are significant. While the former might rightly be
called “art books,” the latter is more aptly designated as an “art history book.” In the
nineteenth century, an “art book” often described any book with illustrations; yet, Knight’s

159
For the catalogues of these exhibitions, see Monroe Wheeler, Modern Painters and Sculptors as
Illustrators (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1936); The Artist and the Book 1860-1960 (Boston:
Museum of Fine Arts, 1962) and Carol Hogben and Rowan Watson, eds., From Manet to Hockney:
Modern Artists’ Illustrated Books (London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1985). On this trend in art
history of privileging the creative over the informational illustration, see Ségolène Samson-Le Men,
“Quant au livre illustré...” Revue de l’art 44 (1979): 85-106; William Cole, “The Book and the Artist:
Rethinking the Traditional Order,” Word & Image 8, no. 4 (1992): 378-82; and Michel Melot, The Art
of Illustration (New York: Rizzoli, 1984). Melot in particular notes the focus in histories of illustration
on works of literary fiction at the expense of scientific, technical, and “everyday” illustrations. The
most canonical illustrated books from the nineteenth century include Manet’s illustrations of Poe,
William Morris’s Kelmscott Press publications, and Pierre Bonnard’s illustrations of Valéry’s
Parallèlement.

160
An example of one of the most studied British illustrated books from the nineteenth century is the
copy of Tennyson’s poems published by Moxon in 1857, which saw the collaboration of designers
Millais, Holman Hunt, and Rossetti, Mulready, Maclise, and Landseer, and the famous Dalziel family
as engravers. On the most well-known British illustrators, see Gleeson White, English Illustration:
‘The Sixties’ 1855-70 (Westminster: Archibald Constable, 1897); David Bland, The Illustration of
Books (London: Faber and Faber, 1951) and A History of Book Illustration (London: Faber and Faber,
1958); Gordon Ray, The Illustrator and the Book in England, 1790-1914 (New York: Pierpont Morgan
Library, 1976); Margaret R. Slythe, The Art of Illustration: 1750-1900 (London: The Library
Association, 1970); Forrest Reid, Illustrators of the Eighteen Sixties: An Illustrated Survey of the Work
of 58 British Artists (New York: Dover, 1975); Paul Goldman, Victorian Illustrated Books, 1850-70:
The Heyday of Wood-Engraving (London: British Museum Press, 1994).
68
Pictorial Gallery separated itself from the majority of such books in the period. Knight’s
publication, though certainly a book about art and its history, was not designed according to
the artistic standards of many illustrated books at the time. Its pages had none of the
decorative elements common to luxury publications; historiated initials, elaborately designed
page frames, pictorial head and tailpieces, multiple colors of text ink (usually red and black),
and gold edging and binding designs were all missing from Knight’s Pictorial Gallery. Such
decorative elements can be seen in an illustrated bible published by the London firm of
Longman in the mid-nineteenth century (Figs. 1.11 and 1.12); the book included foliate and
architectural frames for the texts and images, as well as wide margins, heavy paper, and
leather binding with gilded design. Knight’s book was instead printed with few decorative
flourishes on thinner, cheaper paper with little blank margin space, thereby saving on the
amount of printed pages necessary, and was bound in cloth with leather only along the binding
(Figs. 1.13 to 1.15). The design of the Pictorial Gallery of Arts had the express goal of
affordability rather than artistry, of mass production rather than exclusive luxury.
Like many art books at the time, though, the Pictorial Gallery did include a few color
images printed on finer paper separately from the text and wood engravings. The bright, flatly
colored prints in Knight’s Pictorial Gallery and other volumes in the Pictorial World
collection were produced by a process Knight had patented in 1838 for printing inexpensive
color images in high volume (Fig. 1.16). This process, called “illuminated printing,”
employed a hand press fitted with a turntable that could quickly print layers of flat oil color
from metal relief plates for each color. As the bed rotated, the same sheet of paper was
impressed with an additional color.
161
Though Knight’s illuminated print process did not

161
On Knight’s color printing, see R. M. Burch, Colour Printing and Colour Printers (London: Sir
Isaac Pitman and Sons, 1910), 141-3; Lewis, The Story of Picture Printing, 31-6; Twyman, 45; Ruari
McLean, Victorian Book Design and Colour Printing, 2nd ed. (London: Faber and Faber, 1972), 42-3;
69
outlive the 1840s, while in use it allowed for the addition of a few color prints to his books
without significantly raising the production cost or sales price. Many scholars of color
printing in nineteenth century Britain have been quick to dismiss Knight’s process and its
productions as unrefined and ultimately unsuccessful. Yet, Knight’s goal was not so much to
produce beautifully printed color plates as to provide informational images that would attract
the attention of readers and enhance the educational value of his books.
The illustrations in Knight’s Pictorial Gallery, both the color prints and the wood
engravings, thus served a purpose different than those in the majority of artistic publications;
rather than elements of fine design, they instead represented instruments of visual pedagogy.
As in books on science, such informational illustrations in art history books have been
significant instructional tools, playing an arguably more fundamental role for the developing
field of art history than any illustrated “art book.” However, only one recent study examines
this important role of informational illustrations for the discipline of art history. The Rise of
the Image: Essays on the History of the Illustrated Art Book discusses illustrated publications
as a major factor in the dissemination of ideas about art history, but limits its purview to books
concerning Italian art.
162
General surveys of art history, starting with Knight’s Pictorial
Gallery, uniquely constructed the field of art history through their illustrated formats, which
were disseminated to a wide public in the nineteenth century. These surveys did not
themselves amount to works of high art; yet they merit serious attention from scholars for
their role in shaping and popularizing art history.
As in the other volumes in the Pictorial World series, Knight’s Pictorial Gallery
blended elements of the magazine and the book. It was printed on pages larger than the quarto

Wakeman, Victorian Book Illustration, 41-43; and Joan M. Friedman, Color Printing in England 1486-
1870 (New Haven: Yale Center for British Art, 1978), 23-4.

162
Rodney Palmer and Thomas Frangenberg, The Rise of the Image: Essays on the History of the
Illustrated Art Book (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003).
70
format of the Penny Magazine (36cm compared to 29cm) and used a triple-column layout for
the text, a choice unusual for books, but common for periodicals such as the Illustrated
London News (Fig. 1.13). The images were integrated into the layout, with pages of
illustrations printed on the reverse of pages of text and paginated continuously (Fig. 1.14).
Therefore, the format appears as a double page spread of text followed by a double page
spread of images, back and forth from text to images. The pages of images also included
textual captions for each figure, and a figure number that was referenced in the text, creating
an effective and uncomplicated dialogue between the illustrations and the written narrative.
For an art history survey, this format presented an innovation. Comparing Knight’s
survey to another well-known collection of canonical images of art history, the Denkmäler der
Kunst, published in Stuttgart beginning in 1845—that is, simultaneously with Knight’s
Pictorial Gallery—indeed illuminates the British publication’s novelty. The Denkmäler
included images of a large number of the same works of art, and like the Pictorial Gallery,
arranged them chronologically, beginning with prehistoric and ancient monuments and ending
with art from the modern period. However, the text that accompanied the images in the
German publication was written in catalogue format, not as a narrative. The descriptions of
each image were referenced with numbers, which corresponded to numbers printed adjacent to
the images (Figs. 1.3 and 1.17). The images themselves had no captions attached. Therefore,
flipping back and forth between the textual descriptions in one section and the images in
another rendered the text-image relationship tedious and often confusing, especially for
beginning readers. In contrast, the Pictorial Gallery images function more effectively as
illustrations, appearing in the book in the same section as the related text, while the caption
printed beneath each individual image reiterates its connection to the written history (Fig.
1.18).
71
The media of the images in these two publications also differed. The images in the
Denkmäler were metal line engravings that ranged from shaded, tonal renderings (Fig. 1.17) to
delicate light gray outlines (Fig. 1.3). In contrast, the Pictorial Gallery images were a
uniformly darker gray to black, produced with the same ink as the text; yet, they could be
equally as tonal and detailed as the Denkmäler line engravings (Fig. 1.18). The engravings in
the German publication had to be printed separately and later bound together with the text,
making the volumes more expensive to produce; the use of metal engravings also explains the
limited amount of text on the image plates.
163
On the other hand, the Pictorial Gallery with its
wood engravings, which were printed simultaneously with the text pages and captions, could
be produced in a high volume and sold at a minimal price: one shilling (1s) for each of the 24
monthly parts. The total cost of the publication therefore was one pound, four shillings, a low
price considering that the work included thousands of wood engravings.
164
This cost can be
compared to serial novels in the late 1830s and 1840s, such as Dickens’ Pickwick Papers,
which were also priced at 1 shilling per monthly part and included some illustrations.
165
Also

163
Although Karlholm discusses this publication in detail, he does not provide its sale price either for
the original line-engraved edition (1845-1856) or the later wood-engraved editions. The Denkmäler
was also first published more slowly than Knight’s Pictorial Gallery; its four original sections took
twelve years to appear on the market, in contrast to Knight’s single year (1847) for his second “Fine
Arts” volume. See Karlholm, 66-67.

164
On this price, see “Works Published by Charles Knight and Co.,” The Times, 3 March 1845. The
second volume of the PGA would have thus cost 12 shillings, with its twelve monthly parts. This price
fluctuated in later editions. In the 1850s, the London Printing and Publishing Company offered several
editions. One edition in the British Library still includes the paper wrappers for the monthly parts,
which were listed at 2s per part but for 18 parts instead of 24. These editions are not dated but they
must have been printed after the opening of the Crystal Palace at Sydenham in 1854 because of an
extended discussion of the palace in an appended beginning section. Because the business records of
Knight, like those of so many other London publishers, were destroyed in the 1941 Blitz, tracing the
changes of these prices is difficult.

165
Pickwick Papers (1836) had a total of twenty parts making it close in price to the PGA. It was also
offered for 21s bound and included some engravings on wood and steel. See McLean, 22; Simon
Houfe, The Dictionary of British Book Illustrators and Caricaturists, rev. ed. (Woodbridge: Antique
Collectors’ Club, 1996), 17; and Simon Eliot, “From Few and Expensive to Many and Cheap: The
72
like serial novels, as Knight relates in his memoirs, the Pictorial Gallery issues were “adapted
for sale, in the neighbourhood of the great manufacturing towns and other popular districts,
and by the class of book-hawkers known as canvassers.”
166
Such traveling salesmen helped to
circulate the volumes beyond major urban centers. They sold the work with colored paper
wrappers for each part, which also kept the price low. These wrappers have often been
discarded during the binding process, making them now quite rare (Fig. 1.19).
The format of the Pictorial Gallery as a general art history survey was transitional.
For the first time, it included a comprehensive collection of images and a corresponding
narrative text. Yet, it was still issued in parts, which in Britain represented a traditional means
of publication and distribution: the practice had been used at least since the seventeenth
century and became a staple in the eighteenth, when bibles, reference works, poetry, plays,
and novels were all sold in parts.
167
The mid-1840s, however, saw the development of the
cheap single volume for novels and other book genres; only in the following decade did
illustrated art history surveys see evidence of this shift, a development that will be discussed
in my next chapter.
168
Thus, Knight’s book initiated a lasting genre of art history books—the
illustrated general survey—in what proved to be a temporary and quickly outmoded format.
Along with its transitional format, the content of the Pictorial Gallery as an art history survey
registers a field in flux.

British Book Market 1800-1890,” in A Companion to the History of the Book, eds. Simon Eliot and
Jonathan Rose (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), 296.

166
Knight, Passages, vol. 3, 18-20. Canvassers were “extremely accomplished salesmen” who worked
in the regional areas of England. Selling in large quantities, they were able to “succeed in diffusing
knowledge to a scattered population.” Often they sold books of the lowest price and quality. See
Knight, Old Printer, 216-17.

167
On the practice of issuing books in parts, see Brake, 19-21 and 37; Weedon, 76; and Buchanan-
Brown, 36.

168
McLean, 23. In 1846, for example, single volume novels were offered for 2s 6d bound and by 1847,
this price had dropped to a shilling.

73
A Changing Face for Art History: The Content of the Pictorial Gallery of Arts
On an early page of illustrations in the Fine Arts volume of Knight’s Pictorial Gallery
appears a centrally placed vignette of Stonehenge (Figs. 1.18 and 1.20). The image depicts the
circle of rugged white stones from the southwest beneath a cloud-filled but not turbulent sky.
Very little of the Salisbury Plain is included in this closely focused image, though the
foreground does contain a reclining shepherd and small flock of sheep. Such a view, complete
with shepherd and flock, became quite standard after the publication of a similarly composed
scene by antiquarian John Britton, which was engraved for his Beauties of Wiltshire in 1814.
However, Knight’s readers might also have recalled the more romanticized watercolors of
Stonehenge by J. M. W. Turner (1828) and John Constable (1836) (Figs. 1.21 and 1.22). Both
show a similar close-up view of the stones, but with the dramatic additions of stormy skies, a
lightening-struck herdsman and chaotic flock (Turner), and a faint double rainbow
(Constable). The two watercolors had been exhibited for the London public, and Turner’s
view additionally appeared as a mezzotint copy in Picturesque Views in England and Wales
(1827-38).
169

During the first half of the nineteenth century, the monoliths at Stonehenge came to
signify both an appropriate subject for high art and a canonical monument of British heritage.
While such respected artists as Constable and Turner displayed views of the prehistoric site at
the Royal Academy and other frequented venues, Knight’s own pictorial survey of English
history Old England (1845) featured several depictions of Stonehenge.
170
The site first

169
On the views of Stonehenge by Britton, Turner, and Constable, see Louis Hawes, Constable’s
Stonehenge (London: Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1975). Turner showed his watercolor at the
Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly in 1829 and at the gallery of his publishers Moon, Boys, and Graves in Pall
Mall in 1833; Constable showed his at the Royal Academy in 1836.

170
According to Hawes, “no major British artist before Constable and Turner” produced a depiction of
Stonehenge. See Hawes, 11. In addition to their watercolors mentioned above, both artists depicted the
monument in a number of other drawings and watercolors during the period.
74
appeared in a gilded design on the publisher’s binding, then again prominently at the top of the
decorative frame on the introductory “Advertisement” page, and yet again in several views on
the first few pages of illustrations (Figs. 1.23 and 1.24). Among these was the very vignette
that Knight reused two years later in his Pictorial Gallery of Arts (Fig. 1.20).
In the context of Knight’s Pictorial Gallery, this same image of Stonehenge stood for
something new as well: the beginning of a changing narrative for art history. Whereas the
views of the monument in Old England were located among other prehistoric monoliths of the
British Isles, the Stonehenge vignette in the Pictorial Gallery appeared adjacent to images of
Egyptian pyramids, obelisks, and temples (Fig. 1.18). The corresponding text in the Pictorial
Gallery explained how scholars had recently raised the possibility that such “rude masses” of
stone could be “a starting-point” for the history of architecture. Whereas, a decade earlier,
Constable had captioned his watercolor of Stonehenge with a text emphasizing the
independence of the monoliths from any historical context, the same monument was now
squarely situated within a history of art.
171

In the 1840s, the dating of Stonehenge was still contested, especially concerning its
construction relative to the biblical flood.
172
The Pictorial Gallery did not take a stance either
way, and quickly moved from introducing the early monument to a focus on the more
established role of Egyptian architecture in art history:
Whatever may be the difference of opinion on these conjectural points [about
Stonehenge], it is agreed on all hands that Egypt displays the most mighty
examples of structures which were built ages before Greece and Rome were

171
The caption read: “Stonehenge. ‘The mysterious monument of Stonehenge, standing remote on a
bare and boundless heath, as much unconnected with the events of past ages as it is with the uses of the
present, carries you back beyond all historical records into the obscurity of a totally unknown period.”
See Graham Reynolds, The Later Paintings and Drawings of John Constable (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1984), 287.

172
The most enthusiastic supporter of an antediluvian date was Henry Browne. See Browne, The
Geology of Scripture, Illustrating the Operation of the Deluge (Frome: W. P. Penny, 1832).

75
numbered among the nations of the world; and that all of other very ancient
structures may be best viewed by comparing them with those of Egypt.

On the following page of illustrations, a reader of the Pictorial Gallery could do just that,
juxtaposing the monoliths of Stonehenge with the monuments of Egypt and thus commencing
an historical survey of the fine arts.
At that time, the notion of the “fine arts” still varied in its signification. The
anonymous authors of the Pictorial Gallery (excepting only Ralph Wornum, who was named
in the final section on the history of painting) found it necessary to define the fine arts for their
readers. Hegel’s well-known lectures on the fine arts delivered in the 1830s included poetry
and music, as well as architecture, sculpture, and painting; other writers, according to the
Pictorial Gallery’s introduction, had also variously designated poetry, rhetoric, music,
singing, dancing, and landscape gardening within the “fine arts” category. To clarify their
particular use of the word, the Pictorial Gallery authors stated “that those departments of the
Fine Arts which appeal to the mind through the medium of the ear (such as Poetry and Music)
will not be touched upon.”
173
Thus, Knight’s second volume of the Pictorial Gallery set a
standard of treating architecture, sculpture, and painting in their visual orientation as the main
divisions of the fine arts.
This order—with architecture first and painting last—constituted an established
convention. It was understood in the nineteenth century to be an historical and chronological
organization, with architecture supposedly being the oldest art—starting most often with
Stonehenge and the Egyptian pyramids—with sculpture and painting having emerged later.
Matthew Digby Wyatt began his Slade Lectures at Cambridge in 1870 with an explanation of
this order, arguing that he gave “precedence to Architecture...as ministering to man’s earliest

173
“Introduction,” PGA, vol. 2, 2.

76
necessities.” For Wyatt, architecture claimed “priority in date” because “almost from its birth
it began to include and call into being the [other] branches of the Fine Arts.”
174

After having defined the focus of their volume as the visual arts, the authors of the
Pictorial Gallery began their historical narrative. Continuing in the tradition of
Winckelmann’s foundational history of art from the previous century, this narrative was based
on a progression of artistic styles over time.
175
But where Winckelmann’s survey focused
only on the ancient art of Egypt, Greece, and Rome, Knight’s survey covered a much broader
scope. Writing more than eighty years after Winckelmann, the authors of the Pictorial
Gallery had to contend with a rapidly expanding field of art history. To be sure, the survey
during this period was still very much in the process of being written. Far less naturalized
than it would appear in later publications, including the well-known twentieth-century surveys
of Helen Gardner, H.W. Janson, Frederick Hartt, and Marilyn Stokstad, the sense of art history
as a still-developing field was ubiquitous in the Pictorial Gallery.
176
Repeated throughout the
book was the notion that “opinions” are “very discordant” on numerous issues—including
what constituted taste and beauty, the dates of various monuments, and the lineage of
influence from culture to culture—and in these cases, the Pictorial Gallery presented only the
most generally agreed upon conclusions, or avoided taking a definitive position altogether.
For instance, regarding the dating of Egyptian architecture, the author states that, in the face of

174
Matthew Digby Wyatt, Fine Art: A Sketch of its History, Theory, Practice, and Application to
Industry (London: Macmillan, 1870), 5. Hegel’s definition of art history also used the same order of
architecture, sculpture, and then painting. See Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Aesthetics: Lectures on
the Fine Arts, trans. T. M. Knox (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988).

175
As Alex Potts argues, Winckelmann’s History of Ancient Art (1764) was the first systematic analysis
of stylistic change over time. See Potts, Flesh and the Ideal, 7.

176
On the naturalized canon in later surveys, see especially Mark Miller Graham, “The Future of Art
History and the Undoing of the Survey,” Art Journal 54, no. 3 (1995): 30-34. For examples of later
published surveys, see Appendix 2.

77
the difference of opinion, he “shall not dwell on the point, but shall confine the details chiefly
to the buildings themselves.”
177

Even while operating on the belief that art could have absolute standards, the Pictorial
Gallery revealed that such standards were constantly called into question in this period by
explorations, revivals, and new scholarship. In the early nineteenth century, ancient Greek art
still registered as the pinnacle of artistic style:
By the general sanction of all Europe, the temples of Greece and the sculptures
with which those temples were adorned, are regarded as the finest models of the two
great branches of art to which they relate. Politics may change, wars and tumults may
succeed each other, commerce may spread, the national religion of a nation my
undergo modification; but these temples and these sculptures—mutilated and time-
worn as most of them are—still occupy the first rank, as they ever have done.
178

However, within this statement is an implicit shift in the basis for Greek artistic superiority.
No longer were Greek styles defined in such figural sculptures as the Niobe, the Apollo
Belvedere, and the Laocoon, as they were in Winckelmann’s history of ancient art. Although
these works were still highly valued, and all illustrated in the Pictorial Gallery, it was the
architectural temples and their sculptures—above all the Parthenon—that set new standards
for the most respected style of art.
179
With this shift, the British Museum, more than the
Vatican Museum or the Louvre, became the place to see Greek art of the best quality. Just
after the Louvre had showcased the famous Greek sculptures celebrated by Winckelmann, and

177
PGA, vol. 2, 3.

178
Ibid., 22.

179
The high esteem of these sculptures—the Laocoon, the Apollo Belvedere, the Dying Gladiator, and
the Louvre Diana—did not begin with Winckelmann; these statues had been the epitome of historical
art for centuries. They had been copied in bronze, plaster, print, porcelain, lead, and other media, and
circulated widely among wealthy collectors throughout Europe since at least the seventeenth century.
See Haskell and Penny, Taste and the Antique.

78
had then been forced to return these works to Rome following the ultimate fall of Napoleon in
1815, the British Museum had acquired the newly praised Elgin marbles in 1816.
180

The novelty of this shift still resonated in the sculpture section of the Pictorial
Gallery. There, a lengthy discussion examined the acquisition of the Parthenon marbles by
the British Museum. First, the anonymous author outlined the debates surrounding Elgin’s
removal of the sculptures from Greece (debates that of course continue today) about whether
this action was a “sacrilege to art” or a means to secure the works’ preservation against
destruction and neglect.
181
Next, the author detailed the circumstances of Parliament’s
purchase of the marbles, including a statement of the financial negotiations, both the £50,000
that Elgin personally invested and the £35,000 that the British nation eventually paid to
purchase the works.
182
Finally, this section cited opinions of the various artists consulted,
such as Flaxman and Benjamin West, who agreed on the high artistic value of the pieces that

180
Between 1797 and 1815, the Louvre housed the Laocoon, the Dying Gladiator, and the Apollo
Belvedere, in addition to the Diana that had long been in the French Royal Collection.

181
First, the book recounts how the Parthenon and Erechtheum had been converted into a “powder-
magazine” and their marble sculptures had been knocked to the ground by explosions during the wars
between Greeks and Turks, then pounded for mortar, used as target practice, and generally defaced.
Then, it states that the “question” of the “removal of the sculptures from the place to which they were
originally destined.” In the end, the author observed that there was “ample reason for what Lord Elgin
did.” See 207 and 210.

182
PGA, vol. 2, 210-11. Thomas Bruce, Lord Elgin, obtained permission in 1801 from the Turkish
government in his role as ambassador to Constantinople to collect the remaining Parthenon sculptures
and ship them to Britain at his own cost. In 1816, the collection was purchased from Elgin for the
British state by an act of Parliament, and was thereafter placed in the British Museum. Elgin had first
intended only to have the monuments of Athens measured, drawn, and cast for study. After such
careful records were complete, he began arrangements to remove certain works from the Acropolis.
Elgin additionally studied the Erechtheum and removed one of the caryatid sculptures as well, which is
now in the British Museum with the Parthenon marbles. Information about Elgin’s work in Athens was
similarly provided for readers of the Penny Magazine. See PM, 8 Sept. 1832, 228. On this history, see
Jacob Rothenberg, Descensus Ad Terram: The Acquisition and Reception of the Elgin Marbles (New
York: Garland, 1977); Frank M. Turner, The Greek Heritage in Victorian Britain (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1981); and Ian Jenkins, Archaeologists and Aesthetes in the Sculpture Galleries of the
British Museum (London: British Museum Press, 1992).

79
possibly surpassed all other Greek sculptures in their quality.
183
This argument was made
visually explicit in the book’s illustrations as more than one hundred images detailing the
Elgin marbles preceded views of Laocoon, the Apollo Belvedere, and other long-celebrated
sculptures. In 1847, such changes to the art history canon still appeared novel and thus
required explicit explanation and justification. By the following century, many of these
stories of canon formation had disappeared from the survey altogether, as these once newly
acquired objects became increasingly naturalized and dehistoricized among the other
masterpieces of art history.
Expanding far beyond the scope of previous art histories—including, most
importantly, Vasari’s Lives, with its focus on the Italian Renaissance masters, as well as
Winckelmann’s History—Knight’s survey consolidated recent developments that together
changed the face of the field. In addition to the Elgin Marbles, the book included a section on
the Aegina Temple sculptures, which were rediscovered by European scholars in 1811,
purchased by the King Ludwig of Bavaria, and added to the Munich Glyptothek collection in
1828.
184
Other sections addressed Etruscan art that had surfaced during excavations in the
1830s, such as the so-called Regolini-Galassi tomb, while still others described the rock-cut
tombs of Petra in Asia Minor, explored by Western scholars starting in 1812.
185
The Pictorial
Gallery also incorporated many Egyptian monuments documented and collected during

183
The other artists mentioned were the sculptors Sir Francis Chantrey, Richard Westmacott, Joseph
Nollekens, and the painter Sir Thomas Lawrence.

184
The Aegina marbles had decorated the pediments of the Temple of Athena Aphaia on the island of
Aegina near Athens. See PGA, vol. 2, 30 and Stephen Dyson, In Pursuit of Ancient Pasts: A History of
Classical Archaeology in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (New Haven: Yale University Press,
2006), 134.

185
The Regolini-Galassi tomb was explored in 1836 by Archbishop Regolini and the contents of the
tomb were then sold to General Galassi, an officer in the Papal army. See PGA, vol. 2, 202. The
monuments of Petra were documented by Swiss scholar Johann Ludwig Burchkardt in 1812 and in
Léon de Laborde’s Voyage de l’Arabie Petrée published from 1830 to 1833. The Pictorial Gallery
mentions both Burckhardt’s journey and the “splendid folio volume” of Laborde with its views of
temples and tombs sketched by the author. See PGA, vol. 2, 15.
80
Napoleon’s campaigns between 1798 and 1801, including the temples of Luxor and Edfu; the
Pyramids and the Sphinx; the rock-cut tombs of Ipsambul; other colossal sculptures, such as
the Head of Memnon, which the British Museum acquired in 1820 after the fall of Napoleon;
and paintings on walls and sarcophagi. New findings from Pompeii also appeared in Knight’s
survey. Although digs had begun there in the mid-eighteenth century, increased work under
Napoleon’s sister Queen Caroline of Naples, as well as later rediscoveries—the finding of the
Dancing Faun in 1830 and the Alexander (Battle of Issus) Mosaic in 1832, both thereafter
displayed in the Naples Museum—kept art from Pompeii in the spotlight. The first half of the
nineteenth century saw an international effort to collect and incorporate new works, especially
of ancient art, into art’s history.
With the additions to the canon of ancient art, the Pictorial Gallery also considered
several traditionally unappreciated periods. Beyond the new attention to prehistoric
monuments such as Stonehenge, both medieval and Islamic art became central to the Pictorial
Gallery’s art history. Sections addressed the art of the Middle Ages, acknowledging recent
scholarship on this period, such as Seroux d’Agincourt’s Histoire de l’art par les monuments
(Paris, 1811-23), which began where Winckelmann’s study left off, with the fall of Rome, and
ended with the Renaissance. Like d’Agincourt’s book, Knight’s included art from the Early
Christian, Byzantine, Carolingian, Romanesque, and Gothic periods, as well as the early
Italian Renaissance painters, such as Giotto and Masaccio.
186
Other sections examined the

186
Séroux d’Agincourt’s book did not champion the art of the Middle Ages; for the author, it was
instead a record of the dangers to art during a collapse of civilization. Nevertheless, the book’s textual
and visual documentation of medieval art was highly influential for later scholars and artists who
looked more favorably on the period. See Haskell, Rediscoveries in Art: Some Aspects of Taste,
Fashion, and Collecting in England and France (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1976), 72-3; Henri
Loyrette, “Seroux d’Agincourt et les origines de l’art mediéval,” Revue de l’art 48 (1980): 40-56;
Kultermann, 82; Hélène Sécherre, “L’Edition de l’Histoire de l’art par les monuments, depuis sa
décadence au IVe siècle jusqu’à son renouvellement au XVIe, de Jean-Baptiste Séroux d’Agincourt
(1810-1823)” (Ph.D. diss., Paris IV, 2000-01); and Daniela Mondini, Mittelalter im Bild: Seroux
d’Agincourt und die Kunsthistoriographie um 1800 (Zurich: Zurich InterPublishers, 2005). Of course,
81
architecture of Islamic mosques and palaces in Egypt, Persia, and Spain, most famously the
Mosque of Cordoba and the Alhambra.
187
The Alhambra in particular had recently been
popularized for European and American audiences through the best-selling books of French
poet Victor Hugo and American travel writer Washington Irving.
188
British artist Owen Jones
had also just completed the publication of his color-lithographic album on the Alhambra
(1836-46). Despite its high price of £36 10s (more than thirty times the cost of the Pictorial
Gallery), the book was purchased in the mid-1840s for major libraries, the Government
School of Design at Somerset House (later the National Art Library at the V&A), and the
provincial schools of art throughout Britain; it was therefore widely known among art
students.
189

Not only did a focus on Islamic art take the reader beyond the reach of pagan and
Christian Europe, but the book also described and illustrated monuments from Asia, such as
Persian sculptures, Indian cave temples, and Chinese pagodas. To be sure, the Pictorial

the work of Cimabue, Giotto, and Masaccio was also considered by Vasari; yet, the early nineteenth
century saw an important revival of interest in these early Italian artists. On this, see Robyn Cooper,
“The Popularization of Renaissance Art in Victorian England: The Arundel Society,” Art History 1, no.
3 (1978): 263-92.

187
It is worth mentioning several of the artistic periods and styles that the PGA does not include. The
first is Assyrian art. The excavations of P. E. Botta and Henry Layard were both underway in the 1840s.
However, the now canonical objects, such as the winged bulls and relief sculptures, only arrived at the
Louvre and the British Museum after 1847. Since that time, such Assyrian monuments have been
consistently included in the art history canon. See further discussion of this history in chapter 2.
Another surprising omission is the Venus de Milo, which appeared neither in the Penny Magazine nor
in the Pictorial Gallery. Discovered in 1820, it was displayed in the Louvre by 1821, replacing the
Diana as the highlight of the Greek sculpture gallery. See Haskell and Penny, 328-30. Finally,
African, Oceanic, Native American, and Aboriginal art are also absent. These styles do not solidly
enter art history surveys until after the turn of the twentieth century.

188
Victor Hugo, Les Orientales (Paris: Hetzel, 1829) and Washington Irving, The Alhambra
(Philadelphia: Carey & Lea, 1832).

189
Malcolm Baker and Brenda Richardson, A Grand Design: The Art of the Victoria and Albert
Museum (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1997), 118-19. The PGA mentions Owens’ book as “the most
extraordinary work on the subject...an immense volume...scrupulously copied and printed in gold and
colours, as nearly like fac-similes of the original as art can effect.” See PGA, vol. 2, 62.

82
Gallery represented a world history of art. With the traditions of Asia, it additionally
incorporated a section on the Mayan ruins in Mexico, citing the expeditions of Americans
John Lloyd Stephens and Frederick Catherwood, which began in 1839.
190
In this period, the
Grand Tour of art history, which used to be confined to Italy, became a tour around the
world.
191
As Western nations began to share a global vision driven in large part by
imperialism, a development I will address further in my next chapter, ancient Greek art began
to share the stage with the art of many other times and places. The Egyptian temples of
Thebes, according to the Pictorial Gallery, rivaled ancient Greece and Rome as “the most
extraordinary group of architectural ruins presented in any part of the world.”
192
Mayan
architectural remains, likewise, were “not less worthy of notice of the Egyptian antiquaries”
and were “at once noble in their architecture and beautiful in their proportions and
decorations.”
193
At the same time, Knight’s readers were asked to appreciate the

190
The PGA mentions the explorations of Stephens which were “aided by the pencil” of Catherwood. It
describes how Stephens was “entrusted by the President of the United States with a mission to Central
America for political, commercial, and personal research,” and how in 1841 Stephens published
Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan, which was “read with astonishment” in
England and America. It also mentions the “splendid folio volume of tinted lithograph plates” published
by Stephens and Catherwood in 1844. See PGA, vol. 2, 19. Although written sections in the PGA
addressed Mexican art, no illustrations were included.

191
As discussed in my introduction, Kugler’s Handbuch der Kunstgeschichte published in Stuttgart in
1842 laid out a similar expanded field for art history, including sections on the Middle East, Asia, and
Pre-Columbian America. It is likely that Kugler’s survey influenced Knight in defining his
organization and coverage; however, Kugler’s handbook was unillustrated, so it was Knight’s work that
brought the visual elements to this expanded narrative art history. By the mid-twentieth century, with
the publication of H.W. Janson’s art history survey in 1962, Indian, Chinese, and Pre-Columbian art
had been written back out of the art history narrative, negating some of the previous century’s
expansions. The discussion of these cultures appeared in Janson’s “Postscript” as an afterthought to his
survey. The author separates them because, he claims, they had little influence on western art and their
indigenous artistic traditions were “no longer alive.” See Robert Nelson, “The Map of Art History,” Art
Bulletin 79, no. 1 (1997): 35.

192
PGA, vol. 2, 11.

193
Ibid., 19-22.

83
“astonishing...granite mountain” of the Indian cave temple at Ellora as well as the Alhambra in
Spain, with its “vistas of beauty almost indescribable.”
194

Such extolling descriptions of world monuments was balanced with plenty of the
opposite: the Indian ruins registered among the “grander works of the age of darkness,” China
lacked “much that need detain” the reader, and Romanesque architecture was dismissed as “an
incongruous assemblage of scraps and fragments...wanting in unity of purpose and
distinctness of character.”
195
Yet, while Knight’s version of art history still presented Europe
as the most civilized and advanced culture of the globe, thereby undergirding the Eurocentric
ideologies being constructed in this period, his Pictorial Gallery also provided readers with a
wider array of alternative artistic traditions than ever before. And the same world monuments
that appeared in Knight’s book still form the basis of the art history survey today (for details
this enduring canon, see Appendix 2).
Art history’s relationship with Eurocentric hierarchies has been the focus of much
recent scholarship. Indeed, in the wake of what was identified in the 1970s as the “crisis of
the discipline,” art history’s biases have been productively brought to light.
196
Though many
exclusivities of the discipline developed during the nineteenth century, this period saw
dramatic expansions of the field’s purview as well. Not only was the subject of art history
suddenly accessible to more people than ever before through cheap illustrated books, but the

194
Ibid., 54, 18, and 62 respectively.

195
Ibid., 18, 19, and 54.

196
See, for instance, Linda Nochlin, “The Imaginary Orient,” in The Politics of Vision: Essays on
Nineteenth-Century Art and Society (New York: Perseus Books Group, 1991), 33-59; Patricia Hills,
“Art History Textbooks: The Hidden Persuaders,” Artforum 14 (1976): 58-61; Griselda Pollock, Avant-
Garde Gambits: Gender and the Colour of Art History (London: Thames and Hudson, 1993); Bernard
Cohn, “The Transformation of Objects into Artifacts, Antiquities, and Art in Nineteenth-Century
India,” in Colonialism and its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1996), 76-105; Nanette Salomon, “The Art Historical Canon: Sins of Omission,” in
The Art of Art History: A Critical Anthology, ed. Donald Preziosi (New York: Oxford University Press,
1998), 344-56.

84
scope of what constituted art history also increased significantly. This new inclusiveness was
made visual for Knight’s readers through the lack of hierarchy among the illustrations. Aside
from the two color engravings at the beginning of the volume, all other images were produced
in the same linear, monochromatic medium of wood engraving. Knight’s attempt to define the
survey amidst this transitional landscape of art history might be compared to the challenge of
providing a truly “global” survey today in the aftermath of the “crisis of the discipline.” As
radical changes in the ideologies and methodologies of art history have emerged in recent
decades, students still expect and teachers still provide overviews of art history that can be
traced back to Knight’s innovative survey.
197

Constructing a world history of art, Knight’s Pictorial Gallery also specifically
addressed the history of art in Britain. Starting with Stonehenge, the book moved on to
consider in depth the various styles of medieval cathedrals in Britain, as well as the most
famous country houses and palaces, including Whitehall, Hampton Court, Blenheim, and
Strawberry Hill. Knight saw the goals of teaching art history and national history as closely
related. In his memoirs, he describes this new desire for appreciating the monuments of
Britain:
There was an awakening feeling for the preservation of our historical monuments.
The barbarous neglect which had permitted so many druidical remains...to be in great
part destroyed; so many traces of the Roman occupation to be buried; and so many of
the noble ecclesiastical edifices of the Norman era to be defaced; this ignorant apathy
was rapidly giving place to a just reverence for the past.
198

197
On the enduring use of the survey, see the round table discussion on the “art history survey”
moderated by Peggy Phelan in the Art Journal 64, no. 2 (2005): 32-52. As one respondent noted, “the
survey, any course for that matter, should not be perceived as an end....Rather it should be the beginning
of a journey...The survey should inspire students to visit museums without mandatory field trips, to look
at images with confidence, and to give them a sense of the value of art in general outside the academic
environment.” This assessment sounds noticeably close to the goals outlined in Knight’s PGA.

198
Knight, Passages, vol. 3, 20.

85
Knight’s Pictorial Gallery emerged in the context of the so-called “national heritage
movement” in Britain, which similarly sought to promote knowledge of British history among
popular audiences.
199
However, I would argue that a second “heritage movement” emerged as
equally prominent in Knight’s survey: a “world heritage” movement. This duality can be seen
as both the Pictorial Gallery and the German Denkmäler der Kunst began with an image of
Stonehenge (Figs. 1.17 and 1.18). More than simply a national monument for Britain, the
monoliths were shared by Britain and Germany as a landmark of global art history. Rather
than seeing these interests in national history and international art history in opposition to one
another, it is their parallels that defined the development of art history in this period. Like
Knight’s Penny Magazine, which promoted the museum collections of numerous nations
while it championed the national role of the British Museum and National Gallery, Knight’s
later Pictorial Gallery of Arts revealed how surveys of art history were both staunchly
nationalistic and decidedly trans-national.
Regarding “modern” art, which at the time encompassed everything from the
Renaissance to the nineteenth century, Knight’s survey paid equal attention to the various
European schools, but considered nothing beyond Europe. The most recent works featured in
the book dated from the early years of the nineteenth-century, including several neo-classical
buildings, such as the National Gallery in London, the Paris Bourse, and the Munich
Glyptothek, as well as David’s painted portrait of Napoleon crossing the Alps (1800) and
Canova’s sculpted Monument to Maria Christina of Austria (1798-1805). At times, the focus
on neo-classical styles in architecture, sculpture, and painting overshadowed other post-
medieval works: for instance, Italian Renaissance sculpture is represented in only a single
illustration of a detail from Michelangelo’s Medici Tomb, and the sculptures of Ghiberti and

199
See Peter Mandler, “The Victorian Idea of Heritage,” in The Fall and Rise of the Stately Home (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 21-69.
86
Donatello, though discussed in the text, are not illustrated at all. Canova and Flaxman, in
contrast, are each illustrated in several images, creating a rather idiosyncratic history of
sculpture.
Modern painting, in contrast, was addressed more broadly and more traditionally
according to the national and regional schools of Europe. The classification of European
painting by schools had organized eighteenth-century princely galleries at Dusseldorf,
Dresden, Florence, and Vienna; by 1810, the Louvre had adopted a comparable ordering
system.
200
According to Andrew McClellan, the unfolding of painting history by schools
began with Enlightenment rational classification, parallel to the genus and species divisions of
natural history.
201
In its incorporation of this system, the museum became “a site of public
instruction in the history of art, which was constructed as the succession of great masters and
their pupils within national schools.”
202
Like these galleries and museums, Knight’s Pictorial
Gallery included sections on the Early, High, and Late Renaissance in Italy; the Northern
Renaissance in Germany and the Netherlands; as well as the Italian, French, Flemish, Dutch,
and Spanish schools of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. As with the
sections on architecture and sculpture, the painting section drew heavily on the art illustrations
from the Penny Magazine, reorganizing them into an historical narrative. Therefore, the
reader sees the same images of Leonardo’s Last Supper and Raphael’s School of Athens, but
they are arranged chronologically before those of Reni’s Aurora, a seascape by Claude
Lorrain, and Murillo’s Beggar Boy, and Hogarth’s Marriage à la mode, respectively. As
mentioned above, the Pictorial Gallery’s coverage of non-Western art was limited to earlier

200
Duncan and Wallach, 455.

201
McClellan, 79-80.

202
Ibid., 4.

87
periods. In the nineteenth century, the dichotomy between the high levels of civilization of
ancient non-Western cultures—such as India, China, and Pre-Columbian America—and their
later decline and/or destruction in the face of modern Western progress represented a
pervasive viewpoint, and Knight’s book was no exception.
203
While Knight’s survey clearly
valued the art of the non-Western past and seeks to make it widely known, the book only
considered the modern and contemporary art of Europe as part of the narrative of art history.
In sum, art history as portrayed in the Pictorial Gallery covered the major period
divisions of the field—prehistoric and ancient eras, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the
later modern periods—as well as many subdivisions we still employ, including Egyptian, Near
Eastern, Greek, Etruscan, Roman, Asian, Early American or Pre-Columbian, Early Christian,
Byzantine, Islamic, Romanesque, and Gothic. At the same time, Knight’s book shares a basic
canon of standard works with the majority of published art history surveys that followed,
introducing what became an enduring set of art history images in its illustrations.

The Illustrated Survey: A Popular Genre
More than simply reproductions, the images in art history surveys, following Knight’s
Pictorial Gallery, have been employed as illustrations intimately tied to an historical text as
well as to original objects. Art historian Mitchell Schwarzer has claimed that it was Anton
Springer in Germany who reoriented the art history survey from being conceptually driven, as
it was in the unillustrated early works of Kugler, to having a structural basis in illustrations.
204

203
On this viewpoint, see Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1978); Nochlin, “The
Imaginary Orient;” Cohn, “The Transformation of Objects,” 76-105; and Craig Clunas, “China in
Britain: The Imperial Collections,” in Colonialism and the Object: Empire, Material Culture, and the
Museum, eds. Tim Barringer and Tom Flynn (New York: Routledge, 1998), 41-51.

204
Schwarzer, 28.

88
But before Springer’s first illustrated survey was issued in 1853, Knight’s Pictorial Gallery
had already signalled the importance of illustrated narratives for the pedagogy of art history.
The Pictorial Gallery, moreover, defined the survey in explicit contrast to the
erudition of German art history. The introduction to the Pictorial Gallery explained that
“there [was] a department of study which has occupied the attention of many deep thinkers
and enthusiastic observers, respecting what may be termed philosophy of the Fine Arts.” It
then went on to note that “the Germans have raised the study to the rank of a science by the
employment of the name Aesthetics.”
205
Finally, after recognizing the importance of this new
field, the introduction stated that while “much that is eloquent, and much that is valuable has
resulted” from such philosophical investigations, “the results arrived at have not been so
definite and uniform as to demand a place here.”
206
In other words, an introductory study such
as the Pictorial Gallery had little reason for examining in detail the complex arguments and
conflicting viewpoints of German aesthetic philosophy.
At the same time, Knight’s Pictorial Gallery provided an illustrated survey that was
both compact and affordable. It re-presented the important scholarship to appear in expensive,
multi-volume formats—which the Pictorial Gallery repeatedly refers to as “splendid folio
volumes”—in a cheap and accessible form. Such volumes included the lavish illustrated
publications documenting the findings at Pompeii and the Napoleonic campaigns in Egypt, as
well as Stephens and Catherwood’s books on the Yucatan, Léon de Laborde’s work on Petra,
and William and Thomas Daniell’s Twenty-Four Views in Hindoostan.
207
To cite a specific

205
“Introduction,” PGA, vol. 2, 2.

206
Ibid.

207
On the Pompeii albums, see Haskell and Penny, 74. On the Napoleonic campaign in Egypt, see La
Description de l’Egypte (Paris: Imprimerie Impériale, 1809-1828). On the works of Laborde, Stephens,
and Catherwood, see my earlier notes in this chapter. On the Daniells, see my Chapter 2.

89
example, d’Agincourt’s Histoire de l’art par les monuments was a six-volume work published
slowly, in installments over thirteen years, which sold for a subscription price of between
600F and 1200F (or between 480s and 960s).
208
Such expensive books were often made
possible by guaranteed government subscriptions and the patronage of wealthy buyers. As an
article in the Penny Magazine observed, “little [had] hitherto been popularly known about
Pompeii” because “it [had] been left undescribed, except in words inaccessible to the
generality of readers, either from their high price, or from their being written in a foreign
language.”
209
But Knight’s Pictorial Gallery incorporates many of the discoveries and
monuments of art that these “magnificent and costly publications” added to the canon, and
made them accessible to “the general reader, who is new to such studies.”
210

As an introductory survey, Knight’s book can be credited with little original
scholarship. Throughout its pages, the book defers to what it calls “the authorities,” which
included the writings of scholars of various European nations, as well as non-specialist
travelers. Indeed, Knight’s survey synthesized a range of informative works on the various
monuments of historical art. In its pages, Mrs. Lushington’s emotional account of ascending
the Egyptian pyramids and Mrs. Hamilton Gray’s vivid description of objects from Etruscan
tombs were as worthy of being quoted as ancient writers, such as Herodotus and Pliny, and
modern scholars from Winckelmann, to de Piles, to Kugler (on female travel writing, see

208
In the mid-nineteenth century, 1 shilling was approximately 1.25 francs. For this conversion, I
consulted numerous business contracts between British and French publishers. d’Agincourt’s Histoire
de l’art par les monuments was compiled in the late eighteenth century and published posthumously in
Paris. It included 325 line-engraved plates depicting 1400 separate images, and was sold for the
subscription price of 600 francs, or 1200 for the deluxe edition. See Sécherre.

209
A similar shift occurred in books on natural history at the time. Anne Secord observes how
illustrated natural histories, though common in the libraries of connoisseurs, were inaccessible to a
more popular audience until well into the nineteenth century. See Secord, “Botany on a Plate,” 41.

210
PM, 24 Nov. 1832, 338-9.

90
Chapter 5).
211
Balancing the dry texts of scholars with both entertaining travel writing and a
plethora of visual examples constituted a conscious decision on the part of Knight as editor.
Even the illustrations displayed a wide variety of visually stimulating views, including
diagrams and ground plans, full-view depictions and details, as well as numerous landscape
vistas complete with local landforms, regional plants, native animals, and active human
figures (Fig. 1.25). Far from claiming to be the definitive study on the history of art, Knight’s
survey self-consciously attempted to attract new interest in the subject among beginning
students.
In claiming that Knight’s Pictorial Gallery provided a new popular access to art
history, my choice of the term “popular” requires clarification.
212
On the one hand, popular
can refer the book’s clear and easy-to-use format, its comparatively low price, its succinct and
engaging narrative not weighed down by extensive philosophical debates, and its display of
interesting illustrations. On the other hand, popular can refer to the book’s audience. Scholars

211
On Mrs. Lushington’s account, see PGA, vol. 2, 6. She describes how, although “the perilous
situation justified [her] in the conviction that [she] never should be able to mount” the pyramid, she
conquered her fears, and “reached the summit amidst the huzzas of the whole party.” For Mrs.
Hamilton Gray’s description, see 199 and 202. “I must say,” she states, “I was almost terrified at the
figures [of Etruscan sculpture] when I first saw them; for, by the dim firelight there appeared so much
dignity in their attitudes, and severe majesty in their countenances, that I fancied they seemed to
reprove our intrusion upon their solemn and sacred rest. There they lay, not with a look of death, but as
if they had a tale to tell, if there were any one present willing to listen and worthy to understand.”

212
The range of meanings of popular as applied to cultural forms has varied widely. It has been used to
refer to folk culture, mass culture, subaltern culture, culture from below, culture that is inferior,
simplistic, or “low,” as well as culture that is well liked, mainstream, accessible, and common. It has
also been defined in the negative, as the non-professional, the non-academic, the non-elite.
Correspondingly, the literature on the popular is also vast. The most useful conceptions of this term for
my project have been those that examine the re-packaging of high or intellectual culture (art, literature,
history, and science) in popular formats. On popularizing the literary canon, see Barbara Benedict,
Making the Modern Reader: Cultural Mediation in Early Modern Literary Anthologies (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1996). On popularizing history, see Samuels, The Spectacular Past, and
Bann, Romanticism and the Rise of History. On popular science, see Lightman, “The Visual Theology
of Victorian Popularizers of Science” and Secord, “Botany on a Plate.” See also Lawrence Levine,
Highbrow/lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1988).

91
of Knight, especially in addressing the Penny Magazine, have focused on the working class as
the publisher’s target audience. “Clearly,” Anderson writes, “the intended readership was
working people.”
213
Many have criticized Knight’s efforts as imposing bourgeois values on
the lower classes as a form of social control.
214
While not denying that Knight intended his
works to be accessible to the lower classes, I want to open up the notion of the popular beyond
the working class. As Knight himself writes, his publications did not “address the working
classes only;” rather, “We all want Popular Literature.” This passage is worth citing in full:
Nothing but a very narrow view of the actual state of intelligence amongst the British
people would limit any scheme of popular instruction to the labouring classes
only...they have learned little beyond a pretty general acquaintance with the Holy
Scriptures, writing, and the commonest element of arithmetic. But they are thrown
into the world, and they find they must think, either to rise out of their own rank, or to
be respectable amongst the class in which they were born. And how much better off,
in point of real knowledge, are the sons of the middle classes, who at fifteen are
placed in attourneys’ offices, or behind the counters of the draper or druggist? They
have been taught to read and write; they have fagged at arithmetic for seven years,
without having attained the remotest conception of its philosophy; they are worse than
ignorant of history and geography....Why then should we talk of addressing popular
literature to the working classes only? We all want Popular Literature—we all want
to get at real and substantial knowledge by the most compendious processes. We are
all too ignorant, (except those with whom learning is the business of life)...But we are
all tasked...by our daily labour whether in professions, or trades, or handicraft. We
are ashamed of our ignorance—we cannot remain in it; but we have not time to attain

213
Anderson, The Printed Image, 80. Unlike other scholars, though, she cites evidence from working
class autobiographies to show that some workers did read the magazine. See 146-7.

214
See, for instance, Webb, The British Working Class Reader; Fox, Graphic Journalism, 145-57; and
Maidment, Reading Popular Prints, 57-9. All of these arguments concern the Penny Magazine, and not
the Pictorial Gallery of Arts. Important exceptions to this argument about social control include the
work of Bennett, Anderson, and Gray. Anderson sees the social control as more informal than formal,
and recognizes that there was not one dominant set of “middle class” values behind the work. Bennett
observes that few actual articles in the Penny Magazine took a stance on political and ideological
questions and claims that it was the magazine’s “competitive value” and “not its power to define or
champion a given position” that should be attended to by scholars. He aptly points out that “the
extraordinary and sustained success” of the publication “compels us to recognize that there existed a
strong community of value and interest among massive numbers of readers—readers far more
numerous that those attracted to any other publication of the day.” Gray, likewise, recognizes the wide
social spectrum of Knight’s readers and denies that Knight was actively imposing his own values onto
supposedly vulnerable lower class readers for the purpose of social control. As she points out, readers
who purchased Knight’s publications were capable of making their own literary choices. See
Anderson, The Printed Image; Bennett, 136-37; and Gray, 9, 112, 153, and 184-85.

92
any sound knowledge upon the ancient principle of reading doggedly through a
miscellaneous library, even if we had the opportunity.
215

Not only did the working classes need further education, but the middle classes were also
“worse than ignorant of history and geography.” Indeed, Knight argued, only those for whom
scholarship was a profession were in no need of popularly accessible education. Knight’s
other publications also broadly defined the notion of the popular. According to an article in
the Penny Magazine,
The popular mind is composed, in a much larger proportion than is thus
assumed,—of the young of both sexes,—of those who having earned their daily
bread look to reading as a relaxation,—of the busy and even of the idle, who are
anxious to store their minds with facts, but at the least expense of study and
research.
216

And in Knowledge is Power, Knight stressed that both physical and mental laborers in fact
signified “working-classes,” reminding readers that products of mental labor, such as poetry,
literature, and art, are as important for the health of a nation as the fruits of manual labor.
217

Rather than attach the term popular to a certain social class in the nineteenth century, I
use it as Knight did to designate “the people” more generally. Knight was interested in the
broad audiences that could be educated given the accessibility of his publications. In this
sense, the term popular can be tied to the development of a “mass” culture, but again, referring
to large numbers of people—men and women, adults and children—not large numbers of the

215
This text first appeared in an article entitled “Education of the People” in the London Magazine from
March 1828. It was cited again in both Knight’s own memoirs and a biography written by his
granddaughter, Alice Clowes. See Knight, Passages of a Working Life, vol. 2, 68-69 and Clowes,
Charles Knight, A Sketch (London: Bentley and Sons, 1892), 65-66.

216
“Address to the Readers of the ‘Penny Magazine’ on the Completion of the Fifth Volume,” 514.

217
Charles Knight, Knowledge is Power: A View of the Productive Forces of Modern Society and the
Results of Labour Capital and Skill (London: John Murray, 1855), 320. This publication, a later
reprinting of two earlier works The Results of Machinery and Capital and Labour, has been the most
contested of Knight’s writings. Responding to agricultural workers’ destruction of machinery in rural
England, Knight argued that machinery and industry has had a positive effect on society. This
argument has been criticized most virulently by such Marxist historians as R. K. Webb.

93
lowest classes of people. Like television and the internet today, which are clearly forms of
mass culture, but which reach people from all social levels and from diverse cultural contexts,
the popularity of Knight’s publications allowed them to reach an unprecedented mass of
people. In the education system of the time, the middle and upper classes, as much as the
lower classes, had limited access to learning; all of these groups benefited from Knight’s
publications, especially with a subject like art history, which was not taught in schools.
218

It is worth noting the particular significance of “popular education” in the nineteenth
century. At a time when a state system of primary and secondary schools did not exist in
Britain, education for the general public was not a foregone conclusion.
219
Before 1870, when
the Forster Education Act passed in Parliament to introduce mandatory public education,
Sunday-school classes often represented the principal or only means of basic reading
instruction.
220
Other school establishments included day schools supported jointly by
government money and philanthropic donations as well as private “Dame” schools, which
offered basic elementary education for a few pennies per week.
221
Both of these types of
schools often proved ineffective, however, due to teacher shortages, poor attendance, and few
long-term pupils. Only a small number of institutions existed for the training of teachers, and
advanced education was limited to the wealthiest classes.

218
Secord makes a similar argument for the popularization of science over the same period: a focus on
the “diffusion of scientific knowledge in early nineteenth-century Britain as directed primarily toward
the working classes, with the aim of social control” has obscured the “movement designed also to
attract middle- and upper-class audiences.” See Secord, “Botany on a Plate,” 29.

219
On this lack of a “regularly organized system” of education in Britain, see “National Education,”
Illustrated London News 20 Mar. 1847, 186.

220
Webb, 16.

221
It was in day schools that the detested “monitorial” system was used, in which older students
instructed younger students, lowering the number of actual teachers needed to run the schools. The
Dame schools appeared in towns throughout Britain and provided a generally low quality of education.
See Webb, 17-18; Gray, 96; Altick, 145-54.

94
More effective for most of the century were self- or family-guided models of
instruction, involving private tutors and governesses, local libraries, reading rooms, coffee
houses, book clubs, Mechanics Institutes, or parent-directed learning in the home. The Penny
Magazine included several articles about the value of “self education” and “maternal
education.”
222
As schools were not generally available for all who wanted to learn, study
outside the classroom comprised an important means of obtaining instruction. As an article in
the Illustrated London News from 1847 argues, “a man may be educated—that is his faculties
may be drawn forth—by many things besides the teaching of the school, a fact that is often
overlooked or forgotten.”
223
In this context, efforts to circulate cheap literature for the
instruction of the public made a recognizable difference in levels of education in Britain. A
noteworthy example of this impact can be seen in the memoirs of an artisan named
Christopher Thomson completed in 1847. He claimed to have given up the use of sugar in his
tea to afford the benefits of self-instruction offered by the Penny Magazine.
224
He then
described his role in the founding of an artisans’ library in his town of Edwinstowe, where
several of Knight’s “Pictorial Volumes” had been collected. According to Thomson, these
books, along with lectures and conversation classes, taught the townspeople about “Cheops”
and Raphael, Shakespeare and Byron, in addition to the inventor of the steam engine—again
revealing how art history was part of general learning at the time.
225

Within this context of popular education, both the Penny Magazine and the Pictorial
Gallery shared the goal of teaching the public what they considered “useful knowledge,”

222
See “Self Education,” PM, 28 Apr. 1832, 35 and “Maternal Education,” PM, 11 Aug. 1832, 184-5.

223
“Education,” Illustrated London News 10 Apr. 1847, 225.

224
Christopher Thomson, Autobiography of an Artisan (London: J. Chapman, 1847).

225
Thomson does not specifically mention Knight’s Pictorial Gallery, but it is relatively safe to assume
that his and other such small-town libraries collected the book for the use of their patrons.

95
which, notably, included art history. An advertisement in The Times for the Pictorial Gallery
answers the question “What is Art?” with the response that it “is the practical application of
knowledge to the production of all things whatever that can administer to the uses of man—to
the humblest necessities of the body, to highest gratifications of the mind.”
226
According to
this definition, usefulness is fundamental to art, whether it is the making of a shoe (necessities
of the body) or of a painting (the highest gratifications of the mind). Similarly, all people
could benefit from learning about art in all of its definitions, and no forms of art should be the
exclusive knowledge of social elites. According to an article in the Penny Magazine that
addresses the theme of a “useful education,”
it is most useful to learn to love and understand what is beautiful, whether in the
works of God, or in those of man; whether in the flowers and fields, and rocks and
woods, and rivers, and sea and sky; or in fine buildings, or fine pictures, or fine music;
and in the noble thoughts and glorious images of poetry. This is the education which
will make a man and a people good, and wise, and happy.
227

Indeed, a general knowledge about the world, including the best works of art in the world,
should not be limited to “the scholar” but was just as important “to the man of plain
education.”
228

One particularly important use for this knowledge of world art was art’s value as an
historical document of “generations long since swept away.”
229
Nowhere was this clearer than
when Knight employed more than seventy art history illustrations that would appear in the
Pictorial Gallery in his Pictorial Sunday Book (1845), which was written by bible scholar

226
This definition is repeated in several sources. See Knight’s catalogue of works in The Times, 3 Mar.
1845, and in the introduction to the PGA.

227
“What is education?” PM, 16 June 1832, 109-10.

228
PM, monthly supplement, 31 July to 31 Aug. 1833, 338.

229
PM, 1 Oct. 1836, 395-6. The introduction to the PGA also defines the information presented in its
pages as “the accumulated knowledge of society.”

96
John Kitto. In this educational book of bible studies, paintings by Raphael and other Old
Master artists illustrated descriptions of religious events, as they did is many pictorial bibles
from the mid-nineteenth century.
230
In some cases, works of historical art supplied
documentations of these same religious events. For instance, an image of the Parthenon
illustrated the Apostle Paul’s speech in Athens. In other cases, the rock-cut monuments of
Ipsambul in Nubia and Elephanta in India provided visual references for biblical passages on
burial practices and tomb design. In still others, Egyptian wall paintings and the reliefs of the
Column of Trajan were invoked to show the tools of daily life in biblical times, such as
musical instruments and weapons. Such overlaps between the Pictorial Gallery of Arts and
the Pictorial Sunday Book underscore the closeness of art history to other subjects of general
education in Britain, including one of the most widely studied of all: biblical history. Nearly
every British child in the 1800s learned the stories of the bible; Knight’s books enabled these
stories to be envisioned through the illustrations of historical art.
Another way in which art history was newly relevant in this period was its effect on
public taste. As the Penny Magazine explicitly argued and the Pictorial Gallery implicitly
reiterated, the importance of art was not “merely” to create “an artist here and there,” but
rather to elevate the “taste of the public in general.”
231
According to the magazine, the taste to
appreciate works of art was not limited to the highest ranks of society, but could be learned by
anyone: “taste in the great body of a people is as much a thing of acquisition as the ability to
read or write. It is based on knowledge; and, like knowledge, it may be both acquired and
lost.”
232
And, for Knight, the best way to acquire taste was to learn about the greatest works

230
The variety of Old Masters was quite wide, and included the famous Italians as well as Northern
artists, such as Rubens, Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Poussin, Overbeck, Reynolds, and Benjamin West.

231
PM, monthly supplement, 30 Nov. to 31 Dec. 1836, 515.

232
PM, 8 Oct. 1836, 395-6.
97
of art produced throughout history, a major goal of his Penny Magazine and later art history
survey.
Just how useful this knowledge proved to be for the public has been debated since the
1830s. Radical working class polemicists accused Knight’s Penny Magazine of being “tittle-
tattle” that did little to mitigate the misery of the poor, while the Morning Chronicle in 1836
denied that there could be a “penny magazine” road to the fine arts, claiming that art would
always be the realm of elites.
233
Later Marxist scholars have agreed.
234
Yet, rather than
allowing the dissenting voices to speak the loudest against Knight’s efforts to educate the
public about art, why not allow the high sales of both the Penny Magazine and the Pictorial
Gallery to determine how useful these publications were to their audiences? Not only did the
Penny Magazine circulate to millions of international readers, but the Pictorial Gallery also
reached a wide audience in Britain and beyond. From its initial publication in the 1840s, the
Pictorial Gallery was continuously reprinted, totaling over 80,000 copies in ten years, a
number that would qualify it among the bestsellers of the period.
235
As Knight observes, the
book saw a “great and continued sale” among “portions of the population—who would never
had expended a monthly shilling upon literature.”
236
The London Printing and Publishing

233
See, for instance, The Poor Man’s Guardian, 14 April, 1832, which calls the Penny Magazine
“namby-pamby stuff published expressly to stultify the minds of the working people, and make them
spiritless and unresisting victims of a system of plunder and oppression.” See also the Morning
Chronicle, 19 Oct. 1836 and as quoted in Gray, 8.

234
Richard Johnson, “Really Useful Knowledge,” in Working Class Culture: Studies in History and
Theory, eds. John Clarke, C. Critcher, and Richard Johnson (London: Hutchinson, 1979).

235
On the sales figures of several bestsellers in the 1840s and 1850s, see Isabelle Olivero, L’Invention
de la collection: de la diffusion de la littérature et des savoirs à la formation du citoyen au XIXe siècle
(Paris: Institut Mémoires de l’Edition Contemporaine, 1999), 74 and 143.

236
Knight, Passages, vol. 3, 18-20. This passage also describes the “Pictorial World” series as having
“a very large sale, but were little known to the general reading public.” Exactly what Knight means by
this “general reading public” is unclear. Most likely, he refers to the books having a somewhat different
audience than the Penny Magazine, which, with its hundreds of thousands of copies sold, did reach a
broader public than the Pictorial Gallery. Indeed, the contrast of a “very large sale” and “little known to
98
Company, for instance, sold editions in the 1850s labeled as “55th thousand” and “81st
thousand,” copies of which also circulated in the United States for the price of 25 cents per
part.
237
The work was still advertised by Charles Griffin and Company as late as 1871.
238

Clearly, a large public had become interested in learning about art history through “pictures as
well as words.”
When considering a useful art education and the teaching of taste in mid-century
Britain, scholars most often cite state-funded efforts of art and design pedagogy. There is a
vast literature on these efforts, including the 1835 Parliamentary Select Committee to Improve
British Arts and Manufactures, the collaborative efforts of Prince Albert and Henry Cole in
developing programs of design education, the founding of the Schools of Design in 1836, the
establishment of the Department of Science and Art in 1853 following the Great Exhibition,
and, finally, the opening of the South Kensington Museum in 1857 as an institution dedicated
to teaching British artisans, as well as the general public, basic principles of design.
239
The
driving purpose of this movement was to increase the quality of production in luxury goods, as
well as the taste of consumers to demand better goods, in order to compete in an international
market.

the general reading public” is noteworthy. For my work, I am more interested in the large number of
people who did purchase the Pictorial Gallery than the members of the vaguely termed “general public”
who did not. Knight also describes how, after his retirement from publishing in 1861, the sales of the
“Pictorial World” series passed “into the hands of the canvassing publishers proper,” who continued to
circulate copies around Britain.

237
The British Library copy that includes the paper wrappers of the monthly parts lists the price as 2s
and 50 cents, signifying sales in America.

238
The Publishers’ Circular 8 Dec. 1871, 869.

239
See Fox, 4-5; Macdonald, The History and Philosophy of Art Education; Raphael Cardoso Denis,
“The Brompton Baracks: War, Peace, and the Rise of Victorian Art and Design Education,” Journal of
Design History 8 no. 1 (1995): 11-25; Baker and Richardson, A Grand Design; and Clive Ashwin, Art
Education: Documents and Policies, 1768-1975 (London: Society for Research in Higher Education,
1975).

99
Of course, the privately funded Penny Magazine and Pictorial Gallery of Arts were by
no means divorced from this governmental effort. The Penny Magazine included articles on
the “advantages of instruction in arts applicable to manufactures,” where the authors argued
that the knowledge of perspective and design was as useful to artisans as reading, writing, and
science.
240
Likewise, the two parts of the Pictorial Gallery, both the “useful arts” and the
“fine arts” volumes, together offered a vast “school of design” for its readers.
241
The author of
the history of painting in the Pictorial Gallery was Ralph Wornum, who later became a
lecturer at the Central School of Design in 1851, a librarian for the South Kensington Museum
appointed in 1853 when the museum was still located in the Marlborough House, and, finally,
Keeper of the National Gallery beginning in 1854.
242

Though Knight’s privately funded publications remained closely related to these
government educational efforts, they were also unique in their emphasis on art history as a
fundamental part of popular education. Indeed, the history of art was seen as part of an
expanding modern world, one where travel, technology, and spectacular forms of instruction
could bring the past into the present in new ways. In addition to museums, where art of the
past was on display for visitors, illustrated publications like Knight’s Pictorial Gallery
brought knowledge about works of art to a growing public. But more than museums, these
published surveys were portable, reproducible, and widely disseminated.
Knight’s Pictorial Gallery, moreover, contributed a lasting legacy for art history as a
field. This publication initiated a new kind of art history book—the illustrated general

240
“Mechanics’ Institutes: Advantages of Instruction in Arts applicable to Manufactures,” PM, 19 Dec.
1835, 491-92.

241
Times, 3 Mar. 1845.

242
Wornum was also author of articles in Knight’s Penny Cyclopedia (1833-1846). He “gave to the
Cyclopedia the advantage of his most unequalled knowledge of the general history and character of the
School of Art, and of the lives of the great painters.” See Knight, Passages, 226.
100
survey—based on a text-image dialogue that tells the story of art throughout history. Indeed,
with Knight’s publication, art history became an “illustrated” discipline long before the slide
lectures of Grimm and Wollflin in the late nineteenth century, or the image collections of
Warburg and Malraux in the twentieth. The Pictorial Gallery defined a popular history of art
that was distinctly visual, establishing a relationship between teaching and the use of images
that has persisted in the discipline to this day. With these significant contributions to art
history, Knight’s Pictorial Gallery also played a crucial role in the development of visual
education and popular publishing. My focus on Knight’s art history publications, therefore,
demonstrates how the history of art became more than an academic discipline in the
nineteenth century; it emerged as part of the modern experience of an international public.

101

Fig. 1.1 Cover of Penny Magazine from 1832 with wood engraving of the Laocoon

Fig. 1.2. Illustration of the Laocoon from the Pictorial Gallery of Arts, vol. 2 (London, 1847)

Fig. 1.3. Detail of a page from the Denkmäler der Kunst (Stuttgart, 1845-56) with engraved
image of the Laocoon
102

Fig. 1.4. Broadsheet with woodcut image from 1780

Fig. 1.5. Cover of Penny Magazine with wood engraving of Raphael’s Madonna of the Chair,
signed John Jackson

Fig. 1.6. Illustration from the Penny Magazine of the Egyptian Temple of Luxor
103

Fig. 1.7. Illustration from the Penny Magazine of the Cave Temple at Elephanta in India

Fig. 1.8. Page from the Penny Magazine with illustration of the Dying Gladiator.
104

Fig. 1.9. Illustration of Notre Dame in Paris from the Penny Magazine

Fig. 1.10. Illustration of Notre Dame from the Magasin pittoresque
105
.
Fig. 1.11. Pages from Longman’s New Testament (London, 1865) with illustration of
Leonardo’s Last Supper

Fig. 1.12. Leather binding of Longman’s New Testament with gilt design

Fig. 1.13. Text page from the Pictorial Gallery of Arts
106

Fig. 1.14. Illustration page from the Pictorial Gallery of Arts with Leonardo’s Last Supper

Fig. 1.15. Cloth binding from Knight’s Pictorial Gallery of Arts

Fig. 1.16. Example of Knight’s “Illuminated Print” process from the Pictorial Gallery of Arts,
vol. 1
107

Fig. 1.17. Page of engraved images from the Denkmäler der Kunst.

Fig. 1.18. Page of wood-engraved images from the Pictorial Gallery of Arts
108

Fig. 1.19. Paper wrapper from a later edition of the Pictorial Gallery of Arts

Fig. 1.20. Illustration of Stonehenge from the Pictorial Gallery of Arts

Fig. 1.21. J. M. W. Turner, Stonehenge, 1825-28, watercolor, Salisbury and South Wiltshire
Museum, Salisbury
109

Fig. 1.22. John Constable, Stonehenge, 1836, watercolor, Victoria and Albert Museum,
London

Fig. 1.23. Gilded design of Stonehenge from binding of Old England

Fig. 1.24. “Advertisement” page from Old England with image of Stonehenge
110

Fig. 1.25. Illustration of the Egyptian Temple of Edfu from the Pictorial Gallery of Arts
111
Chapter 2: Art History on Display: Illustrated Surveys in Mid-Century Britain
The 1851 Great Exhibition in London has become a touchstone for histories of
modernity.
243
The iron and glass structure of the Crystal Palace has introduced studies of
modern architecture and design, while the goods on display have framed discussions of
modern consumer culture and capitalism as spectacle.
244
The exhibition’s focus on “the
industry of all nations” has provided a key example of Britain’s leadership in the Industrial
Revolution.
245
And the inclusion of colonial products has been the subject of scholarship on
imperialism in the modern period.
246
The history of art history, in contrast, has rarely
foregrounded the Great Exhibition in its narratives. To be sure, the displays included very
little high art. Although one of the four organizing categories of the exhibition was the “Fine
Arts,” this included mainly objects of decorative art with some sculpture by contemporary
artists.
247
The lack of a broader presentation of fine art was in fact a particular point of

243
On the importance of the Great Exhibition in histories of modernity, see Louise Purbrick, ed., The
Great Exhibition of 1851: New Interdisciplinary Essays (Manchester: Manchester University Press,
2001).

244
On the Crystal Palace as a starting point in the history of modern architecture and design, see, for
example, Nikolaus Pevsner, Pioneers of Modern Design (Middlesex: Penguin, 1960) and Sources of
Modern Architecture and Design (London: Thames and Hudson, 1968); and Rick Brettel, Modern Art
1851-1929 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). On the palace as an example of modern consumer
culture and capitalist spectacle, see Martin Berman, All That is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of
Modernity (London: Verso, 1983); Rachel Bowlby, Just Looking: Consumer Culture in Dreiser,
Gissing, and Zola (New York: Methuen, 1985); Thomas Richards, The Commodity Culture of Victorian
England: Advertising and Spectacle 1851-1914 (London: Verso, 1990); and Andrew H. Miller, Novels
Behind Glass: Commodity Culture and Victorian Narrative (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1995).

245
Francis Donald Klingender, Art and the Industrial Revolution (Chatham: Evelyn, Adams, and
Mackay, 1968) and Christopher Harvie, Graham Martin, and Aaron Scharf, Industrialisation and
Culture, 1830-1914 (London: Macmillan, 1970).

246
Paul Greenhalgh, Ephemeral Vistas: The Expositions Universelles, Great Exhibitions, and World’s
Fairs 1851-1939 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988) and Bernard Porter, Britannia’s
Burden: The Political Evolution of Modern Britain 1851-1990 (London: Edward Arnold, 1994).

247
The other three categories were raw materials, machinery, and manufactures. See Official Catalogue
of the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations (London: Spicer Brothers, 1851), 5.

112
criticism for reviewers of the Great Exhibition.
248
And in subsequent scholarship, France,
rather than Britain, has generally received credit for bringing high art to world’s fairs with its
dedicated Beaux-Arts pavilion at the 1855 Exposition Universelle.
249

Yet, the decade of the 1850s in Britain saw the organization of two large-scale
exhibitions that highlighted the fine arts and rivaled the original Crystal Palace in the extent of
the displays and the number of visitors. I refer here to the Sydenham Crystal Palace, which
opened in 1854 and remained open until it burned beyond repair in 1936, as well as the
Manchester Art-Treasures Exhibition of 1857. As can be seen in color prints published in the
context of these exhibitions, the iron and glass pavilions closely resembled Paxton’s original
design; indeed, the Sydenham pavilion was literally Paxton’s palace reconstructed in a new
location (Figs. 2.1 and 2.2). The bustling crowds that appear in these images also point to the
large and ongoing public attendance of the shows. Unlike the Great Exhibition, both
Sydenham and Manchester were expressly dedicated to the display of high art, and they were
designed as chronological surveys for teaching its history through display. The Sydenham
Fine Arts Courts offered a room-by-room progression of the periods of art history, in which
visitors encountered plaster versions of canonical works of architecture and sculpture.
Manchester, on the other hand, displayed original works of art, especially paintings, organized
chronologically according to the various European schools. Although overlooked in both the
history of modernity and the history of art history, the exhibitions at Sydenham and
Manchester established Britain as a leader in disseminating the history of art as a subject of
general knowledge newly available to a broad public.

248
See, for example, “Fine Arts Courts,” Tallis’s History and Description of the Crystal Palace, vol. 1
(London and New York: John Tallis and Co., 1852), 202.

249
Greenhalgh, 13-14. Greenhalgh writes: “It was left to the French however to determine a clear and
central rôle for the fine arts, when their first international exhibition was arranged for 1855...The French
had added the final ingredient to the newly established tradition [of the world’s fair].”
113
Moreover, both of these exhibitions provided a context for furthering art history
education through illustrated publications. At Sydenham, a visitor could obtain affordable
handbooks for each of the Fine Arts Courts and for the palace in general. Building on
conventions defined in such earlier publications as Knight’s Penny Magazine and Pictorial
Gallery of Arts, the Sydenham handbooks included wood-engraved illustrations of the works
on display as well as text positioning these works within the history of art. This use of
illustrated publications can be seen in pages from the Handbook to the Egyptian Court, with
their view of the massive decorated columns from the Temple of Karnak adjacent to an
explanatory text with images comparing the scale of the Sydenham displays to the actual
temple in Egypt (Fig. 2.3). The Manchester show, likewise, was widely covered in the
illustrated press, introducing viewers to the displays through wood engravings prior to their
visit.
250
Also available for purchase in 1857 was The Manchester Art-Treasures Examiner, an
illustrated magazine that accompanied the show. This publication similarly employed text and
wood engravings to educate viewers about the featured artists and their works, such as
Constable’s Salisbury Cathedral (Fig. 2.4).
While the art exhibitions at Sydenham and Manchester introduced methods of
teaching art’s history through display, they also signalled the emergence of a new and lasting
format for the published art history survey. The hand-held guidebooks offered at Sydenham,
referred to specifically as “handbooks,” set a precedent for issuing the illustrated history of art
in a new portable format. This chapter will close with a look at James Fergusson’s 1855
Illustrated Handbook of Architecture, which arguably provided the first compact and
comprehensively illustrated survey of art history (Fig. 2.5). Like Knight’s publications and
the Sydenham handbooks, Fergusson’s Illustrated Handbook integrated wood-engraved

250
See, for instance, issues of the Art-Journal, Punch, and the Illustrated London News between May
and October 1857.
114
illustrations of art history monuments into the text pages. Britain’s leadership in art history
pedagogy, which began in the 1830s with Knight’s Penny Magazine, expanded at mid-century
through both public exhibitions and general-market illustrated publications. These non-
academic books and displays forged influential paths for popularizing art history as a field.

A Crystal Palace for Art History: Sydenham

After the closure of the Great Exhibition in 1851, the question of what to do with the
Crystal Palace arose. The enormous glass and iron structure was scheduled for immediate
removal from Hyde Park, but a large public argued in support of its preservation. Under the
initiative of a group of British businessmen, a company of shareholders formed a plan to
purchase the building, as well as land in the southern London suburb of Sydenham for its
relocation.
251
This plan would enable the re-opening of the Crystal Palace as a permanent
pleasure garden rather than as a temporary exhibition space. Shares in the Crystal Palace
Company sold at £5 each, quickly raising the initial funds for the new project, and
construction began in Sydenham in 1852. Between this date and 10 June 1854, when the
Sydenham Palace opened to the public, the structure of Joseph Paxton’s original building was
disassembled, moved, and expanded, adding two new levels above the original three, as well
as two additional transepts flanking the principal one.
252

251
On this history see, Tobin Andrews Sparling, The Great Exhibition: A Question of Taste (New
Haven: Yale Center for British Art, 1982), 62; Jeffrey Auerbach, The Great Exhibition of 1851: A
Nation on Display (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 200-206; Peter Gurney, “A Appropriated
Space: The Great Exhibition, the Crystal Palace and the Working Class,” in The Great Exhibition of
1851: New Interdisciplinary Essays, ed. Louise Purbrick (Manchester: Manchester University Press,
2001), 122; and J. R. Piggott, Palace of the People: The Crystal Palace at Sydenham (Madison:
University of Wisconsin Press, 2004).

252
The expansion amounted to fifty percent more exhibition space. See Samuel Phillips, Crystal
Palace. A Guide to the Palace and Park (London: Crystal Palace Library and Bradbury and Evans,
1854), 15.
115
In addition to these expansions, another major change made during the move from
Hyde Park to Sydenham involved the incorporation of new didactic historical displays.
Unlike the original Crystal Palace exhibits, which showcased contemporary innovations in
industry, science, and the decorative arts, the Sydenham Palace manifested an active interest
in teaching visitors about the history of nature and man, science and art. In the words of
Matthew Digby Wyatt, Director of Works at Sydenham, “The products, no less than the
interests, of the Exhibition of 1851 were limited to time present,” while the “contents of the
new Crystal Palace” shared “an intimate alliance with the philosophy of the past.”
253
In the
gardens, painted models of prehistoric creatures were situated in re-created natural habitats,
informing viewers about recent discoveries in paleontology, geology, and climatology. The
extensive and lifelike detail of these displays can be seen in a color lithograph that appeared in
Matthew Digby Wyatt’s Views of the Crystal Palace, an album of prints published to
demonstrate the new attractions at Sydenham (Fig. 2.6). Inside the palace, painted plaster
created similarly detailed galleries representing the various periods of art history, from
Assyrian and Egyptian to the Italian Renaissance (Fig. 2.7).
254
These galleries, which made up
the “Fine Arts Courts,” corresponded closely with the period divisions in published art history
surveys, such as Knight’s Pictorial Gallery, and they incorporated three-dimensional
recreations of many of the same canonical monuments (for a list of these divisions at
Sydenham, see Appendix 3).

253
Matthew Digby Wyatt, Views of the Crystal Palace and Park, Sydenham (London: Day and Son,
1854), 8. Italics in original.

254
Also inside the palace were displays of plants and stuffed animals from various regions of the world,
as well as life-size models of human figures from different ethnological and racial groups, including
African, Arab, Jewish, Native Mexican, Native South American, Hindu, Javanese, Native North
American, and Aborigine. Original art was displayed and sold at the Sydenham Palace in a Picture
Gallery that exhibited a collection of both Old Master and contemporary works, which was updated
each year.
116
This new focus on historical display coincided with a focus on public education. In a
speech entitled “The Necessity of an Architecture Education on the Part of the Public,” which
was given in 1852 to justify the Sydenham project, Owen Jones explained the intent of the
pedagogical exhibits. Jones had been responsible for the interior decoration of the original
Crystal Palace and was named Director of Decorations at Sydenham as well. His 1852 speech
described how the displays would make useful learning, especially regarding the subject of art
history, accessible to visitors. The Fine Arts Courts in particular provided a “complete history
of civilization” from the “earliest times to present” in such a form that “hundreds daily may be
taught” an “education necessary to the governors as to the governed.”
255
Rather than the
“showy decorations of the upholsterer and the paper stainer” that were on display in 1851,
Sydenham would “place before the eyes of the public...testimonies of unrivalled excellence”
in the form of copies of the world’s best works of art.
256

As at Hyde Park, the ticket pricing system at Sydenham enabled visits by a large
cross-section of the population. In 1854 alone, more than 1.3 million visitors attended, half of
this number being children. Fridays and Saturdays catered to more elite audiences with tickets
at 2s 6d and 5s respectively, whereas the cheapest tickets at a shilling were available Monday
through Thursday and on Holidays.
257
To promote family and group visits, Sydenham also
offered half-priced tickets to children and discounted group rates. Dedicated rail lines from

255
Owen Jones, “The Necessity of an Architecture Education on the Part of the Public,” as quoted in
Piggott, 29.

256
Tallis’s History and Description of the Crystal Palace, vol. 3, 80.

257
This same pricing scale was employed at Hyde Park in 1851. Season tickets were also offered at £3
3s for men and £2 2s for women, with the first day open to season ticket holders only. After 22 days,
the shilling tickets on Monday through Thursday were available. Fridays were 2s 6d and Saturdays 5s.
The palace was closed on Sunday until 1860.

117
London provided cheap round-trip fairs for travel to Sydenham.
258
According to Wyatt, the
palace enabled audiences beyond “the nobility and aristocracy” to enjoy the displays,
including not only “the bourgeoisie” but also “an extension...through the great body of the
people of England.”
259

In order to attract and inform the many visitors to Sydenham, the organizers employed
innovative visual formats for their displays. In his 1852 speech, Jones argued that the art
history exhibits would be designed to inform “the mind as well as the eye” and to bring “art-
knowledge within the reach of all,” language that sounds remarkably similar to Knight’s
arguments in the Penny Magazine and the Pictorial Gallery of Arts.
260
The general guidebook
for Sydenham also informed visitors that the exhibits enabled “the eye” to “track the
intellectual stream as it flows on” through the historical galleries. The guidebook continued,
claiming that the displays could provide a “worldwide tour of inspection” to “educate [the
visitor] by the eye” and “show him how to see” the history of art.
261
Thus, a belief in the
effectiveness of visual pedagogy proved crucial for the palace designers, both because of their
interest in education and because of their desire to attract larger ticket-buying audiences.

258
The inclusion of round trip train tickets to the palace from central London made the cost between 1s
6d and 7s, depending upon the day of the trip and the class of the train seats (first, second, or third).
There were also cheaper rail fares for schools, “benevolent societies,” and parties of over 100 people.
For the rail ticket prices see Phillips, Crystal Palace and Samuel Phillips and F. K. J. Shenton, General
Guide to the Crystal Palace (London: Crystal Palace Library and Bradbury and Evans, 1879), extra-text
advertisements.

259
Wyatt, Views of the Crystal Palace, 8.

260
Piggott, 29.

261
Phillips, Crystal Palace, 15 and 43. Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins, the sculptor of the dinosaur
models at Sydenham employed very similar language to emphasize the “visual education” and “direct
teaching through the eye” made possible by his sculpted models as displays of science and natural
history. Hawkins, like Jones and the other directors of Sydenham, believed in the power of visual
pedagogy to teach beginning audiences. On Hawkins’ theories and his “groundbreaking science
installation” at Sydenham, see Carla Yanni, “The Crystal Palace: A Legacy in Science,” in Die
Weltausstellung von 1851 und ihre Folgen, ed. Franz Bosbach and John R. Davis (Munich: K.G. Saur,
2002), 119-26.

118
More than public museums with their declared educational missions, the Crystal Palace had
financial stakes in this broad appeal.
In mid-century Britain, privately-funded illustrated publications and visual displays
came together to teach the public about art and its history. Just as Knight had incorporated the
technologies of wood engraving and stereotyping to produce a new form of popular art history
(one that would soon be influential in other European countries), the Sydenham exhibits in
painted plaster likewise created an unprecedented means of teaching the public about
historical art. As Samuel Phillips claimed in his general guidebook to the palace,
Nothing better aids us in realizing the people and customs of the past, than the
wonderful monuments happily preserved from the destructive hand of time, and now
restored to something of their original splendor by the patient and laborious researches
of modern times; and we may add (not to some pride), by the enterprising liberality of
Englishmen...thus beneath one roof, may the visitor trace the course of art from
centuries long anterior to Christianity, down to the very moment in which he lives.
262

Phillips thus highlighted the leading role of British businessmen in making world art available
to nineteenth-century audiences. Through visual formats, the “imagination of the spectator”
was “safely conducted back...to the artistic characteristics of distant and distinctive ages.”
263

The promise of such imaginative travel formed a fundamental component of both published
art histories with illustrations and the displays at Sydenham.
The title of Jones’s speech—“The Necessity of an Architecture Education on the Part
of the Public”—signified that “architecture education” defined a guiding premise for the
construction of the Fine Arts Courts. The general guidebook to the palace emphasized that the
courts would provide “architectural specimens” from the most remarkable “edifices
throughout the world” organized to present “a grand architectural sequence from the earliest

262
Ibid., 43.

263
Phillips and Shenton, General Guide, 11-15. Wyatt likewise claimed that “for the first time...those
who have not enjoyed the advantages of foreign travel” could still be informed about “the greatest
works of well-known and highly-esteemed masters.” See Wyatt, Views of the Crystal Palace, 11.

119
dawn of art to the latest times.”
264
Although numerous casts after famous sculptures and some
copies of paintings were also included in their design, the courts were for the most part
organized within a framework of architectural styles. As the palace guidebook stated,
“Sculpture is the sister art of Architecture” and “the statues will generally be found as much as
possible in or near the Architectural Courts of the periods and countries to which they
belong.”
265
Thus, it was architecture in Britain, as much as painting and sculpture, that framed
the history of art for popular audiences.
266
Architecture in this period represented the original
branch of the visual arts, being the most closely related to utility and the earliest to evolve into
a fine art. It also constituted the medium of the most ancient art monuments, from the temples
of Egypt, India, and Central America to the palaces of Assyria. In nineteenth-century surveys,
architecture formed the starting point for a narrative of art history.
The Fine Arts Courts at Sydenham did not comprise a uniform survey in which the
spatial layout entirely mirrored a chronological progression. Visitors could walk through the
connected galleries of Egypt, Greece, and Rome, or of the Byzantine and Romanesque,
Gothic, and Renaissance styles, experiencing these progressions as a three-dimensional art
history survey. However, several anachronisms within the organization undermined this
effect: the Alhambra Court was reached before the Assyrian and Byzantine Courts; the
Egyptian monument of Abu Simbel appeared between the Alhambra and Assyrian Courts; and

264
Phillips, Crystal Palace, 17.

265
Phillips and Shenton, General Guide, 7.

266
This argument goes against the notion that architecture has been somewhat of an “adjunct” in art
history. On this view, see Katherine Fischer Taylor, “Architecture’s Place in Art History: Art or
Adjunct?” The Art Bulletin 83, no. 2 (2001): 342-46. Taylor argues, for instance, that it was the German
art historian Heinrich Wölfflin who “rescued architecture from the Hegelian hierarchy and erected it as
a parallel to painting and sculpture.” Yet, half a century before Wölfflin, illustrated art history surveys
in Britain—including the Sydenham Fine Arts Courts and Fergusson’s Illustrated Handbook of
Architecture—positioned architecture on equal footing with painting and sculpture in the history of art.

120
the Pompeii gallery was disassociated from the rest of the Fine Art Courts. Nevertheless, the
major period styles of art history were all present at the palace.
267
Many of the same stylistic
categories had been featured at Hyde Park in 1851. Displays in this earlier exhibition had
included Alhambra wallpapers and chandeliers, “Moorish” coffee and tea services, and
jewelry with Assyrian designs, as well as tiles in Islamic, Byzantine, “Pompeian,” Roman, and
Greek ornamental styles.
268
However, new at Sydenham was the representation of these
historical styles not in consumer products, but in specific monuments. More than teaching
artists about quality design and educating patrons to appreciate such quality, the Sydenham
displays taught broader audiences about the history of art as a subject of general knowledge.
As in contemporary published surveys, the canon presented in these displays provided an
introduction both to the appreciation of beauty and to the understanding of human history.
Moreover, the same survey of objects that introduced art history to the public at Sydenham
continues to dominate the survey canon to this day (on the canon presented at Sydenham, see
Appendices 2 and 3).

Reproductions or Illustrations?
As in surveys in the form of illustrated books, the courts and their monuments
functioned above all as art history illustrations. Period descriptions of these displays

267
The Alhambra Court was completed a year after the opening, in 1855. A fire in 1866 damaged this
court as well as the Abu Simbel Figures in the North Nave, the Assyrian Court, and the Byzantine and
Romanesque Court. Only the Alhambra Court and the Byzantine and Romanesque Court were restored
and reopened after this fire.

268
Piggott, 23 and 91. Ralph Wornum’s essay “The Exhibition as a Lesson in Taste,” which won a prize
for best essay in the context of the 1851 exhibition, described nine basic design ornamental styles that
visitors should learn to recognize: Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Saracenic, and Gothic,
Renaissance, Cinquecento, and Louis Quatorze. See Ralph Wornum, “The Exhibition as a Lesson in
Taste,” Art-Journal Illustrated Catalogue (London and New York: George Vitrue and Co., 1851), i-
xxii. The article was ongoing, beginning in part 11 of the magazine and concluding in part 15. Another
source that defined similar design styles was Owen Jones’s Grammar of Ornament (1856), a luxury
album that provided chromolithographic examples Egyptian, Assyrian, Persian, Greek, Pompeian,
Indian, Chinese, Celtic, Medieval, and Renaissance design, but included no example monuments.
121
continuously emphasized their role as such. For instance, during his speech at the opening of
the palace, Chairman of the Crystal Palace Company Samuel Laing highlighted this purpose
of the Fine Arts Courts, claiming that they provided a “complete historical illustration of the
arts of sculpture and architecture from the earliest works of Egypt and Assyria down to the
modern times.”
269
The general palace guidebook also commented on this function: “these are
the most important and comprehensive series of Art-illustrations of their kind in the world,
and are designed to convey, as they do convey, a practical lesson not otherwise attainable by
the very many.”
270
The illustrative role of the courts, as they presented lessons in art history,
aligned closely with their pedagogical intent.
Though valued as illustrations, the displays could hardly be called reproductions in the
most accepted sense of the word. They often amounted to reduced and revised versions of the
actual monuments. The massive Abu Simbel figures in the northern transept, for example,
included only two out of the four colossal sculptures (Fig. 2.8). The Alhambra Court likewise
condensed and reorganized the rooms of the actual palace—the Court of the Lions, the Hall of
the Abencerrages, and the Hall of Justice—to fit the rectangular gallery space (Figs. 2.9 and
2.10), while the Parthenon and Colosseum in the Greek and Roman Courts were represented
in parts and details. The Greek Court included only the west facade of the Parthenon, as can
be seen in the distance in the lithograph from Wyatt’s Views (Fig. 2.11), and casts after the
Elgin Marbles, while the entrance to the Roman Court was taken from a single archway from
the lowest level of the Colosseum (Fig. 2.12). At the same time, the Egyptian Court (Fig. 2.7)
presented a composite collection of monuments from different periods and locations, with the
early Tomb of Beni Hassan adjacent to the much later Hypostyle Hall of Karnak. The Italian

269
Sydenham Crystal Palace Expositor (London: James S. Virtue, 1854), 3.

270
Phillips and Shenton, General Guide, 7. See also Wyatt, Views of the Crystal Palace, 11. Wyatt
called the palace a “great scheme of illustration,” as it “assembled specimens of the utmost interest and
importance, illustrating the great schools of almost all art.”
122
Court, in turn, displayed a cast of Michelangelo’s Medici Chapel sculptures from the Florence
Church of San Lorenzo in front of niches decorated with Raphael’s designs for the Vatican
loggia (Fig. 2.13).
Although many of these monuments were produced in plaster, the term “cast,” which
implies a direct mechanical reproduction of an original, is somewhat problematic in this
context. Only some of the objects on display constituted direct casts from original works,
such as the Laocoon, the Venus de Milo, the Dying Gladiator, and Ghiberti’s Gates of
Paradise. Many others offered more interpretive versions of their originals. Only the heads
of the Abu Simbel figures, for instance (Fig. 2.8), were taken from direct casts, while artists
modeled the bodies after the Nubian monuments. In the palace handbooks and other
descriptions from the period, the art displays at Sydenham were variously referred to as casts,
illustrations, reproductions, restorations, facsimiles, and even reminiscences, revealing their
uncertain and hybrid status as copies.
271

To be sure, these versions in brick, plaster, and paint did not strive to reproduce the
originals mimetically so much as to render them effectively for teaching the styles and periods
of art history. As the palace handbooks declared, the “objective” of the courts was “to give
the best examples...in the smallest possible space.”
272
Thus, the displays condensed and
simplified the survey of art history into the essentials necessary for instruction. Like wood-
engraved book illustrations, in contradistinction to strictly mechanical reproductions, these

271
It was James Fergusson who referred to them as “reminiscences.” See Fergusson, “On a National
Collection of Architectural Art,” a lecture delivered 21 Dec. 1857 and published as part of the
Introductory Addresses on the Science and Art Department and the South Kensington Museum
(London: Chapman and Hall, 1857), 16. On the interpretive status of various reproductive media in this
period, including photography, see Trevor Fawcett, “Graphic Versus Photographic in the Nineteenth-
Century,” Art History 9, no. 2 (1986): 185-212.

272
Phillips and Shenton, General Guide, 23. This statement was made in reference to the Alhambra
Court, where “it should be remembered that the different apartments here brought together do not stand
in the same relation to each other as in the Moorish Palace.”

123
plaster examples in their abstracted and abbreviated versions served a demonstrative and
didactic purpose. And as art monuments of widely varying sizes appeared in similar sized
formats within the pages of a published survey, the plaster copies at Sydenham had been
adjusted to fit inside the galleries of the palace: the massive columns from Karnak and the
more modest house of Pompeii therefore appear nearly identical in size. This standardization
of art history illustrations into uniform sizes has of course become most familiar in the
photographic and digital slides that accompany spoken lectures.
What the displays at Sydenham lacked in authenticity and mimesis, however, they
made up for in accessibility. In his review of the Fine Arts Courts published in 1867, art critic
William Michael Rossetti (brother of the Pre-Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti)
discussed the educational benefits of studying the Sydenham reconstructions over studying
originals. An “uninformed person, or one having a smattering of knowledge and a superficial
interest in the subject,” he argued, could “immediately and without labour” learn something
from the displays at Sydenham.
273
Although the “teaching of the Crystal Palace is subject to
the inferiority which necessarily belongs to a copy,” Rossetti wrote, the palace provided a
“comprehensiveness and vividness” that could not be matched in a collection of original
objects.
274
He continued:
The British Museum is a better mistress in Egyptian art and Greek art than the
Sydenham Museum but she takes a longer time in giving her curriculum. Her facts
are perfect, but they are isolated. At Sydenham you find the most striking facts
prearranged for you in the most perspicuous manner; and when you have gathered as
much as serves your immediate purpose about the arts of Egypt and Greece, you can
pass to Ninevite, and Byzantine, and Saracenic, and Medieval, and Renaissance...all
presenting a linked chain of sequence and divergence whose significance it is difficult
to miss.
275

273
William Michael Rossetti, Fine Art, Chiefly Contemporary (London: Macmillan, 1867), 51.

274
Ibid., 52-53.

275
Ibid., 52.

124
It was thus the arrangement, sequence, and manageability of Sydenham, not the “perfection”
of the objects, themselves, that made the palace such an effective educational collection. Not
only do the displays at Sydenham tell “so much...in so short a time,” Rossetti continued, they
also made the “lesson so palatable to those who cannot devote themselves to all the subjects
which it embraces.”
276
Comparable to other illustrated art history surveys, the Sydenham
Fine Arts Courts created an informative and easily accessible musée imaginaire made possible
only through copies. In the twentieth century, when plaster casts and wood engravings had
become entirely obsolete, André Malraux would describe such an imagined museum in the
context of photography.
277

The Fine Arts Courts as an Illustrated Survey
The various guidebooks published by the Sydenham Crystal Palace further
underscored the role of the Fine Arts Courts as art history illustrations (Fig. 2.14).
278
No
textual wall labels identified the monuments in the galleries, but these objects were named,
explained, and contextualized within art history—including general periodizations and
descriptions of historical styles—as well as re-illustrated, in both the general palace guides

276
Ibid. 53-54. Wyatt similarly claimed that at Sydenham “more useful knowledge” could be
“apprehended in a hour than could be acquired in any other Museum by months of patient and
persevering study.” See Wyatt, Views of the Crystal Palace, 12.

277
André Malraux, “Museum without Walls,” in The Voices of Silence (Garden City, NY: Doubleday,
1953), 13-130. This text was originally published in French in 1947 as “Le Musée Imaginaire.”

278
These handbooks included Samuel Philips, General Guide to the Palace and Park; Owen Jones and
Samuel Sharpe, Handbook to the Egyptian Court; George Scharf, Handbook to the Greek Court;
George Scharf, Handbook to the Roman Court; Owen Jones, Handbook to the Alhambra Court; Austen
Henry Layard, Handbook to the Nineveh Court; Matthew Digby Wyatt and J. B. Waring, Handbook to
the Byzantine Court, Handbook to the Medieval Court, Handbook to the Renaissance Court, and
Handbook to the Italian Court; Wyatt and Scharf, Handbook to the Pompeian Court; Anna Jameson,
Handbook to the Courts of Modern Sculpture. All were published by the Crystal Palace Library and
Bradbury and Evans. Prices are as listed on the back cover of Phillips’ general guide.

125
and the specific court handbooks (Fig. 2.15).
279
All of these books were available at the
palace for a low price of around a half a shilling (6d).
280
Their format resembled a scaled-
down version of a published art history survey, with their use of wood-engraved images
integrated into a narrative, descriptive text. Philip Henry Delamotte, now better known for his
photographs of the construction of the Sydenham Crystal Palace (Figs. 2.8 and 2.13), designed
the illustrations.
281
These handbooks, like both published art history surveys and the palace
displays, themselves, reached out to the non-professional “public at large.”
282

While explicated in the palace handbooks, the art history displays at Sydenham were
themselves directly compared to educational books. The hieroglyphs that appeared on the
walls of the Egyptian Court, for example, likened the palace to “a book for the instruction of
the men and women of all countries, regions, and districts.” The translation of these glyphs
appeared in the handbook to the Egyptian Court (Fig. 2.16).
283
The general guidebook

279
Some of the individual sculptural casts included a textual label on their plinths, which identified the
title of the work and the location of the original. For instance, the Venus de Milo’s plinth read “Venus
de Milo, Louvre.”

280
Compare their prices to Philip Henry Delamotte’s Photographic Views of the Progress of the Crystal
Palace, Sydenham, which consisted of thirty photographic albums documenting the construction and
palace, each of which sold for a guinea (21 shillings), totaling 630s or £31 10s. Piggott, 133.

281
On Delamotte as photographer, see Janet E. Buerger, The Crystal Palace: Photographs by Philip H.
Delamotte (Rochester, NY: George Eastman House, 1980); Grace Seiberling, Amateurs, Photography,
and the Mid-Victorian Imagination (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 127-8; and Ian Leith,
Delamotte’s Crystal Palace: A Victorian Pleasure Dome Revealed (Swindon: English Heritage, 2005).
On his work as an illustrator, see Appendix 1. He was also the draftsman for the many of the wood-
engraved illustrations of the Sydenham Crystal Palace that appeared in the Illustrated London News in
1854.

282
Jameson, Handbook to the Courts of Modern Sculpture, 1.

283
It read: “In the seventeenth year of the reign of her Majesty, the ruler of the waves, the royal
daughter Victoria, lady most gracious, the chiefs, architects, sculptors, and painters, erected this Palace
and Gardens with a thousand columns, a thousand decorations, a thousand statues of chiefs and ladies, a
thousand trees, a thousand flowers, a thousand birds and beasts, a thousand fountains, and a thousand
vases. The architects, and painters, and sculptors, built this Palace as a book for the instruction of the
men and women of all countries, regions, and districts. May it be prosperous!” For this translation, see
Jones and Sharpe, Handbook to the Egyptian Court and Wyatt, Views of the Crystal Palace, 20.

126
similarly compared the palace displays to a “well arranged book” in which one might
“proceed from subject to subject at one’s discretion.” Such a comparison not only highlights
the connections between the Fine Arts Courts and published art history surveys but also calls
attention to how these books, like the galleries in the palace, did not require readers to follow
their narratives from cover to cover. Rather, readers could pick and choose amongst the
chapters, sections, and illustrations that most interested them. An art history survey, therefore,
could present an historical progression that incorporated all the periods in a systematic order,
but it could also provide summaries of individual periods to be engaged separately.
The Fine Arts Courts arguably had more in common with published art history
surveys than with individual art museums, as the courts brought together works from
numerous museum collections and geographic locations. Architectural examples, for instance,
came from Greece, Rome, Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, and the Middle East, while
sculptures were from the Louvre, the Vatican, the Uffizi, the British Museum, the Munich
Glyptothek, and the Naples Museum. According to Matthew Digby Wyatt in his Slade
Lectures in Art History at Cambridge in 1870, the palace displays had “succeeded in
presenting an even more complete idea of the grandeur and vastness of some of these
monuments than can be derived from the study of even the finest remains in the Museums of
Europe.”
284
As art historian Alan Wallach observes in his study of nineteenth-century cast
collections, “for didactic purposes,” such formats “were as good as, and in some respects
better than, originals.”
285
The media of illustrated books and plaster copies enabled the

284
Matthew Digby Wyatt, Fine Art: A Sketch of its History, Theory, Practice, and Application to
Industry, being a course of lectures delivered at Cambridge in 1870 (London: Macmillan, 1870), 118.
Even earlier, Wyatt had claimed that a “greater amount of information will be offered to the public than
has ever yet been brought together in any national Museum in the world.” See Wyatt, Views of the
Crystal Palace, 12.

285
Alan Wallach, “The American Cast Museum: An Episode in the History of the Institutional
Definition of Art,” in Exhibiting Contradiction: Essays on the Art Museum in the United States
127
presentation of what came to define the survey canon of art history monuments, combining
works from widely varying locations together in one accessible place. In other words, they
accomplished something the originals could not.
286

As comparable as the Fine Arts Courts were to publish art history surveys, however,
they also differed from these books in significant ways. First, the palace displays presented
full color formats of their visual examples in a way impossible in the most affordable
illustrated books at that time (Fig. 2.17). The contrast between the black and white wood
engravings in both surveys and palace handbooks on the one hand (Fig. 2.15), and the vibrant
colors in the palace displays on the other, must have been striking. In some instances, the
dramatic color of the Fine Arts Courts even aroused objection. This was certainly true with
the colored examples of the Parthenon and its marbles. In 1854, Owen Jones published An
Apology for the Colouring of the Greek Court in the Crystal Palace, which was issued as one
of the palace handbooks. In this book, Jones justified the coloring as based on
incontrovertible historical evidence, claiming that many Greek sculptures had without doubt
been ornamented by paint. But, according to Rossetti, there was indeed “grave doubt” on the
matter, since “there [was] not a particle of direct confirmation” that the Elgin marbles,
themselves, had been painted.
287
Recent exhibitions, such as “The Color of Life: Polychromy

(Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 1998), 48. Yet, Wallach argues that this role is made
possible only because the casts were virtually indistinguishable from originals. I am hoping to show
how didactic effectiveness reached beyond the exact mechanically-reproduced cast.

286
This coincides with Walter Benjamin’s arguments in his now famous essay “The Work of Art in the
Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” in which he observes that the copy can circulate in ways the original
cannot. However, I want to broaden the scope of the “copy” beyond Benjamin’s more narrowly defined
“mechanical reproduction” to include media besides the lithography, photography, and film on which
Benjamin concentrates. See Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” in
Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt (New York: Schocken Books, 1968), 217-51.

287
Rossetti was also critical of the coloring of the Assyrian Court, which was, he argued, a “pure loss”
for the aesthetic quality of the objects, but he highly praised the paint schemes of the Alhambra Court.
Rossetti, 74 and 76.

128
in Sculpture from Antiquity to the Present” held at the Getty Villa in 2008, reveal that the
practice of coloring ancient sculpture remains contested territory even today.
Second, the Sydenham displays offered a different scope of art history than survey
books. A number of important styles covered in books such as Knight’s Pictorial Gallery
were absent from Sydenham. These included Etruscan, Indian, Chinese, and Pre-Columbian
art. In 1856, James Fergusson, author of his own illustrated art history survey (see below), did
help to design an Indian Court, which included reproductions of the frescos from Ajanta as
well as models of various temples, mosques, and other architectural works that had appeared
as illustrations in his survey the year before.
288
But this gallery was not mentioned as one of
the main Fine Arts Courts in the palace handbooks.
289
On the other hand, though, the courts
included a style of art history that was missing from Knight’s Pictorial Gallery, but which
would be incorporated into nearly every art history survey that followed: Assyrian art. One of
the major attractions at Sydenham was the Assyrian Court (Fig. 2.18).
290
This gallery
exhibited copies of the newly discovered remains of the Palaces at Khorsabad and Nimrud,
including the famous winged bulls brought to the Louvre and the British Museum a few years

288
Piggott, 77.

289
Also absent are casts from objects that Jones and Wyatt were unable to obtain, such as the equestrian
statue of Marcus Aurelius in Rome and bas-reliefs from the Arch of Titus. See Phillips, Crystal Palace,
18-22. Jones and Wyatt were responsible for traveling the continent in search of objects from which to
procure casts.

290
In his study of the reception of Assyrian objects in nineteenth-century Europe, art historian Frederick
Bohrer argues that the Assyrian Court was distinctly isolated from the other courts at Sydenham and
therefore explicitly distanced from the high art status that these courts portrayed. Yet, in the handbooks
to the palace, the Assyrian Court was always included as one of the Fine Arts Courts. In his speech at
the opening of the Sydenham palace, which was recorded in the Crystal Palace Expositor, Laing
claimed that the courts created a history of art from Egypt and Assyria to the modern period. Thus, in
spite of its slightly removed location, the Assyrian Court represented, with Egypt, the shared origins of
art history. See Frederick Bohrer, Orientalism and Visual Culture: Imagining Mesopotamia in
Nineteenth-Century Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

129
earlier.
291
The gallery also included casts of the Lion Hunt reliefs from Nimrud acquired by
the British Museum, and copies of the double-bull columns from the Palace of Persepolis in
Persia. Fergusson had been responsible for the design of this court, basing his reconstruction
of the Palace of Sargon II on his own theory that the non-extant second level of the palace
matched the style of Persepolis. Although his theory has since been discounted, it was at the
time well known and generally accepted as plausible.
292
Drawings of Fergusson’s design of
the Assyrian Court had first appeared as wood-engraved illustrations in his 1851 Palaces of
Nineveh and Persepolis Restored. In fact, these same wood-engravings printed in Fergusson’s
1851 book, were used again in the handbook to the Sydenham Assyrian Court in 1854, and
then again in every edition of Fergusson’s Illustrated Handbook of Architecture (Fig. 2.19).
293

Such repetitions of these images clearly emphasize the wide dissemination possible with wood

291
For a detailed account of the Assyrian excavations of Paul-Emile Botta and Henry Layard, see
Bohrer as in ibid. and Elizabeth Fontan, De Khorsabad à Paris: La découverte des Assyriens (Paris:
Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 1994). Botta’s digs at Khorsabad, which unearthed the Palace of
Sargon II, began in 1843 and his findings arrived at the Louvre starting 1 May 1847, several months
before objects arrived in London. By the mid-1840s, L’Illustration and the Magasin pittoresque were
providing articles and images of the objects. With the revolution in 1848, Botta was forced to cease his
excavations for lack of government funding and it was not until 1851 under the Second Empire that his
replacement Victor Place returned for a further dig. Layard was funded privately by the British
Ambassador to Constantinople and began his excavation of Nimrud in 1845 and his second excavation,
which included the site of Kouyunjik, in 1849. The Winged Bulls arrived at the British Museum in
October 1850.

292
On Fergusson’s design, Rossetti wrote: “To have given us at Sydenham casts of isolated works could
be of no possible value. The restoration of part of an Assyrian building, according to the best lights we
have on the subject, was well worth attempting. Nor do we see any reason to doubt that it has been
executed as successfully, and with as near an approach to full accuracy, as circumstances would admit.
Of course a great deal of the colour and of the construction is conjectural, and types which have been
found at Susa and Perspolis did not necessarily exist as well at Nineveh. But what of that? To cavil
Mr. Fergusson’s production because he has not had unquestionable authority for each detail appears to
us as futile as it is easy. Mr. Fergusson has studied the subject, and acted up to his opportunities; Mr.
Layard has ratified the result with his general and particular approval. The very value of the labour
bestowed upon it consists not in what is certain, which we can find better and as accessibly in the
original, but in what is conjectural.” See Rossetti, 74-75.

293
Layard’s handbook to the Assyrian Court directly thanked Murray’s publishing firm for sharing
these illustrations.

130
engravings, which uniquely allowed publishers to reuse images cheaply and easily in
numerous publications.
A focus on the Assyrian Court at Sydenham, moreover, reveals that art history was
not an isolated field of study in mid-century Britain. Rather, it offered a means for audiences
to visualize the past, a past that involved combinations of biblical, cultural, geological, and
architectural history. As an early reviewer of Sydenham described,
The Nineveh, or Assyrian Court, will be visited with intense interest, unfolding as
it does its wondrous record of remote ages, in colossal monuments, sculptured
walls, gigantic idols, and statues of renowned and mighty monarchs, whose names
are familiar to us in the pages of Holy Writ.
294

Experiencing the objects on display in the court, which resonated not only as art but also as
artifacts of biblical history, visitors found themselves vicariously transported back in time,
ushered “into spiritual converse with the mighty dead” as the figures from the past “rise before
[their] imagination.”
295
At Sydenham, therefore, the history of art formed not an arcane,
theoretical set of discourses but a collection of historical monuments that threatened to come
alive before viewers, awakening their wonder and admiration. In dialogue with the natural
history displays at the palace, the idols of Assyria corresponded with the prehistoric beasts that
roamed the palace gardens: the Dinosaurians, Iguanodons, and Megalosauruses; the
Mosasaurus “with its colossal lizard-like head, with wide gaping jaws and formidable teeth;”
and the Pterodactyle, or that “winged-fingered...strange mix of bird, fish, and beast” believed
at the time to be the dragon slain by St. George, the patron saint of England (Fig. 2.6).
296

Constructed in iron, concrete, brick, and painted plaster, these model animals presented

294
Tallis’s History and Description of the Crystal Palace, vol. 3, 104.

295
Ibid. In a similar fashion, visitors to the Pompeii Court could examine ash from the explosion of
Mount Vesuvius, and thus tactilely experience both the geological phenomenon of the volcano and the
human tragedy of the buried town of Pompeii.

296
Ibid., vol. 3, 108-9.

131
visitors with vivid historical illustrations. The Crystal Palace at Sydenham thus represented a
site where the various strands of world history, including the history of world art, came
together in dramatically designed displays.
As a place of amusement and education for British and foreign visitors, the popularity
of the Sydenham Palace endured for decades, with an average of 2 million visitors each year
for the first thirty years.
297
As Henry Cole claimed in 1857, “thousands incur the cost of
travel, and pay for admission [to the Sydenham Crystal Palace], exceeding the total of all the
visitors to the gratuitous public museums in the metropolis.”
298
The palace’s importance for
teaching art history to a general public was recognized and appreciated both in Britain and
abroad. Though recent scholars have been quick to dismiss this importance, claiming that the
didactic lessons at Sydenham were soon overshadowed by spectacular entertainments such as
fireworks displays, melodramas, and the tightrope acts of Blondin, numerous voices in the
nineteenth century long acknowledged the Fine Arts Courts as a source of art history
education.
299
For example, popular art history surveys published in the 1870s—including
Mary Margaret Heaton’s Concise History of Painting (1873) and N. d’Anvers’ (Nancy Bell)
Elementary History of Art (1874) (on these authors, see Chapter 5)—repeatedly mentioned the
courts as a site to access art history illustrations beyond those provided in their books.

297
On these figures, see Auerbach, 201; Gurney, 123; and Piggott, 61. Despite these high numbers of
visitors and the income they no doubt generated, the palace company was continually plagued by
financial mismanagement throughout its long existence.

298
Henry Cole, “The Functions of the Science and Art Department,” in Introductory Address on the
Science and Art Department and the South Kensington Museum (London: Chapman and Hall, 1857),
23.

299
On these spectacles, see Auerbach, 202-3 and 208-9; Gurney, 127-28; Yanni, 122; and Piggott, 183-
204.

132
Foreign reviewers also appreciated the educational value of the Sydenham art history
displays. Writing in 1867, French promoters of art history pedagogy René and Louis Ménard
described their desire to have a similar cast collection in France:
The young people of France are naturally inclined to love the arts. They must now
develop a taste for the spectacle of the masterpieces of all countries and all
times...How instructive for them would a gallery of casts be where they could
compare the characters of all schools! In traveling to study the monuments of the arts,
I have felt, I must say, a certain sentiment of national jealousy to see that England had
surpassed us in this vein....In this astonishing palace of Sydenham where one leaves
the Egyptian colossi to traverse Greek and Renaissance art, to then arrive at the art of
our days, one must admire these masterpieces located between a stuffed bear and a
merchant of discount suspenders.
300

For the Ménard brothers, England had “surpassed” France in providing an instructive
spectacle of the “monuments of the arts” as a survey. René Menard would later go on to
publish his own illustrated survey of art history, Histoire des beaux-arts (Paris, 1875).
Guidebooks and travel literature designed for foreign visitors to London additionally
emphasized the Fine Arts Courts as a means for travelers to experience the history of art. For
example, Elisée Reculs’ Londres illustré (Paris, 1862) included a map and extended
description of the Sydenham courts, which were “destined to illustrate...the phases of art,” as
well as a detailed list of the monuments on display.
301
In Notes sur l’Angleterre (1872),
French historian Hippolyte Taine described “the antique museum containing facsimiles in
plaster of all the Greek and Roman statues spread throughout Europe,” as well as the

300
Louis and René Menard, De la Sculpture antique et moderne (Paris: Librairie Academique, 1867),
xxii-xxiii: “La jeunesse français est naturallement portée à aimer les arts. Il ne faudrait que développer à
goût pour le spectacle des chefs d’oeuvre de tous les pays et de tous les temps,...Combien serait
instructive pour elle une galerie de moulage où elle pourrait comparer les caractères de toutes les
écoles! En voyageant pour etudier les monuments des arts, j’ai éprouvé, je dois le dire, un certain
sentiment de jalousie nationale à voir que l’Angleterre nous avait devancés dans cette voie....dans cet
étonnant palais de Sydenham où l’on part les colosses egyptien pour traverser l’art grec et la
renaissance, et arriver ainsi jusqu’à l’art des nos jours, il faut admirer ces chefs-d’oeuvre entre un ours
empaillé et une marchande de bretelles au rabais.”

301
Elisée Reculs, Londres illustré, Collection des Guides-Joanne (Paris: Hachette, 1862), 197-202.

133
“museums” of Medieval, Renaissance, Egyptian, Ninivite, and Indian art and the “copies” of a
house from Pompeii and the Alhambra, with its “molded ornamentation.”
302
The displays at
Sydenham thus became internationally recognized, and Britain’s leadership in popular art
history education was widely acknowledged.
In the Sydenham Fine Arts Courts, as in published art history surveys, works of
historical art constituted more than the “toys of connoisseurs” and instead amounted to “solid
objects” that concerned “a nation.”
303
They emerged as fundamental components in the
education of the British public. What made this new status possible, above all, were
illustrations of art history in new formats that blended visual and textual media. With
illustrations in the form of both plaster casts and wood engravings, which could be
contextualized in accompanying written historical narratives, the general survey of art history
became accessible to the British public as never before. Although art historians have been
more apt to acknowledge the role of reproductions in constructing their field of study, the role
of illustrations has been equally powerful. By refocusing on popular, non-academic forms of
art history in mid-century Britain, the importance of the illustrated survey takes center stage.

The Manchester Art-Treasures as a History of Art

Three years after the opening of the Sydenham Crystal Palace with its Fine Arts
Courts, another large-scale exhibition devoted specifically to art was mounted in Britain and
similarly arranged in large part as a survey of art history: the Manchester Art-Treasures
Exhibition. This show responded to one of the major criticisms of both the 1851 Great
Exhibition and the Sydenham Crystal Palace for neglecting original paintings among their

302
Hippolyte Taine, Notes sur l’Angleterre (Paris: Hachette, 1872), 250-51. This book was also
simultaneously published in English in London, New York, and Toronto.

303
Anna Jameson, Handbook to the Public Galleries of Art in and near London (London: John Murray,
1842), 7.
134
displays. An article in Tallis’s History and Description of the Crystal Palace, for example,
called the lack of paintings at Hyde Park a “barbarous exclusion” and described what was lost
in this exclusion:
Let us for a moment suppose—and the idea might easily have been realised—that a
sufficient portion of the vast avenues of the Crystal Palace had been properly arranged
and set aside for the purpose of exhibiting and comparing the various productions of
pictorial art among all nations, and that the space had also been found for specimens
of the various schools of painting that have prevailed at different periods. What a
delightful, as well as instructive gallery might there not have been formed, compared
to which the long-extended Louvre, the Florentine and the Vatican chambers, and the
vast emporium at Munich, would have shrunk into insignificance.
304

The anonymous author then claimed that the collections of England could surely provide
“ample treasures” to offer a “history of painting” that covered the works of Giotto, Raphael,
Giorgione, Correggio, Titian, Rembrandt, Claude Lorrain, and many others.
As a response to such critiques, and in an effort to demonstrate that British picture
collections could indeed rival those of Continental Europe, a group of Manchester
businessmen arranged a show very much like the one called for in Tallis’s History. The site of
Manchester for this exhibition was significant and unprecedented, for the city was known as
the “Cottonopolis,” the premier industrial city in England, but not as a place of or for art.
305

To organize such an exhibition, therefore, it was necessary to borrow pictures from a large
number of British collections and have them shipped to Manchester, an event prominently
covered in the Illustrated London News (Fig. 2.20). In the 1850s, the National Gallery still
lagged far behind other European public collections in the extent of its holdings, and
Sydenham had only displayed a collection of watercolor copies of the masters, which Taine

304
Tallis’s History and Description of the Crystal Palace, vol. 3, 78-80.

305
Tristram Hunt and Victoria Whitfield, Art Treasures in Manchester: 150 Years On (Manchester:
Manchester Art Gallery, 2007), 15-16 and 41.

135
referred to as “mauvaises pochades” (bad sketches) that were only “worthy of a fair.”
306
In
contrast, private picture galleries in Britain contained representative works by all the major
artists. Berlin Gallery Director Gustav Waagen, as well as British art historian Anna Jameson
(on Jameson, see Chapter 5), had both recently published guidebooks to the private collections
in Britain, which were read by a large international audience.
307
The wealth of these private
holdings was widely recognized at the time, but it was also lamented that “the best treasures”
in Britain were “locked up from the great masses...not from the poor alone, but from the entire
middle class of society.”
308
The goal at Manchester was to remedy this state of affairs by
bringing together the great privately owned works in one publicly accessible space.
309
The
show opened in a Crystal Palace-like iron and glass structure, and its execution involved the
most modern methods of packing and shipping art (Figs. 2.2 and 2.20). The exhibit ran for
four months between May and October 1857 and hosted more than 1.3 million visitors.
Not only was the Art-Treasures Exhibition designed to showcase the important works
of art in British collections, it was also organized as a chronological survey of art history. As
at Sydenham, the directors at Manchester viewed the history of art as a significant subject for
general education and one that could be taught to diverse audiences by means of display. The
art history lessons at Manchester were largely confined to painting. Works in other media
were shown, including sculpture, printmaking, miniature painting, watercolor, decorative arts,

306
On the National Gallery’s limitations compared to continental collections, see Knight’s Cyclopaedia
of London (London: Charles Knight, 1851), 723 and Taine, Notes sur l’Angleterre, 252.

307
Gustav Waagen, Treasures of Art in Great Britain, 3 vols., trans. Elizabeth Eastlake (London: John
Murray, 1854) and Anna Jameson, Companion to the Private Galleries of Art in London (London:
Saunders and Otley, 1844).

308
“Fine Art in Manchester,” Art-Treasures Examiner (London and Manchester: W. H. Smith and Son
and Alexander Ireland and Co., 1857), 33.

309
Although not all the collectors asked to donate works complied, many did share their works, with the
largest lenders being the Queen and Prince Albert with works from the Royal Collection, the Duke of
Portland, and the Marquess of Hartford. See Hunt and Whitfield, 19.
136
and even artistic photography, such as the well-known montage of Oscar Rejlander Two Ways
of Life (Fig. 2.21). But it was the display of paintings that offered an historical survey. The
paintings galleries were divided into two sections: ancient masters (born before 1700) and
modern masters. Together these galleries displayed a total of 1,866 works by traditionally
respected painters—from Raphael and Michelangelo to Rubens and Rembrandt—as well a
number of works by newly appreciated artists that have remained in the canon since that date,
such as Botticelli, El Greco, Velazquez, and Goya. Also represented, mainly in the Modern
Gallery, were significant works of the British school, including Hogarth, Reynolds,
Gainsborough, Constable, Turner, and the Pre-Raphaelites William Holman Hunt and John
Everett Millais. Though few actual paintings shown at Manchester have since entered the
survey canon—with the important exceptions of Titian’s Rape of Europa, Gainsborough’s
Blue Boy, and Benjamin West’s Death of General Wolfe, the latter two being featured in full-
page wood engravings in the Art-Treasures Examiner (Fig. 2.22)—the artists represented
closely corresponded with those featured in contemporary published surveys, making the
exhibition a veritable survey itself (for a list of these artists, see Appendix 4).
310

According to the Art-Treasures Examiner, the illustrated magazine published for the
exhibition, the Ancient and Modern Galleries allowed visitors to “trace the gradual progress of
the art [of painting], as well as the gradual development of the qualities for which particular
schools have been distinguished.”
311
In these galleries, the works hung in chronological order
according to these schools, starting with Byzantine art and the Early Italian and Spanish
Masters, followed by those of Germany, Flanders, and England, as well as the later European

310
The Rape of Europa is now at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, the Blue Boy is at the
Huntington Library and Museum in San Marino, California, and the Death of General Wolfe is in the
National Gallery of Canada.

311
“The Art-Treasures Palace,” Art-Treasures Examiner, v.

137
schools. As at Sydenham, no didactic wall labels appeared, but information about the works
was provided in a number of available publications. The unillustrated General Catalogue sold
at the exhibit for 1s included little instruction beyond a list of artist and title for each work.
312

In contrast, the Art-Treasures Examiner, which was offered to visitors for 6d per issue (the
same price as the Illustrated London News), went much further by discussing art historical
information about the works on display. Such information included biographies of the various
artists, definitions of the different schools, and articles on “How to look at a Picture,” which
conveyed introductory skills of art historical analysis, such as how to identify compositional
elements ranging from perspective to chiaroscuro.
313
Illustrations of many of the works in the
exhibition accompanied this textual information, while they depicted famous works by the
same artists housed in the most respected continental collections, including Cimabue’s
Madonna and Child in the Uffizi, Leonardo’s Mona Lisa in the Louvre, and Raphael’s
Madonna of the Chair in the Pitti Palace (Fig. 2.23).
The intended purpose of this art history instruction—in its textual, visual, and material
formats—was two-fold. On the one hand, the Examiner’s authors saw the study of art history
as advancing the study of history more generally: “it is not too much to hope, that the interest
awakened by a survey of the extensive collection of historical portraits and paintings now
thrown open to the public, will act in many cases as a stimulus to the study of history.”
314
On
the other, the knowledge of both history and art history would promote a better appreciation of
fine art among the public: “a great help towards obtaining these picture-lessons will be found
in an acquaintance with the personal history of the painters, and in a general knowledge of the

312
Hunt and Whitfield, 30.

313
See, for example, H. Ottley, “Picture Talk—Points of Criticism” and “The Schools of Painting,”
both ongoing articles in the Art-Treasures Examiner that begin respectively on pages 16 and 32.

314
“Working Men and the Art-Treasures Exhibition,” Art-Treasures Examiner, 40.

138
periods they respectively represent, and of the circumstances and surroundings.”
315
Thus,
historical context enhanced the experience of viewing paintings and viewing paintings
advanced the study of history. This reciprocal relationship defined the study of art history in
mid-century Britain.
The audience for these “picture-lessons” at Manchester was comparable to that of
both Hyde Park and Sydenham. Tickets were offered at the same prices starting at 1s, with the
railroad providing transportation from around the British Isles to Manchester.
316
According to
the Illustrated London News, “there [was] no part of the United Kingdom from which direct
communication [could] not be had with the Exhibition.”
317
Given the large number of visitors,
the educational success of the Art-Treasures Exhibition constituted an important issue, and
one that has been debated since the 1850s. Early reviewers, including the American art
historian Charles Eliot Norton, criticized the large numbers of inferior, misattributed, and
restored paintings among the displays.
318
George Scharf, the designer of the Ancient Masters
Gallery, lamented that good quality copies of more unequivocally respected works might have
served better to educate the public.
319
Yet, as the Sydenham displays had revealed only a few
years earlier, the ability to attain such “good quality copies” of paintings was more difficult
than with other media. While the plaster reconstructions of architecture and sculpture at
Sydenham had been largely praised, the watercolor copies after painting masterpieces had
been almost universally derided. In a period when color photographs were not yet available,

315
“The Functions of Art,” Art-Treasures Examiner, 176.

316
Art-Treasures Examiner, prospectus, viii and Illustrated London News 2 May, 1857, 400.

317
“The Art-Treasures at Manchester,” Illustrated London News, 2 May 1857, 400-401.

318
See, for example, Charles Eliot Norton, “The Manchester Exhibition,” The Atlantic Monthly, 1 no. 1
(1857): 33-46.

319
On Scharf’s response, see Hunt and Whitfield, 31.

139
and black and white photography still struggled to register the wide tonal range in paintings,
providing an effective survey of painting history for a British audience was a particular
challenge.
Some voices, however, recognized the innovations introduced at Manchester with the
aim of creating such a survey. The Quarterly Review, for example, praised Manchester for
setting a precedent in Britain for historical display of paintings, a practice only later adopted in
the National Gallery.
320
An article in the Illustrated London News, moreover, claimed that,
unlike “the State and the Legislature” that “have done but little to encourage Art,” the
Manchester exhibition “aided a very great and much-needed educational movement” in the
sharing of its “treasures” with the public.
321
A later piece in the same newspaper labeled
Manchester as “the most complete and valuable illustration of the progress of British pictorial
art which has ever been collected.”
322
The choice of the word “illustration” must not go
unnoticed; it points to the shared interest in visual education demonstrated at Manchester, at
the Sydenham Crystal Palace, and in published art history surveys alike.
A few art historians, such as Francis Haskell and Elizabeth Pergam, have
acknowledged the notable impact of the Manchester show in shaping the field of art history,
particularly regarding the history of painting.
323
As Haskell attests, new painters entered the
canon following their inclusion in the Art-Treasures exhibition.
324
Pergam likewise argues

320
See Quarterly Review 102 (1857): 168-9 and 181, and as cited in Hunt and Whitfield, 33.

321
“The Art-Treasures Exhibition,” Illustrated London News, 9 May 1857, 423-4.

322
Illustrated London News, 4 July 1857, 12-14.

323
Francis Haskell, Rediscoveries in Art: Some Aspects of Taste, Fashion, and Collecting in England
and France (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1976) and Elizabeth A. Pergam, “‘Waking the Soul:’ The
Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition of 1857 and the State of the Arts in Mid-Victorian Britain,”
(Ph.D. diss., New York University, 2001). See also David Robertson, Sir Charles Eastlake and the
Victorian Art World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), 163-4.

324
Haskell, Rediscoveries, 158-9.
140
that Manchester set important precedents for the blockbuster paintings exhibitions now
mounted by major museums, both in the number of works on display and in the number of
visitors. Though it remains largely overlooked in the history of art history, the Art-Treasures
Exhibition in Manchester played a fundamental role in defining art history as a field, and must
be seen in the context of a collective of British attempts to disseminate knowledge about this
field to new audiences.

Illustrated Handbooks of Art History

While the public learned about art’s history through the visual displays at Sydenham
and Manchester, the demand for accessible books on the subject continued to grow. In a
period that saw the production of increasingly compact book formats, this demand included a
new desire for “handbooks” of art history. Not unrelated were the various handbooks to the
Sydenham Crystal Palace that summarized the Fine Arts Courts, placing the art monuments
into a context of art history (Fig. 2.3). But the real pioneer of the art history survey as a
handbook was James Fergusson’s Illustrated Handbook of Architecture (Fig. 2.5).
Fergusson’s book condensed an extensively illustrated art history survey into a convenient
hand-held format.
In 1855, when Fergusson’s book appeared on the market, his publisher John Murray
had already become famous for its series of travel handbooks.
325
Beginning with a guide to

325
Although the German “Handbuch” has appeared in titles since the Renaissance, the English use of
the word became prominent only in the early nineteenth century, with Murray’s handbooks being one of
the most famous examples. John Murray (1737-1793) founded the firm in 1768. John Murray III
(1808-1892) was responsible for introducing the series of travel handbooks. The firm also published
some of the most celebrated books of the nineteenth century, including Charles Darwin’s Origin of
Species (1859), David Livingstone’s Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa (1857),
Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology (1830-33), and Samuel Smiles’ Self-Help (1859), as well as the
long-running Quarterly Review. On the firm’s history, see Emily Symonds (as George Paston), At John
Murray’s: Records of a Literary Circle 1843-1892 (London: John Murray, 1932) and James J. Barnes,
Free Trade in Books: A Study of the London Book Trade Since 1800 (London: Oxford University Press,
1964), especially 42-62.
141
Holland, Belgium, and Northern Germany in 1836, the series comprised more than one
hundred volumes and covered locations worldwide.
326
Murray’s travel handbooks were issued
in small, portable formats at a relatively low price (between 3 and 15 shillings on average),
and were easily identified by their bright red covers.
327
According to Emily Symonds, a
historian of Murray’s firm, the guides saw wide use: “With the gradual development of rail-
way-systems in foreign countries, British tourists spread over the Continent like a
conflagration, and their nationality could always be guessed from the sturdy red volumes
which they clutched so tightly and studied so diligently.”
328

For fellow publisher Charles Knight, Murray’s travel handbooks signaled a new
moment in book history.
329
Knight described how, during the 1830s, books went from being
expensive and uncertain ventures for publishers, requiring the caution of small editions with
higher prices, to being goods of large-scale production and sales. A combination of smaller
formats, lower prices, and increased edition sizes shifted the book market from the category of
luxury goods to that of everyday objects. In Knight’s words, the single, small, and
“essentially cheap” volume became “a necessity for instruction and for amusement,”

326
The first of Murray’s travel handbooks was A Hand-book for Travellers on the Continent: Being a
Guide to Holland, Belgium, Prussia, and Northern Germany (1836). Later volumes included Western
and Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, Asia Minor, Turkey, Egypt, Greece, Russia, India, Japan, and New
Zealand. On the series, see Symonds, 27, 107, and 164-6; Simon Eliot, “From the Few and Expensive to
Many and Cheap: The British Book Market 1800-1890,” in A Companion to the History of the Book,
eds. Simon Eliot and Jonathan Rose (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), 300; Jean-Yves Mollier and Marie-
Françoise Cachin, “A Continent of Texts: Europe 1800-1890,” in A Companion to the History of the
Book, 308-9.

327
The visual components of these books most often included maps and only rarely illustrations. Karl
Baedeker’s similar series of travel guides published in German also began in the 1830s. See Karlholm,
149 and Alex W. Hinrichsen, Baedeker-Katalog: Verzeichnis aller Baedeker-Reiseführer von 1832-
1987 (Holzminden: U. Hinrichsen, 1988).

328
Symonds, 50.

329
Charles Knight, Passages of a Working Life, vol. 2 (London: Bradbury and Evans, 1865), 32.

142
overturning the predominance of book buyers among “the learned who once bought folios,
and...the rich who rejoiced in exclusive quartos.”
330

Murray’s firm emerged as an early leader in what has been called the “second
revolution of the book.”
331
With the first revolution referring to Gutenberg’s invention of
movable type around 1450 and the printing boom that followed, this second revolution
encompassed the changes in production and distribution of books during the industrial era of
the nineteenth century. These changes included new inventions, such as the steam-powered
press, and new means of dissemination, drawing on railroad and steamship networks. As a
result, British publishers instigated a dramatic increase in portable, affordable, and widely
circulating books.
332

330
Charles Knight, The Old Printer and the Modern Press (London: Murray, 1854), 265. As Dan
Karlholm observes, this similar “boom” in the book industry—including expanded markets, lower
prices, and the development of the book as an “article for mass consumption”—occurred in Germany
between 1855 and 1870, several decades after Britain. See Karlholm, Art of Illusion: The
Representation of Art History in Nineteenth-Century Germany and Beyond (Berlin: Peter Lang, 2006),
90. Although Richard Altick claimed that “literature for any but the [train] passengers in first-class
carriages was not the [Murray] firm’s forte,” Knight argued in contrast that the era of “cheap literature”
began in part with Murray’s publications, such as the Family and Railway Libraries, which sold for 5s
per volume. Knight went on to specify that although such books were not yet the “extreme” of
cheapness, their prices were “essentially low, by comparison with the ordinary rate at which books for
the few were sold.” See Altick, The English Common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading
Public, 1800-1900, 2nd ed. (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1957; 1998), 298; Knight, The Old
Printer, 243; and Scott Bennett, “John Murray’s Family Library and the Cheapening of Books in Early
Nineteenth-Century Britain,” Studies in Bibliography 29 (1976): 139-66.

331
On this “second revolution,” see Mollier and Cachin, “A Continent of Texts,” 306; Frédéric Barbier,
L’Empire du livre: le livre imprimé et la construction de l’Allemagne contemporaine (1815-1914)
(Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1995), 18-20; and Alain Mercier, ed., Les Trois révolutions du livre (Paris:
Musée des Arts et Métiers, 2002). The “third revolution” of the book, then, characterizes the change to
the computer screen as the predominant format for reading and writing. Of course, these three
revolutions describe developments in the West; the invention of typographic printing occurred first in
China c. 1000.

332
As Alexis Weedon demonstrates, this process was not instantaneous, but rather the trends toward
cheapness and mass production that began in the 1830s were effectively accomplished only after the
1880s. Yet, in the first half of the century, Britain was “well ahead” of its European and American
competitors in making these changes. See Weedon, Victorian Publishing: The Economics of Book
Production for a Mass Market, 1836-1916 (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003).

143
After the initial success of his travel guide series, Murray expanded his so-called
handbooks to incorporate other genres, including art history books and gallery guides. For
instance, he issued Anna Jameson’s Handbook to the Public Galleries of Art in and near
London (1842), a translation of Franz Kugler’s Handbook of the History of Painting: From the
Age of Constantine the Great to the Present Time (1842), and Sir Edmond Head’s Handbook
of the History of Spanish and French Schools (1848).
333
However, like Kugler’s original
German editions, none of these early handbooks were comprehensively illustrated; a few
included only a frontispiece image and others were entirely devoid of pictures. As I have
shown, Charles Knight first introduced wood-engraved images into the general art history
survey. But Knight’s publication was not produced in the novel smaller formats, being instead
a folio volume sold in affordable parts. With Fergusson’s Illustrated Handbook of
Architecture, Murray married the well-known format of the handbook with the illustration
technology used by Knight, putting art history into the “hands” of British readers in a new
way.
Along with Knight’s Pictorial Gallery, Fergusson’s Illustrated Handbook of
Architecture belongs to the genre of the illustrated art history survey. It presented an
historical narrative “generalising all the styles known, and assigning to each its relative
value.”
334
Fergusson’s approach was more didactic than philosophical. He sought “to enable
the reader to acquire a more complete knowledge of the subject than has hitherto been

333
Jameson’s Handbook to the Public Galleries was published in twenty-one editions between 1842
and 1855 and was listed at the very low price of 2s 6d. Murray also published handbooks of art
practice, such as Mary Philadelphia Merrifield’s On the Arts of Painting in Oil, Miniature, Mosaic, and
Glass and C. R. Leslie’s Handbook for Young Painters. German publishers had also issued unillustrated
art history handbooks in this period, including Kugler’s Handbuch der Geschichte der Malerei von
Contantin dem Grossen bis aus die neurere Zeit, 2 vols. (Berlin: Duncker und Humbolt, 1837) and
Handbuch der Kunstgeschichte (Stuttgart: Ebner und Seubert, 1842). On the relationships between
these unillustrated art history handbooks and travel handbooks in Germany, see Karlholm, 152-59.

334
Fergusson, Illustrated Handbook of Architecture (hereafter IHA), vi.

144
attainable without deep study,” and to “avoid all theory” in order to focus on writing “a
history.”
335
In other words, his handbook would not extensively examine aesthetic theory;
rather, it focused on the architectural monuments themselves, which appeared in the
illustrations, making them “intelligible in every part to the general reader.”
336
Images were
key for this intelligibility; they presented visual information about world architecture,
including foreign monuments not often experienced directly by his readers, in a condensed
and manageable format. Although his work attempted to provide “a general History of all
styles,” Fergusson admitted that this “completeness [was] impossible in such a work as this.”
As in every art history survey, “there must be a selection.”
337
Fergusson’s characterization of
his book in these terms reveals that the genre of the art history survey had found a recognized
form.
For Fergusson, architecture was an integral part of the history of art. He was certainly
not the first to make such claims; the authors of published art histories—beginning with
Séroux d’Agincourt’s multi-volume Histoire de l’art par les monuments (Paris, 1811-23),
Kugler’s Handbuch der Kunstgeschichte (Stuttgart, 1842), and Knight’s Pictorial Gallery
(London, 1847)—had all included architecture as high art along with painting and sculpture.
As discussed earlier, architecture in the nineteenth-century constituted the original fine art,
having developed before and having led to the introduction of sculpture and painting.
Agincourt and Knight, for instance, both began their books with a section on architecture.
Fergusson separated the history of architecture out from the general survey, while
acknowledging its importance within art history.

335
James Fergusson to John Murray, 5 Sept. 1849, John Murray Archive (JMA), National Library of
Scotland, Acc. 12604/1398

336
IHA, vii.

337
Fergusson to Murray, 17 Nov. 1855, JMA, Acc.12604/1399.

145
Furthermore, Fergusson saw architecture as art history’s most progressive branch.
The history of architecture, he declared, had made “rapid progress in the last fifty years,” and
was no longer a field for the “mere amusement of the amateur.”
338
Rather, it had assumed a
“rank among the most important elements of historical research” and was not only limited to
the most serious students, but had in fact become “one of the most useful as well as one of the
most attractive” subjects that could “occupy the attention of the public.” Regrettably, though,
the remaining “difficulties attending its pursuit” still limited the field’s accessibility to the
public. Fergusson explained:
Owing to the very nature of the subject, books that treat of architecture are generally
large, and from the number and size of the illustrations required are also very costly,
so that an architectural library is one of the most cumbersome as well as one of the
most expensive that can be got together. But even among those who can collect it,
few have the patience to study the plans, sections, and details which are
indispensable.
339

Large-format, multi-volume publications, which were most often supported by government
funds and private subscriptions from wealthy backers, dominated the market for architecture
books prior to the mid nineteenth century.
340
In his preface, Fergusson offered his own work
as a response to the limitations of such expensive and cumbersome publications:
The object of the present work is to remedy to some extent these inconveniences, and,
by supplying a succinct but popular account of all the principal buildings of the world,
to condense within the compass of two small volumes the essence of information
contained in the ponderous tomes composing an architecture library.
341

338
IHA, v.

339
Ibid.

340
Werner Szambien, Le Musée d’architecture (Paris: Picard, 1988), 13-18. Szambien describes this
eighteenth-century market for architecture books as one of “savant luxe” directed to studied
antiquarians, an audience far from the public targeted by Fergusson.

341
IHA, vi.

146
Without trying to “compete” with the many “splendid monographs” and histories of local
styles available for more serious scholars of architecture, his handbook provided instead “a
general résumé of the whole” of architecture history.
342

Fergusson and Murray were not alone in the mid-1850s in producing an illustrated
architecture survey. As discussed above, the Sydenham Fine Arts Courts provided an
historical progression of architectural styles, while several published histories of architecture
appeared contemporaneously in Germany. The same year as Fergusson’s handbook, Wilhelm
Lübke, a university-trained art historian, issued a single-volume history of architecture with
174 illustrations.
343
A year later, Lübke’s colleague Franz Kugler began publication of a five-
volume illustrated survey of architecture: Geschichte der Baukunst.
344
Clearly, Fergusson’s
efforts to secure the history of architecture within art history were not isolated. Yet,
Fergusson’s book went farthest in familiarizing a non-specialist public with architectural
history, particularly in its use of illustrations. Lübke’s first edition of Geschichte der

342
Ibid., vii. Fergusson also designated his book as different from works such as that of Joseph Gwilt.
Gwilt’s Encyclopedia of Architecture, Historical, Theoretical and Practical was published by
Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans in 1842 and combined a brief illustrated history of architecture
with theories of construction, geometric principles, uses of materials, and other technical knowledge.
According to its preface, the book’s main object was to provide a reference manual for architects in the
“exercise of [the] profession,” while also being of use to the “amateur.” Fergusson claimed, in contrast,
that his work was not “mixed up with other matter to which illustration of the fine art of architecture is
made subordinate” and that his work targeted an audience beyond professional architects. It is worth
emphasizing that neither “professionals” nor “amateurs” were the audience for “popular” books like
Fergusson’s. See IHA, vi.

343
Wilhelm Lübke, Geschichte der Architektur von den ältesten Zeiten bis auf die Gegenwart (Leipzig:
Seeman, 1855). Lübke (1826-1893) taught as a professor at the Berlin Bauakademie from 1857 to 1861
and held later professorships in Zurich, Stuttgart, and Karlsruhe. He also published the influential
illustrated art history survey Grundriss der Kunstgeschichte (Ebner und Seubert, 1860) which saw
seventeen German editions between 1860 and 1958, and was translated into English, French, Danish,
Finnish, and Swedish. Karlholm calls him “the most well known and widely read art history of the
German nineteenth century.” On Lübke, see Karlholm, 29-30 and 99-100; Nikolaus Meier, “Wilhelm
Lübke, Jacob Burckhardt und die Architektur der Renaissance,” Basler Zeitschrift für Geschichte und
Altertumskunde 85 (1985): 151-212; and “Wilhelm Lübke,” Metzler Kunsthistoriker Lexicon:
Zweihundert Porträts deutschsprachiger Autoren aus vier Jahrhunderten, ed. Peter Bethhausen et al.
(Stuttgart: Metzler, 1999), 249.

344
Franz Kugler, Geschichte der Baukunst, 5 vols. (Stuttgart: Ebner und Seubert, 1856-73).
147
Architektur, in contrast, included smaller and more diagramatic images, which often
represented generic categories of buildings rather than specific historical monuments (Fig.
2.24). A decade later, Lübke’s third edition (1865) dramatically increased the number of its
images, and in so doing, appropriated at least forty illustrations from Fergusson’s originals.
The views of the Kailasanatha at Ellora in both books display identical figures in the lower
right, the same view of the rock-cut temple that extends diagonally from the lower left, and a
matching depiction of the top of the carved out rock in the background (Figs. 2.25 and 2.26).
Moreover, Fergusson’s caption claiming the work as a “sketch by the author” further
underscores the source for Lübke’s borrowed image. Though the use of Fergusson’s original
images was not credited, this overlap implicitly highlights the impact of the Illustrated
Handbook of Architecture on the developing field of art history, especially through its
illustrations.

Illustrating the History of Architecture
The history of architecture has long been represented in illustrated books. Since the
Renaissance, with the publication of illustrated versions of the work of Roman architectural
theorist Vitruvius, such as Giovanni Giocondo’s 1511 edition with its 136 woodcuts, books on
architecture have included images of elevations, ground plans, cross-sections, and pictorial
views of buildings.
345
However, Murray and Fergusson, like Knight before them, turned to the
medium of wood engraving for the hundreds of illustrations in their book. Only with this
medium could such large numbers of finely detailed images be printed easily and cheaply
along with the text. As Fergusson stated in the book’s preface, “one object that has been

345
Robert Tavenor, “‘Brevity without Obscurity:’ Text and Image in the Architectural Treatises of
Daniele Barbaro and Andrea Palladio,” in The Rise of the Image: Essays on the History of the
Illustrated Art Book, ed. Rodney Palmer and Thomas Frangenberg (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003),
105-33.

148
steadily kept in view in this work has been to show that architecture may be efficiently
illustrated by plates on a small scale, yet sufficiently clear to convey instruction.”
346
In
contrast to Knight’s history of art, which separated the pages of text from the pages of images,
Murray and Fergusson further integrated the illustrations into the body of the written text,
making the text-image relationship more interdependent. For the first time, the survey
presented the balanced double language of text and image that has since become the
predominant model for art history teaching and scholarship, both in illustrated publications
and in presentations accompanied by slides.
347
Without any decorative flourishes, each of the
images in Fergusson’s book served a demonstrative purpose as a visual example of a work of
art.
The quality of the illustrations in Fergusson’s survey was unrivaled by similarly
priced art history handbooks at the time. Murray issued a number of other illustrated art
history books in the 1850s and 60s, mainly those dealing with the history of painting, such as
later editions of Kugler’s handbook of painting, Anna Jameson’s Lives of the Early Italian
Painters, and J. A. Crowe and G. B. Cavalcaselle’s History of Painting in Italy.
348
But the
illustrations in these handbooks of painting hardly compared to the detail offered in
Fergusson’s images. These handbooks provided only a fraction of the number of images, and
their illustrations were printed as basic outline drawings in contrast to the highly descriptive,

346
Fergusson, IHA, x.

347
Robert Nelson argues, in contrast, that it was in the late nineteenth-century photographic slide
lectures that words and images “merged” in art history. See Nelson, “The Slide Lecture, or the Work of
Art ‘History’ in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” Critical Inquiry 26, no. 3 (2000): 430.

348
Franz Kugler, Handbook of Painting: The Italian Schools, 2 vols., edited by Sir Charles Eastlake,
translated by Margaret Hutton (1851); Kugler, Handbook of Painting: The German, Flemish, and Dutch
Schools, 2 vols., edited by Gustav Waagen and translated by Elizabeth Eastlake (1860); Anna Jameson,
Handbook of the Lives of the Early Italian Painters: From Cimabue to Bassano, and Progress of
Painting in Italy (1859); and J. A. Crowe and G. B. Cavalcaselle, A New History of Painting in Italy
from the Second to the Sixteenth Century (1864). Crowe and Cavalcaselle’s volume reused many of the
same wood engravings from the translations of Kugler’s handbook.

149
tonally rendered images in Fergusson’s work (Figs. 2.27 and 2.28). Murray’s ledger books
from the period show that two widely respected wood engravers were responsible for
Fergusson’s images. Robert Edward Branston, son of Robert Allen Branston, the principal
rival of Thomas Bewick, provided both the designs and the cutting of wood blocks for
Fergusson’s 1855 edition, while James Davis Cooper was the artist for the book’s later
editions (on these illustrators, see Appendix 1). Both illustrators were paid thousands of
pounds for their work, revealing that illustration was a major expense and priority in the
production of the book, and one that Murray trusted he could recuperate in the book’s sales.
349

The variety of the images provided in Fergusson’s book was also striking, ranging
from plans, sections, elevations, and detail views, such as his page with both a detail view and
a ground plan of a Mayan palace (Fig. 2.29), to the many “picturesque sketches,” as Fergusson
called them, in which buildings were depicted in a descriptive landscape that often included
figures in regional dress (Fig. 2.25).
350
These “picturesque sketches” can be compared to the
topographical landscapes of several world travelers of the period, such as British artists
Thomas Daniell and David Roberts. Between 1785 and 1794, Thomas Daniell and his
nephew William journeyed throughout India recording noteworthy sites and monuments in
hundreds of sketches with the help of a camera obscura.
351
Several decades later, between

349
Branston was paid £1300 2s in 1854 and £210 6s in 1855 for his work drawing and engraving on
wood. Cooper was paid £2282 in 1862 for the modern architecture volume and more than £1500 for the
work on the new edition between 1865 and 1900. See Murray’s ledger books in the JMA.

350
James Fergusson to John Murray, 5 Sept. 1849, JMA, Acc. 12604/1398.

351
The 18th-century camera obscura was a large box with sloping sides with an open back covered in a
curtain. The scene to be drawn was reflected upside down by means of an angled mirror through a glass
lens onto a sheet of paper at the base of the box. The image could then be traced onto the paper. On
this device and the Daniells’ use of it, see Antonio Martinelli, Oriental Scenery Yesterday & Today
(Calcutta: Victoria Memorial Hall, 2000), 7. Thomas Daniell was elected to the Royal Academy in
1799. On Thomas and William Daniell, see Mildred Archer, The Daniells in India, 1786-1793
(Washington, D.C: Smithsonian Institute, 1962) and Early Views of India: The Picturesque Journeys of
Thomas and William Daniel (London: 1984). The Daniells traveled with other artists also in India, such
as James Wales.
150
1838 and 1839, Roberts toured the Middle East, similarly producing sketches of the terrain
and its famous locales.
352
The drawings of Daniell and Roberts were later reproduced as color
prints and circulated in lavish publications such as Oriental Scenery (1795-1807) and Egypt
and Nubia (1846-49).
353

The monuments documented by Daniell and Roberts largely overlap with the works of
architecture illustrated in Fergusson’s handbook. For instance, Daniell’s Oriental Scenery
shares with Fergusson’s book views of the Pagoda at Tanjore (Thanjavur), the Raths and
Mahamallapuram, and the Taj Mahal. Roberts’ Egypt and Nubia coincides with Fergusson’s
book in including the Egyptian pyramids, the Tombs of Beni Hassan and Abu Simbel, and the
Temples of Luxor, Karnak, and Philae. Fergusson’s strikingly similar views of the
Kailasanatha in India and the Temple of Edfu in Egypt to those in the earlier publications
(Figs. 2.25 and 2.30; 2.31 and 2.32) also reveal shared conventions in the depiction of these
monuments, such as their placement within a descriptive milieu of native flora, fauna, and
human activity. The conventionality and pervasiveness of these views is further underscored
by the fact that Fergusson’s image of Edfu, while clearly inspired in part by Robert’s image,
was also directly taken from Charles Knight’s Pictorial Gallery (Figs. 1.25 and 2.32). The
signature of Knight’s wood engraver John Jackson appearing on Fergusson’s image points to

352
Roberts was elected to the Royal Academy in 1841 upon his return to London. On Roberts, see
Kenneth Bendiner, “David Roberts in the Near East: Social and Religious Themes,” Art History 6, no. 1
(1983): 67-81; Katharine Sim, David Roberts, RA 1796-1864: A Biography (New York: Quartet Books,
1984); Helen Guiterman and Briony Llewellyn, David Roberts (London: Phaidon Press, 1986);
Wolfgang Schüler, In the Holy Land: Paintings by David Roberts (London: Studio Editions, 1995); and
Debra Mancoff, David Roberts: Travels in Egypt and the Holy Land (San Francisco: Pomegranate,
1999).

353
Thomas Daniell, Oriental Scenery, 6 vols. (London: Thomas Daniell, 1795-1807) and David
Roberts, William Brockedon, and Louis Hague, Egypt and Nubia, 3 vols. (London: F. G. Moon, 1846-
49). See also Roberts and George Croly, The Holy Land, 3 vols. (London: F. G. Moon, 1842-49). The
prints in Daniell’s book were hand-colored aquatints; those in Roberts’ book were color lithographs.
151
the source of the print, a connection that again highlights the fluid exchange of illustrations
that came to define nineteenth-century art history publishing.
Despite the wide discrepancy in size between the large-scale color prints of Daniell
and Roberts and the tiny vignettes in Fergusson’s book, these images equally provided
viewers with attractively composed “pictures.” The conventions of the “picturesque”
landscape can be traced to the late eighteenth-century writings of William Gilpin, who
prescribed methods for appropriate sketching during travel.
354
Though Gilpin’s observations
pertained more to sites within England, his approach to sketching was carried across the globe
by British travelers.
355
Fergusson, like both Daniell and Roberts, journeyed widely beyond
Britain and employed sketching as a tool to record the sites he visited. Born in 1808,
Fergusson began his career as a merchant, moving to India as a teenager to work with his
brother in a trading house affiliated with the British East India Company.
356
Soon after this,
he acquired his own indigo plantation and factory, from which he made a significant fortune,
allowing him to retire from business and return to London by 1845.
357
During his time in

354
William Gilpin, Observations Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty (1786) and Three Essays: On
Picturesque Beauty, On Picturesque Travel, and on the Art of Sketching Landscapes (1792). See also
Malcolm Andrews, The Search for the Picturesque: Landscape Aesthetics and Tourism in Britain,
1760-1800 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989).

355
On the ways in which this tradition was taken up in the nineteenth century for rendering exotic
places and peoples within familiar conventions, see Ryan, “Picturesque Visions: Controlling the Seen,”
in The Cartographic Eye: How Explorers Saw Australia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1996), 54-100.

356
On Fergusson’s early biography, see the preface to his Historical Inquiry into the True Principles of
Beauty in Art (London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1849). The timeline of Fergusson’s
travels in India is difficult to discern, and the few sources giving these dates tend to contradict one
other. For the most detailed timeline, see Clements R. Markham, A Memoir on the Indian Surveys
(London: W. H. Allen, 1878), 246-7.

357
Therefore, his experience in India occurred before the Raj, or the British political government of
India, which dated from 1858 to 1947. However, de facto British rule had begun much earlier, when
the East India Company by the mid-eighteenth century had acquired “many attributes of a state, in
European terms,” including tax collection and the buildup of military power to defend its properties and
152
India, Fergusson began to act on his ambitions to become a scholar of architectural history and
engaged in systematic travel to the monuments of India. Using the camera lucida, a much
more compact drawing aid than Daniell’s camera obscura, Fergusson recorded these visits in
detailed sketches. The camera lucida is a small, portable device invented by William Hyde
Wollaston in 1807. It was made from a glass prism attached to a mountable arm that, like the
camera obscura, projected an image onto paper for tracing.
358
Numerous illustrations in
Fergusson’s handbook are labeled as being “from a sketch by the author,” further connecting
Fergusson’s book to other British travel illustrations (Fig. 2.25). At the same time, however,
the mammoth formats and sumptuous presentations of the published drawings of Daniell and
Roberts could hardly be further from Fergusson’s compact and unadorned handbook (Fig.
2.33). The vibrantly colored prints bound in expensive morocco leather with gilded detail
contrast dramatically with Fergusson’s more humble, black and white images printed on
unremarkable paper and bound in plain cloth.
359
Unlike the large and expensive media
employed by Roberts and Daniell, and their focused coverage of a selection of regional
monuments, Fergusson’s small but detailed wood engravings presented a collective canon of
global architecture.

territories. See Bernard S. Cohn, Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 58.

358
On Fergusson’s use of the device, see Fergusson, Picturesque Illustrations of Ancient Architecture in
Hindostan (London: J. Hogarth, 1848), iv. The Yale Center of British Art has a camera lucida from the
1800s, which I was able to inspect and use during my time there.

359
The price discrepancies are also telling. Oriental Scenery was sold bound with text for 200 guineas,
or £210. Egypt and Nubia was sold in twenty parts for £3 3s per part for the colored prints. The first
edition of Fergusson’s handbook was sold at 36s or £1 16s, making it more than thirty times less
expensive Roberts’ book and one hundred times less expensive than Daniell’s. On the prices of
Oriental Scenery and Egypt and Nubia, see Travel in Aquatint and Lithography 1770-1860, from the
Library of J. R. Abbey, vols. 1 and 2 (London: Privately printed at the Curwen Press, 1956), nos. 272
and 420. The Abbey collection is now part of the rare books collection at the Yale Center for British
Art.

153
Surveying World Architecture

In the anthology Views of Difference: Different Views on Art (1999), Colin
Cunningham called Fergusson’s book the “first history of world architecture in the English
language.”
360
Cunningham’s use of the term “world” is significant, as Fergusson’s art history
survey was indeed unusually global in its scope. While the Manchester Art-Treasures had
been confined to the European schools of painting, and the Sydenham Fine Arts Courts
incorporated Assyria and Egypt as the foundations of European art, Fergusson’s handbook
included architecture well beyond Europe, examining monuments in India, China, Southeast
Asia, and Central and South America. Fergusson’s survey continued to expand the canon of
art history monuments that Knight’s Pictorial Gallery had mapped out in the previous decade.
Fergusson explained in his preface an intention to draw upon the “mass of new material”
concerning architecture beyond the styles of classical Greece and Rome, thus rejecting many
of the long established hierarchies of the field. “Till within a very recent period,” Fergusson
wrote, “the histories of Greece and Rome have been considered as the ancient histories of the
world.” “Even now,” he continued, “in our universities and public schools, it is scarcely
acknowledged that a more ancient record has been read in the monuments of Egypt, and dug
out of the bowels of the earth in Assyria.”
361
With his survey, Fergusson sought to remedy
this lack of awareness.
Like Knight, Fergusson included Indian and Pre-Columbian architecture, but he
vastly expanded these sections. His Indian chapters, the first to appear in his handbook,
spanned more than one hundred pages and provided illustrations of what are now standard
works in Indian art history. In addition to the Hindu sites of Elephanta and Thanjavur, both of

360
Colin Cunningham, “James Fergusson’s History of Indian Architecture,” in Views of Difference:
Different Views of Art, ed. Catherine King (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 43.

361
IHA, 255-56.

154
which also appeared in Knight’s Pictorial Gallery, Fergusson’s book added images of other
Hindu monuments, such as the rock-cut temples at Ellora and Mahamallapuram, as well as
Buddhist art, including the Lion Capitals of Ashoka, the Chaitya Hall at Karli, the Great Stupa
at Sanchi, and the cave temples of Ajanta.
362
In a letter to Murray of 1849, Fergusson claimed
that his goal was to “assign to this style [of Indian architecture] its true position in the history
of art.”
363
In other words, Indian architecture was not a footnote to the main narrative of art
history, but rather an important stage in the development of this narrative. For Fergusson, it
had interest “as the art of a large portion of the human family,” which produced some of “the
best and highest modes of expression.”
364

In addition to his extensive coverage of Indian architecture, Fergusson also included a
section on the monuments of Central America (Fig. 2.29). Drawing upon the expeditions of
Americans John Lloyd Stephens and Frederick Catherwood, and their illustrated volumes on
the Mayan monuments that followed, Fergusson claimed that these buildings were among the
most “remarkable” in the world.
365
Though this style represented for Fergusson “exceptional
odds and ends” that fit well within a specialized history of archaeology, it still had a place in a

362
In this section of his handbook, Fergusson also examines monuments of Jainist, Sri Lankan,
Burmese, and Javanese art. Although Fergusson’s conclusions about non-western art have been
questioned in subsequent scholarship, and his biases have been critiqued, his books have continued to
be reprinted, especially his work on the architecture of India. His History of Eastern and Indian
Architecture was reprinted as late as 1972. On Fergusson’s role as an historian of Indian architecture,
see Rajendralal Mitra, The Antiquities of Orissa (originally published 1875-80; New Delhi: Today and
Tomorrow’s Printers and Publishers, 1973); Markham, 246-74; Cohn, 95; Cunningham, 43-66; Partha
Mitter, Much Maligned Monsters: A History of European Reactions to Indian Art (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1977; reprint 1992), 256-67; and Tapati Guha-Thakurta, Monuments, Objects,
Histories: Institutions of Art in Colonial and Postcolonial India (New York: Columbia University
Press, 2004).

363
Fergusson to Murray, 5 Sept. 1849.

364
IHA, 132.

365
Ibid., 150 and John Lloyd Stephens, Incidents of Travel in Central America (New York: Harper and
Brothers, 1841) and Incidents of Travel in Yucatan (New York and London: Harper and Brothers and
John Murray, 1843).

155
general history of art.
366
Later surveys of art history followed his example, from Bell’s
Elementary History of Art (1874) to Helen Gardner’s Art Through the Ages (1926), as Mayan
ruins continued to appear among the styles of ancient architecture (on such continuities in the
canon, see Appendix 2).
Like the directors of Sydenham, Fergusson saw Assyrian art as “an entirely new
chapter” of art history. Indeed, Fergusson was responsible for the design of the Sydenham
Assyrian Court. His coverage of Assyrian architecture in his handbook largely coincided with
this design, as both included illustrations of the Temple at Khorsabad and its famous Winged
Bulls (Fig. 2.19). In mid-century Britain, public enthusiasm for the rediscovery of these
Assyrian monuments was widespread. Not only did millions of visitors view the Assyrian
objects on display at the British Museum, but the objects’ excavation and arrival was covered
in a wide range of popular journals in the 1840s and 50s, including the Penny Magazine, the
Athenaeum, the Illustrated London News, and the Art-Journal. The objects also appeared in
paintings and poems by the Pre-Raphaelites, theater productions, panoramas and dioramas,
jewelry and other decorative objects.
367
In 1851, Murray published Layard’s Popular Account
of Nineveh as part of his “Railway Library,” which sold for 5s and quickly became a
bestseller, reaching its fifteenth edition by 1855.
368

366
Fergusson to Murray, 5 Sept. 1849.

367
On this boom in Assyriana, see Bohrer, Orientalism and Visual Culture.

368
In contrast, Botta’s Monument de Ninive (1849-50) was published in parts as a five-volume work in
folio format that Bohrer calls “magisterial” and “grandiose.” The French Chamber of Deputies had
provided Botta a large credit that made this luxurious work possible. It had a very limited circulation,
with only 300 copies printed, and it cost upwards of 1800F (20F each for 90 parts). Botta and the artist
Eugène Flandin each received a 60,000F honorarium for the work. According to Bohrer, the French
government spent nearly three times as much on this publication as on the excavations themselves. See
Bohrer, 71-73. Murray was also the publisher of Layard’s numerous other books on his Assyrian digs—
Nineveh and its Remains (1848), which sold for 36s, was hugely profitable with sales of nearly 8000
copies in the first year, and was in its sixth edition by 1855, as well as Nineveh and Babylon (30s) and
Monuments of Nineveh, a folio volume with engravings and lithographs (£10 10s)—as well as
Fergusson’s own Palaces of Nineveh and Persepolis Restored (1851).
156
In the earliest years of this popularity, the Assyrian objects were celebrated for their
importance to world history and, in particular, to biblical history. The findings could be
directly linked to passages in classical texts and the Old Testament, which were widely known
by European audiences.
369
Yet, an appreciation of the importance of these monuments for art
history was not immediate. According to an article in the Illustrated London News of 1847,
published upon the arrival of Layard’s excavated objects at the British Museum, “the great
importance of these sculptures in an historical point of view” stems “more from the high state
of civilisation which they indicate...than from their beauty and utility as works of art.”
370

Frederick Bohrer notes that the question of “Assyria as art” was much debated at the time. On
the one hand, the trustees of the British Museum, influenced by Royal Academy sculptor
Richard Westmacott, denied Assyria a place among the ancient artistic styles of Egypt,
Greece, and Rome. Displaying the objects as artifacts more than art, the museum relegated
them to various secondary locations—including a hallway of general antiquities and a
basement chamber—before finally providing dedicated galleries in 1853-54.
371
On the other
hand, more popular sources for the reception of Assyrian artifacts were less invested in
upholding the classical ideal of art and thus more willing to allow the objects to resonate as an
alternative artistic style. Bohrer argues that Assyria provided “a unique resistance” at mid-
century to traditional aristocratic and academic definitions of art, defined first by

369
Assyria was one of the ancient kingdoms of Mesopotamia, along with Babylon, which were located
between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in modern-day Iraq. The bible described in particular the
decadence, sloth, and violence of Mesopotamian culture, mentioning the kings Sardanapalus of Assyria
and Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. See Bohrer, 49.

370
Illustrated London News, 26 June 1847, 412.

371
On the “unfavorable” viewing of the Assyrian sculptures at the British Museum, see Knight,
Knight’s Cyclopaedia of London, 709-13.

157
Winckelmann, who valued Greek art above all.
372
My focus on the history of the survey
points to how Fergusson’s handbook, which presented Assyrian art as a central and canonical
component of art history, brought this resistance to a peak. To be sure, Fergusson’s survey
marked a turning point for the reception of Assyrian objects as high art. Few subsequent art
history surveys have failed to include a section dedicated to the ancient art of Assyria.
Byzantine art was a final notable novelty in Fergusson’s coverage. Like both the
Sydenham Fine Arts Courts and the Manchester Exhibition, Fergusson considered Byzantine
Art an important period of art history. However, only a small number of Byzantine paintings
were included at Manchester and the Byzantine Court at Sydenham represented few actual
monuments of Byzantine art.
373
Fergusson’s book, in contrast, illustrated the work that, more
than any other, has come to stand for the Byzantine period: Hagia Sophia. Fergusson included
a cross-section of the church, which, according to Robert Nelson in his study of the modern
reception of Hagia Sophia, was first published in Germany in 1854 as a color lithograph by
Wilhelm Salzenberg.
374
Like the new and lasting inclusion of Assyrian art within the art
history survey, the incorporation of Hagia Sophia has since become an enduring standard in
art history.
With these important expansions of the art history canon, Fergusson’s work also
betrayed the same Eurocentric biases that are so evident in Knight’s Pictorial Gallery of Art.

372
For the wide and varied range of views on the artistic worth of the Assyrian objects, see Bohrer,
Chapters 4 and 5.

373
The Byzantine art at Manchester was seen as but a “few specimens...of no great importance.” See
“The Manchester Art-Treasures Exhibition,” Illustrated London News, 23 May 1857, 505-6. The
Byzantine and Romanesque Court at Sydenham did include painted copies after the mosaics of
Justinian and Theodora in Ravenna, but these were reviewed as particularly bad copies.

374
Robert Nelson, Hagia Sophia 1850-1950: Holy Wisdom Modern Monument (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2004). The volume by Wilhelm Salzenberg was entitled Alt-Christliche Baudenkmale
von Constantinople. Nelson’s work examines how in the mid-nineteenth century, the Byzantine church
became a secular “site” more than a sacred space and how the circulation of images—in both graphic
and photographic media—was largely responsible for this transition.

158
According to Fergusson, “even the indolent and half-civilised inhabitants of India, the stolid
Tartars of Thibet and China, and the savage Mexicans, succeeded in producing great and
beautiful buildings.”
375
Here the tension between exclusive hierarchies and inclusive
expansions is prominent: even while he employed racist language to describe these cultures,
the author nonetheless considered their monuments indispensable to the history of art. In fact,
he valued these non-Western works of architecture above those of the historicizing modern
styles of Europe, considering the former “appropriate and purposeful” for their historical
periods as distinct from to the latter, which were mere reproductions and “masquerades” of the
historical periods they imitated.
376
For Fergusson, Mayan and Indian temples were more
“beautiful” as architecture than St. Peter’s in Rome and the Houses of Parliament in London.
Such tensions are also explicit in a review of Fergusson’s book in the Times.
According to the anonymous author, “the cultivation of architecture as a fine art” has “during
the present century...wonderfully surpassed” any previous period “in the acquisition of
materials for study.” The article continued:
The earth has been ransacked from its populous centres to its desolate places,
where the monuments of the past had been secreted by nature from all but the
detective instinct of genius. Ancient styles have been sifted like recent
inventions...and have been exhibited by means of morceaux choisis beneath domes of
crystal to our eclecticizing inspection...Our travelers of late years have been thronging
in with plans, pictures, and measurements of other varieties from all climes; and we
now stand on a pinnacle from which we can survey in an architectural sense all the
kingdoms of the world and the glory of them.
377

In this passage, the overtones of theft and violence emerge with the notion of a “ransacked”
earth. Certainly, the author and his British audience felt justified in pillaging the planet for the
benefit of scholarly knowledge. This audience was also quick to celebrate the heroic and

375
IHA, xxvi.

376
IHA, xxvi.

377
“Fergusson’s Handbook of Architecture,” The Times, 25 Jan. 1856, 4.

159
pioneering work of explorers and their “detective instinct.”
378
During the period, other
cultures amounted to specimens for Europeans to collect, isolate, and inspect within glass
cases, while those same “domes of crystal” also recalled the Crystal Palaces that put the world
on display for the amusement and education of the European public. This public could
proudly revel in their “god’s-eye view” made possible through the “survey” of the world
provided in books such as Fergusson’s.
379

Given the scope of Fergusson’s book, it is not surprising that the notion of the
“survey,” a term that would in the following century come to define this publishing genre, was
employed to describe its approach and coverage. According to Bernard Cohn, “the word
‘survey’ in English evokes a wide range of activities: to look over or examine something; to
measure land for the purpose of establishing boundaries; to inspect; and to supervise or keep
watch over persons or place.”
380
Although Cohn is describing here the official mapping
surveys of India by the British in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, his
observations are more widely applicable to how the “survey” became an important cultural
form of modernity. Not only did the word capture the sense of a sweeping summary, but it
also implied one that was particularly visual, in which materials were looked over, over-
viewed, inspected, and kept watch over. At the same time, Cohn’s definition describes the
position of power that a survey enables—an over-view, a watching over—that establishes

378
For a discussion of how exploration and discovery were seen as heroic practices in the nineteenth
century, see Simon Ryan, “Exploring Culture: The Formation and Fragmentation of the Explorer,” in
The Cartographic Eye, 21-53.

379
On this “god’s eye view” of Western exploration and imperialism, see Ryan, 6-7.

380
Cohn, “The Survey Modality,” in Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge, 7. On the notion of the
“survey” as related to the picturesque in providing a broad, sweeping view rather than a detailed,
“anatomized” description, see Gilpin, Three Essays (1792), 26. It is worth noting as well the more
common use for “survey” in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was as a verb, “to survey,” which
described an act of viewing rather than the view itself.

160
boundaries of control. Finally, Cohn’s study appreciates how this power comes together with
“knowledge” in a survey, and how things are categorized, classified, and defined through the
activity of surveying.
381
All of these notions of the survey are relevant to Fergusson’s book.
It provided a general résumé or broad, sweeping summary of the history of architecture. It
included visual examples that the reader could look over and inspect, while creating a position
of power for the reader from which to gaze upon the monuments of the world. Lastly, it
systematized knowledge about architectural history, creating what would soon become the
standardized boundaries of the field.
“Survey” views of world architectural monuments also became available to
nineteenth-century British audiences, even those unable to travel to foreign lands, in the form
of painted panoramas. These constructed spaces, which offered visitors a survey view of an
imagined scene, included depictions of many of the same works of architecture appearing in
Fergusson’s handbook, and for an entry price of a single shilling.
382
For instance, Robert
Burford’s Panorama at Leicester Square rendered the Temple of Karnak in Egypt, the
Colosseum in Rome, Constantinople with a view of Hagia Sophia, the Porcelain Tower at
Nanking, and the palaces of Assyria, all of which were also illustrated within the pages of
Fergusson’s survey.
383
However, while Burford’s spectacles surveyed each of these
architectural sites in separate panoramas, Fergusson’s handbook brought together a

381
On the historical relationships of power and knowledge, the pivotal works are Michel Foucault, such
as Discipline and Punish (New York: Vintage, 1979) and The Order of Things (New York: Vintage,
1973). In particular, his writing about the Panopticon deals directly with the role of vision in these
relationships.

382
On the panorama as a modern, bourgeois system of viewing the world, see Stephan Oettermann, The
Panorama: History of a Mass Medium (New York: Zone Books, 1997).

383
The Leicester Square panoramas included Florence in 1831; the Temple of Karnak and Thebes in
1835; Lima and its Surroundings, 1836; the Colosseum and a view of Rome in 1839; Versailles in
1839; Athens and the Acropolis in 1845; Nanking with the famous Porcelain Pagoda in 1845;
Constantinople with Hagia Sophia in 1846; Palaces of Assyria in 1851; and Moscow in 1857. On these
panoramas, see the various brochures provided by Robert Burford for viewers of his panoramas, many
of which can be found at the Yale Center for British Art and the Beinecke Library at Yale.
161
comprehensive collection of these sites, further elevating his readers’ viewpoint and
expanding their view.
Of course imperialist ideology was at the heart of such “elevated” and “expanded”
views. They represented what Cunningham has called “the inevitable western bias” of both
scholars like Fergusson and their European audiences. Fergusson and his readers were
members of “the conquering ‘race,’” and therefore “shared the view” that non-Western
cultures were “more primitive than [their] own.”
384
Fergusson’s survey incorporated common
and generally accepted conclusions, such as the decline of non-Western cultures from an
earlier, purer, more civilized period, as well as the inability of these cultures to write their own
histories. According to Fergusson, only educated European scholars had the training and
knowledge to write history. These ideological conclusions have been widely critiqued in
scholarship, especially in the field of post-colonial studies.
385
In advancing such conclusions,
Fergusson’s work was utterly typical for its time. In other aspects, however, Fergusson’s
contributions proved quite radical. Despite his Eurocentric outlook, the author’s interest in
non-Western cultures on an aesthetic level, and not merely an ethnographic level, was
unusual.
386
As the Times reviewer had observed, Fergusson’s book attempted to acknowledge

384
Cunningham, 44.

385
See, for instance, Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1978); Cohn, Colonialism
and Its Forms of Knowledge; Sally Price, Primitive Art in Civilized Places (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1989); Zeynep Çelik and Leila Kinney, “Ethnography and Exhibitionism at the
Expositions Universelles,” Assemblage 13 (1990): 34-59; Craig Clunas, “China in Britain: The Imperial
Collections,” in Colonialism and the Object: Empire, Material Culture, and the Museum, eds. Tim
Barringer and Tom Flynn (New York: Routledge, 1998), 41-51; Linda Nochlin, “The Imaginary
Orient,” in The Politics of Vision: Essays on Nineteenth-Century Art and Society (New York: Perseus
Books Group, 1991); Ryan, The Cartographic Eye.

386
I am not the first to acknowledge Fergusson for such revisionist views. Maurice Craig credits his
approach—with its refusal to blindly revere Greek art and its appreciation of other periods and styles as
equally worthy of respect—with a “freshness” based on “common sense” that questioned comfortable
patterns. See Craig, “James Fergusson,” in Concerning Architecture: Esssays on Architectural Writers
and Writing presented to Nikolaus Pevsner, ed. John Summerson (London: Allen Lane, The Penguin
Press, 1968), 142 and 152.
162
architecture as a “fine art” in Europe and beyond. Recent studies of the monuments of the
Middle East, India, China, and Pre-Columbian Mexico had provided challenges to the
traditional narratives of art history, and Fergusson’s collection of these studies into a “succinct
account...intelligible to the general reader” was pivotal in creating a new global version of the
survey.

A Popular Handbook of Art History?

The full title of Fergusson’s handbook—Illustrated Handbook of Architecture: Being
a Concise and Popular Account of the Different Styles of Architecture Prevailing in All Ages
and Countries—emphasized its status as a “popular” book. Yet, pinning down a precise
meaning for this term in the context of Fergusson’s work has proven difficult. Not only did
nineteenth-century publishers pervasively use this term to promote their products, but they
also applied it with a range of significations. As we have seen, “popular” could describe the
book itself: its small size, relatively low price, or compact format. In other cases, it referred to
the information presented in the book, including a readily comprehensible text and the
addition of clear, didactic images. In still other cases, the word pointed to an audience for the
book as being somehow not exclusively elite in either wealth or education. For Fergusson and
Murray, the word “popular” was in fact a particular point of contention.
Between 1845 and his death in 1886, Fergusson published extensively, beginning with
books based on his experience in India, including Illustrations of the Rock-Cut Temples of
India (1845) and Picturesque Illustrations of Ancient Architecture in Hindostan (1847), both
of which were expensive albums illustrated with lithographs prepared from Fergusson’s
drawings.
387
But Fergusson’s interests reached beyond Indian art, and he aspired to write a

387
Illustrations of the Rock-Cut Temples of India was published in London by Weale and included 18
plates of colored lithographs. It sold for £2 7s 6d. Picturesque Illustrations of Ancient Architecture in
163
philosophical account of beauty comparing the relative worth of all artistic styles. This
work—An Historical Inquiry into the True Principles of Beauty in Art, More Especially with
Reference to Architecture (1849)—was Fergusson’s attempt to incorporate the “theory” he
sought later to avoid in his handbook.
388
In letters to Murray, Fergusson lamented that his
True Principles, which he considered his “favorite child,” did not sell well, disappointing him
deeply.
389
Above all, for his next publication, he wrote, he was “anxious...to produce a
popular work that people will read and buy,” as he “had sufficient experience to show [him]
the folly of [his] former ways.”
390
This anxiety provided the context for his Illustrated
Handbook.
At first, Fergusson deferred to Murray’s “superior experience” in general-market
publishing. Given Murray’s high sales with his travel handbooks, it was clear that Murray
knew what it took to produce a popular book that people would buy. However, because he felt
the need to overcome his background in commerce, Fergusson also felt pressure to assert

Hindostan, also published in London but by Hogarth, included 24 plates of colored lithographs and sold
for £4 4s. Fergusson also published essays on the topography of Jerusalem (1847), on fortification
systems for national defense (1849), and on national institutions such as the British Museum, the
National Gallery, and the National Record Office (1849).

388
The book was published by Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, and sold for 31s 6d, a price that
is close to the price of the handbook. According to Pevsner, “never before had art and architecture been
pressed so hard to fit a system” of universal theory as it had in Fergusson’s True Principles. He also
remarked on the author’s “crazy delight in new terms: Etherics, Biotics, Thermatics, Nosology,
Amativeness, Eumorphics.” Nikolaus Pevsner, “James Fergusson,” in Some Architectural Writers of the
Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), 238-39.

389
Fergusson to Murray, 17 May 1851, JMA, Acc. 12604/1398. In the preface to his 1865 edition of the
History of Architecture, Fergusson stated that he published the True Principles at his “own expense and
risk,” after finding no publisher to take it on otherwise. He admitted, too, that “the booksellers were
right” in their hesitation, as “the book did not sell.” See Fergusson, A History of Architecture in All
Countries, vol. 1 (London: Murray, 1865), iv.

390
Fergusson to Murray, 11 Dec. 1849, JMA, Acc. 12604/1398. Underscoring in original. In letters
dated 5 Sept. 1849 and 14 May 1851 from the same folder, Fergusson reiterated his desire to write a
book the public will buy and read. He also repeated his regret about not “hitting the mark” with what
he had previously published.

164
himself as a serious scholar. He wrote in 1849 that the “disadvantage” of his “mercantile
pursuits” was “the practical exclusion it [entailed] from the best class of intellectual or artistic
society.”
391
Fergusson’s letters to Murray revealed a continuous struggle over the form and
content of the handbook. Fergusson, who originally presented the idea of the book to the
publisher, called it “A History of Architecture.”
392
It was Murray who suggested the
“handbook” designation, presumably for marketing purposes, as this would fit better within
the genre his firm was best known for.
393
Fergusson began to refer to the project as “the
handbook” in 1851, but continued to complain to Murray that he was “afraid the title of
‘Handbook’...will prove a stumbling block we shall hardly be able to get over.”
394

In his Notes sur l’Angleterre, French historian Hippolyte Taine listed the qualities that
for him defined Murray’s famous travel handbooks, which, with biting wit, he associated with
the “mind of an Englishman:”
One can compare exactly enough the interior of the English mind to one of Murray’s
guidebooks: lots of facts and few ideas; a quantity of useful and precise information,
little statistic résumés, numerous numeric figures, exact and detailed maps, short and
dry historic notices, useful and moral advice in the guise of a preface, no view of the
ensemble, no literary attractiveness at all; it is a simple storehouse of good verified
documents.
395

391
Fergusson, “Preface,” in True Principles, xi-xvi.

392
Fergusson to Murray, 5 Sept. 1849.

393
Fergusson wrote in his preface to the 1865 edition of his History of Architecture that “a proposal was
made to [him] by Mr. Murray” to publish a work “in the more popular form of a Handbook of
Architecture.” See History of Architecture, vol. 1 (1865), iv.

394
See letters from 14 May, 17 May, 28 May, and 17 July 1851 for Fergusson’s acceptance of the
handbook designation, and a letter dated simply 13 Jan. for his hesitation about the term. JMA, Acc.
12604/1398. He also wrote of his belief that “one half of [Murray’s] objection to [his] unfortunate work
would be removed if it were called History instead of Handbook of Architecture.” See Fergusson to
Murray, 17 Nov. 1855. Underscoring in original.

395
Taine, 325: “on peut comparer assez exactement l’intérieur d’une tête anglaise à un Guide de
Murray: beaucoup de faits et peu d’idées; quantité de renseignements utiles et précis, petits résumés
statistiques, chiffres nombreux, cartes exactes et détaillées, notices historiques courtes et sèches,
conseils moraux et utiles en guise de préface, nulle vue d’ensemble, point d’agrément littéraire; c’est un
simple magasin de bons documents vérifiés.”
165
This statement, despite its obvious national biases, encapsulates what was expected of
Fergusson in his “handbook” of architecture, and what Fergusson sought to avoid. In contrast,
Fergusson wanted a book with “ideas” as well as “facts,” and, above all, a “good view of the
ensemble.”
The disagreement between publisher and author over the handbook and its popular
format persisted beyond the first edition and into the numerous later versions. In the end,
what claimed in its original title to be a “concise” and “popular” survey slowly grew into an
increasingly expensive multi-volume series. The first two volumes, issued in 1855, covered
ancient and medieval architecture and sold as a set for 36s. Though this price was close to that
of Murray’s other handbooks of art history, it represented a significant expense even for an
illustrated book. But in comparison to the cost of a single chromolithograph after a Fra
Angelico painting, which sold in 1855 for 42s, or of a luxury volume of plates like Robert’s
Egypt and Nubia that sold for more than one thousand shillings, the cost of Fergusson’s book
provided its buyer with two dense but compact volumes with more than 800 illustrations of
the major monuments of architecture.
396

The next volume in Fergusson’s Illustrated Handbook series, which covered the
“modern styles” of architecture from the Renaissance to the nineteenth century, was published
in 1862, and sold separately for 31s 6d. According to a review of this work in the Times from
1863, this volume was unprecedented: “We have had many works on particular buildings and
styles to which their characteristics have been set forth with technical precision, but a survey
of modern architecture, as a whole, has not been attempted before.”
397
In his preparations for

396
Robyn Cooper, “The Popularization of Renaissance Art in Victorian England: The Arundel Society,”
Art History 1, no. 3 (1978): 275.

397
“Fergusson’s Modern Architecture,” The Times, 30 Mar. 1863, 6. Italics added to emphasize that the
Times referred to Fergusson’s book as a “survey,” marking one of the first incidents in which a book of
this genre was identified as such. Of course the “survey” would later become the dominant term for this
166
writing this volume, Fergusson had again proposed to Murray that they “drop” the title of
handbook “and call it a History.”
398
According to Fergusson, though he was “well aware...of
the advantages to be derived from making [his book] as popular as possible,” going too far in
this direction would be “fatal” to his “character as an author.”
399
It seemed that a popular
“handbook” and a serious “history” were at odds in Fergusson’s mind.
After 1865, Fergusson finally got his way and the title of the book was changed from
Illustrated Handbook of Architecture to A History of Architecture. This change signified a
definitive step away from the popular book market. At this point, the publication became a
three-volume scholarly study, expensive to purchase in its entirety, and challenging for
beginning readers to digest. Fergusson also gained control over the content of this second
edition and no longer had to contend with Murray’s suggestions as a publisher. Nevertheless,
a certain “popularity” in terms of ongoing sales was ultimately achieved by Fergusson’s book.
The author himself admitted the original handbook “was successful” and was “much better
suited to public demand” than his earlier True Principles, with its low sales.
400
The size of the
1855 first edition of the handbook was 5000 copies, all of which Murray sold by 1861.
401

genre. This volume included 312 illustrations of many canonical monuments. See Appendix 2.
Fergusson’s main argument for this book critiqued the modern practice of copying historical styles and
calls for a new style appropriate to his contemporary moment. For a close reading of what he calls
Fergusson’s “most important book,” see Pevsner, 238-51.

398
Fergusson to Murray, 6 July 1860, JMA, Acc. 12604/1399. Indeed, the Times review referred to the
third volume as the History of Modern Styles of Architecture: Being a Sequel to the Handbook of
Architecture, revealing a sort of compromise between the two terms for the publication.

399
Fergusson to Murray, 7 Nov. 1874, JMA, Acc. 12604/1399.

400
Fergusson, History of Architecture, vol. 1 (1865), iv.

401
It should be noted that Murray was selling his copies wholesale to retailers for later sales to the
public. Therefore, these sales figures do not directly represent the number of books purchased by
readers. Murray’s firm was famous for its annual trade gathering at Albion Tavern in December where
many sales to retailers took place. These gatherings were by invitation only and included dinner.
Barnes, 59-60.

167
According to James J. Barnes, the standard edition size during the 1850s was 1000 copies and
two years was often not enough time to sell an edition of this size.
402
Thus, Fergusson’s
handbook was issued in a relatively large edition that sold comparatively quickly, and was
profitable. By 1859, Murray and Fergusson had each earned an equal profit of £42 4s 6d on
sales of the handbook; their total earnings for the first edition were more than £480 a piece.
403

The legacy of Fergusson’s Illustrated Handbook of Architecture for the field of art
history has been significant, and the book’s impact on survey publishing and introductory art
history teaching is measurable. Not only did German art historian Wilhelm Lübke copy
dozens of illustrations from Fergusson’s book for the third edition of his own widely-read
architecture survey, but many other survey authors credited Fergusson’s innovations in art
history publications. Both Bell’s Elementary History of Art (1874) and Francis Turner’s A
Short History of Art (1886) mentioned Fergusson’s book as one of the standard art history
studies of the period.
404
These two books were illustrated and printed in a compact format that
drew on precedents set by Fergusson’s survey. In his Slade Lectures in Art History given at
Cambridge in 1879, Matthew Digby Wyatt named Fergusson’s book as one that he would
“especially recommend,” given its status among the “many excellent treatises which are now

402
Barnes, 53. See also Weedon, 71.

403
Murray issued a second edition of the first two volumes in 1859 for the reduced price of 26s, which
also signified successful sales. The third volume, the Handbook of Modern Styles, was printed in 3000
copies in 1862, all of which sold by 1870. Between 1865 and 1873, Murray reorganized the book as a
series of three volumes, which turned yearly profits after just one year. And by 1874, the publication
included four volumes, which was also profitable from 1879 until 1886, the year of Fergusson’s death,
and continued to sell through the end of the century. Vol. 1 covered ancient architecture; vol. 2,
medieval architecture; vol. 3, Indian and Eastern architecture; and vol. 4, modern architecture. In total,
Fergusson and Murray each earned just over £2400 on the publication. On these sales and profit
figures, see Murray’s ledger books from the JMA.

404
Nancy Bell, Elementary History of Art (London: Asher, 1874) and Francis C. Turner, A Short
History of Art (London: Swan, Sonnenschein, Le Bas, and Lowrey, 1886).

168
brought within ready access to all those who may desire to consult them.”
405
In 1871,
Fergusson received a Gold Medal from the Royal Institute of British Architects for his various
publications on the history of architecture, including his general survey.
406
However, after the
turn of the twentieth century, the appreciation of Fergusson’s survey as pivotal for the field of
art history dramatically diminished, and histories of the discipline rarely mention Fergusson or
his handbook.
A few recent interpreters have acknowledged Fergusson’s accomplishments within the
field of architecture. Craig credits him with the “vision” to question “comfortable”
conventions.
407
And in his study of nineteenth-century writers on architecture, Nikolaus
Pevsner considers Fergusson’s work among better-known architects and theorists of the
period, including Pugin, Ruskin, and Viollet-le-Duc. Yet, most of Fergusson’s scholarly
reputation has been based on his True Principles and his later editions of the History of
Architecture.
408
His original handbook is often noted only in passing or ignored altogether. In
contrast, my focus on the handbook in particular and its historical context in the 1850s seeks
to shift attention away from Fergusson as a scholar and toward his Illustrated Handbook as a
formative and influential publication for the field of art history. Not only was it the first fully
illustrated survey in the compact format of the handbook, it also introduced art history to new,
non-specialist audiences. Such a focus highlights architecture as the branch of the fine arts

405
Wyatt, Fine Art, 28.

406
Piggott, 110-11.

407
Craig, 152.

408
Craig referred to the work as simply “Fergusson,” by which he meant “of course the four-volume
History of Architecture published between 1862 and 1876.” The four-volume version was actually
published between 1865 and 1876. See Craig, 140. Kultermann claims that Fergusson’s History of
Architecture (1865-67) was the first survey of architecture in English, and never mentions the author’s
previous handbook. See Udo Kultermann, The History of Art History (New York: Abaris Books, 1993),
105.

169
responsible for significantly reshaping art history as a field. Moreover, a close look at
Fergusson’s handbook illuminates the complicated and contested notions of a “popular” art
history in the nineteenth century.

Leading the Way in Art History Education

During the 1850s, public art institutions in Britain showed a hesitation to promote
educational art history programming. The British Museum did not provide didactic labels in
its galleries or useful guidebooks for visitors to explain the objects on display. According to
arts educator J. C. Robinson writing in 1854, “the British Museum has never been specially
regarded as an Art-teaching Institution” and it would be “difficult to formularise the sort of
influence exercised by it on the public mind.”
409
The National Gallery, in contrast, was
founded in 1824 with the goal “not merely of exhibiting to the public beautiful works of art
but of instructing the people in the history of that art.”
410
Yet, such educational ideals were
still far from completely realized by the institution. Wall labels remained absent and the
organization of the paintings did not provide a didactic historical display. These museums
offered the benefit of free admission, but they fell short of providing the lessons to make their
collections fully accessible to the public.

409
J. C. Robinson, “An Introductory Lecture on the Museum of Ornamental Art of the Department,” in
Addresses of the Superintendents of the Department of Practical Art (London: Chapman and Hall,
1854), 9. On the conflict in the British Museum’s mission between educating the national public and
maintaining an elitist institution for the already highly educated, see Bohrer, 107-111 and “The Times
and Spaces of History: Representation, Assyria, and the British Museum,” in Museum Culture:
Histories, Discourses, Spectacles, ed. Daniel Sherman and Irit Rogoff (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1994), 201-202. In particular, Bohrer discusses how the British public in the late
1840s began making significant demands for a more popularly accessible museum.

410
Colin Trodd, “Culture, Class, City: The National Gallery, London and the Spaces of Education,
1822-57,” in Art Apart: Art Institutions and Ideology Across England and North America, ed. Marcia
Pointon (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994), 40.

170
Publicly funded art institutions in mid-century Britain focused their outreach to
general audiences on practical art education, not on the teaching of art history. During this
period, the administration of the Department of Science and Art was transferred from the
Board of Trade (a logical place in the context of the 1851 Great Exhibition) to the Committee
of the Council on Education. This move signified an increased interest in promoting design
instruction among British artists, artisans, and the wider public. The National Course of Art
Instruction, published in 1853, established a general art curriculum to teach quality design to
artists and the appreciation of such quality design to consumers; art history as a subject was
not mentioned.
411
G. G. Zerffi, a lecturer at the National Art Training School in South
Kensington, complained that art history, “which ought to form one of the most important
subjects of our education system,” was “entirely neglected.”
412

Beyond this public system, however, art history was not a “neglected” subject, but
arose as a central focus of diverse educational projects. Private commercial endeavors—the
Sydenham Crystal Palace, the Manchester Art-Treasures Exhibition, and the publication of
general-market books on art history—in fact led the way in popular art history education.
These enterprises emerged with the express purpose of instructing the public about high art
and its historical development. Reviewers carefully scrutinized and often severely critiqued
such efforts in the private sector. Even Fergusson himself, who served as the general manager
at the Sydenham Crystal Palace between 1856 and 1858, voiced reservations about the

411
On this national curriculum, see Rafael Cardoso Denis, “Teaching By Example: Education and the
Formation of South Kensington’s Museums,” in A Grand Design: The Art of the Victoria and Albert
Museum, eds. Malcolm Baker and Brenda Richardson (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1997), 108-9 and
Stuart Macdonald, The History and Philosophy of Art Education (New York: American Elsevier
Publishing Co., 1970). This curriculum included twenty-two stages: ten of drawing ornament, seven of
painting, three of modeling, and two of composition.

412
G. G. Zerffi, “Preface,” in A Manual of the Historical Development of Art (London: Hardwicke and
Bogue, 1876). On the “unsatisfactory way in which the history of Art, or a knowledge of precedent
works” was taught in British public institutions, see Robinson, 19.

171
pedagogical success of the Fine Arts Courts. He worried that the displays had been too
“sweet” to be “wholesome and real learning,” and compared them to “transposing” the
“problems of Euclid into lyric verse” or teaching “theology through the religious novel.”
413

Whereas Sydenham director Samuel Phillips had celebrated the “picturesque displays” that
contrasted with the more “tedious glass cases” of museums, Fergusson objected to the lack of
scholarly rigor that those very glass cases represented.
414

Other reviewers were equally critical about the attempts to popularize art history. For
Taine, the Sydenham displays were too commercial to be effective in their educational goals:
the Crystal Palace was the ideal “pleasure palace for the people-king” of Britain, a venue
defined by “pantheons of richness and curiosity...where a taste for the new, the diverse, the
excessive replaced the sentiment for simple beauty.”
415
Rossetti, amidst his general praise for
the Fine Arts Courts, also criticized the presentation of art monuments “coloured like the
rooms of a new clubhouse, only a good deal brighter, and smelling of paint and putty.”
416
An
issue of the Quarterly Review dedicated to the Sydenham Crystal Palace called the displays “a
gingerbread toy for the wonderment, not even the delight, of the vulgar.”
417
For this
anonymous author (Elizabeth Eastlake), the “polychromy” at Sydenham was more fitting in a
sailor’s figurehead, a mechanic’s garden, a child’s picture book, or a dye for Manchester
cotton than in the monuments of high art.

413
Fergusson, “On a National Collection of Architectural Art,” 16.

414
Phillips, General Guide, 18.

415
Taine, 251-53.

416
Rossetti, 59.

417
Elizabeth Eastlake, “The Crystal Palace,” The Quarterly Review 96 (1854-55): 303-54. On the art
writing of Eastlake and other British women, see Chapter 5.

172
At the same time, many of these very voices admitted that commerce had enabled a
new access to the history of art. Eastlake recognized that without the “liberality of private
proprietors of the present day, there would be little opportunity for a large portion of the
public to become acquainted with works of this class.” In particular, she commented on the
number of “young people” she had seen “turned loose among these monuments” and how
“many a one in future days will trace their first realisation” of art history “to some sunny,
dreamlike visit to this building.”
418
Fergusson, too, conceded Sydenham’s ultimate
educational suceess:
There is no doubt but that the Architectural courts at the Crystal Palace have done
a great deal of good in awakening attention to the subject, and thus conveyed to
many an amount of instruction they never would have imbibed had it not been
presented to them in the enchanting form which it wears under the crystal roof at
Sydenham.
419

Thus, despite such critiques and reservations, innovative methods of art history instruction in
mid-century Britain were recognized. Just as Knight’s Penny Magazine and Pictorial Gallery
of Arts had offered guidance about art history to new audiences for an affordable price, these
later surveys of art history designed new ways of instructing a growing non-specialist public.
They experimented with novel means of pedagogy, especially methods combining visual,
verbal, and material media, making illustration central to their versions of art history. Such
methods would go on to play significant roles in museums with their use of wall labels and in
academic art history programs with the classroom slide lecture.
Privately funded surveys in Britain, therefore, did much to inform the general public
about global art canons and, at the same time, to define successful and enduring methods of

418
Ibid.

419
Fergusson, “On a National Collection of Architectural Art,” 15-16.

173
education for art history. To be sure, these efforts defined an area in which Britain was more
advanced than the rest of Europe:
France, indeed, has its eminent literary men; Italy is still a school for the fine arts; but
their claim to a high standing is due to the transcendent abilities of a gifted few.
England’s superiority, on the contrary, consists in the general spread of intelligence,
which places the highest prizes of merit within the reach of energy and talent in every
station of life.
420

Referring here to the Art-Treasures Exhibition, this statement applies equally to the
contemporaneous projects of the Sydenham Fine Arts Courts and Fergusson’s Illustrated
Handbook of Architecture. In nineteenth-century Britain, “spreading intelligence” about art
history beyond “the gifted few” was of primary importance. The visual displays and
illustrated publications that emerged in mid-century Britain pioneered the transformation of
the traditionally elite subject of art history into a broadly appealing form of modern visual
culture.

420
“Working Men and the Art-Treasures Exhibition,” Art-Treasures Examiner, 40.
174

Fig. 2.1. Color lithograph of the Crystal Palace at Sydenham, from Matthew Digby Wyatt’s
Views of the Crystal Palace (London, 1854)

Fig. 2.2. Color print of the Manchester Art-Treasures Exhibition, from the Art-Treasures
Examiner, 1857

Fig. 2.3. Pages from the Egyptian Court Handbook for the Sydenham Crystal Palace, 1854
175

Fig. 2.4. Page from the Art-Treasures Examiner with wood engraving of Constable’s
Salisbury Cathedral

Figs. 2.5. Page from James Fergusson’s Illustrated Handbook of Architecture (London, 1855)

Fig. 2.6. Color lithograph of the Prehistoric Animals Exhibit at the Sydenham Crystal Palace
from Wyatt’s Views
176

Fig. 2.7. Color lithograph of the Egyptian Court at the Sydenham Crystal Palace, from Wyatt’s
Views

Fig. 2.8. P. H. Delamotte, photograph of Abu Simbel figures at the Sydenham Crystal Palace

Fig. 2.9. Color lithograph of the Alhambra Court from Wyatt’s Views
177

Fig. 2.10. Plan of the Alhambra Court, from the Crystal Palace Guidebook, 1879

Fig. 2.11. Detail of color lithograph of the Greek Court, from Wyatt’s Views.

Fig. 2.12. Detail of color lithograph of the Roman Court from Wyatt’s Views
178

Fig. 2.13. P. H. Delamotte, photograph of the Italian Court at the Sydenham Crystal Palace

Fig. 2.14. General guidebook to the Sydenham Crystal Palace, 1854

Fig. 2.15. Page from the Crystal Palace guidebook, with wood engraving of the Parthenon
179

Fig. 2.16. Page from the Egyptian Court Handbook with translation of hieroglyphs

Fig. 2.17. Color lithograph of the Pompeii Court from Wyatt’s Views

Fig. 2.18. Color lithograph of the Assyrian Court, from Wyatt’s Views
180

Fig. 2.19. Wood engraving after a drawing by James Fergusson that appeared in Palaces of
Nineveh and Persepolis Restored (1851), the Assyrian Court Handbook for the Sydenham
Crystal Palace (1854), and Illustrated Handbook of Architecture (1855)

Fig. 2.20. “Unpacking the Art-Treasures at the Exhibition Building, Manchester,” from the
Illustrated London News, 2 May 1857

Fig. 2.21. Oscar Rejlander, Two Ways of Life, composite photograph, 1857
181

Fig. 2.22. Illustration of Gainsborough’s Blue Boy in the Art-Treasures Examiner

Fig. 2.23. Illustration of Leonardo’s Mona Lisa in the Art-Treasures Examiner

Fig. 2.24. Page from Wilhelm Lübke’s Geschichte der Architektur (Leipzig, 1855) with
illustrations of the tomb of Ipsambul in Egypt
182

Fig. 2.25. Page from Fergusson’s Illustrated Handbook of Architecture with illustration of the
Kailasanatha in Ellora, India, labeled as a sketch by the author

Fig. 2.26. Page from Lübke’s Geschichte der Architecktur, 3rd ed. (1865) with illustration of
the Kailasanatha
183

Fig. 2.27. Page from Fergusson’s Illustrated Handbook of Architecture with image of Chartres
Cathedral

Fig. 2.28. Page from the English translation of Franz Kugler’s Handbook of Painting (London,
1851) with image of Holbein’s Meyer Madonna
184

Fig. 2.29. Page from Fergusson’s Illustrated Handbook, with a detail view and plan of the
Mayan Palace in Zayi (Sayil)

Fig. 2.30. View of the Kailasanatha, from Oriental Scenery, 1795-1808, drawn by James
Wales, engraved by and under the direction of Thomas Daniell, hand-colored aquatint
185

Fig. 2.31. View of Temple of Edfu, from Egypt and Nubia, 1846-49, drawn by David Roberts,
lithographed by Louis Haghe, hand-colored lithograph

Fig. 2.32. Page from Fergusson’s handbook, with illustration of the Temple of Edfu
186

Fig. 2.33. Comparison of David Roberts’ Egypt and Nubia to Fergusson’s handbook

187
Chapter 3: Art History in Modern Life: The Bibliothèque des Merveilles

Edouard Manet’s The Railway (1872-3) (Fig. 3.1), which depicts a fashionably
dressed woman with a child companion outside the railyard of the Paris Gare Saint-Lazare,
has long been appreciated as emblematic of modernity. Its thick brushstrokes, flattening grid
of iron bars, and off-centered cropping of the figures call attention to the surface of the canvas,
questioning long-standing traditions of painting. The work also “paints modern life,” as
Baudelaire encouraged, through the subject of the railroad and references to the
Haussmannization of Paris.
421
However, I want to draw attention to another element of
modern life in this work. Entirely overlooked in the Manet scholarship is the subtle yet
distinct modernity of the small book resting in the hands of the woman (Fig. 3.2).
422
Such
hand-held books became common commodities in the nineteenth century, especially for
travellers and other readers on the go. The illustrated art history survey was a new genre
published in these portable formats; James Fergusson’s Illustrated Handbook of Architecture
was one of many such books on the market in mid-century Europe. Yet, it was in France that
art history surveys reached an unprecedented level of affordability and accessibility: for the
cost of a few francs, travellers on the French railroad could purchase a paperback survey to
entertain them on their journey or distract them while they wait for a train. Looking again at

421
Charles Baudelaire, “The Painter of Modern Life,” in Baudelaire: Select Writings on Art and
Literature, trans. P. E. Charvet (London: Penguin Books 1972), 390-435. The essay was written in
1863. For studies dedicated to this painting, see Harry Rand, Manet’s Contemplation at the Gare Saint-
Lazare (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987); Juliet Wilson-Bareau, Manet, Monet and the
Gare Saint-Lazare (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998); and T. J. Clark, “Modernism,
Postmodernism, and Steam,” October 100 (Spring 2002): 154-74. For other interpretations of its
modernity, see Anne Coffin Hanson, Manet and the Modern Tradition (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1977), 190; George Heard Hamilton, Manet and his Critics (New York: Norton, 1969), 178, 180;
Theodore Reff, Manet and Modern Paris (Washington, D.C: National Gallery of Art, 1982), 58-9;
Linda Nochlin, Realism (New York: Penguin, 1971), 162.

422
In a number of the studies on this painting, the activity of the woman’s reading is discussed, but the
book as a modern object is never mentioned.
188
Manet’s painting, we realize that the woman outside the Saint-Lazare station could in fact be
glancing up from a hand-held history of art.
While British publishers Charles Knight and John Murray were early leaders in the
popularization of art history through their illustrated books, the Paris firm of Louis Hachette
introduced a new popularity—and indeed a new modernity—for published surveys of art
history. Hachette has been called “the most powerful house of European publishing” in the
nineteenth century, a status due in no small part to Hachette’s veritable monopoly on rail-
station bookstores in France.
423
As the first publisher to negotiate with French rail companies
to set up stalls in stations, founder Louis Hachette guaranteed a distribution network for his
firm’s publications that rivaled any in Europe. Among the numerous series of “bon marché”
(or cheap) illustrated books that Hachette introduced primarily for sales in its railroad
bookstalls was the “Bibliothèque des Merveilles.” This series, which appeared in 1865 and
continued to issue volumes into the twentieth century, offered readers a tantalizing
introduction to the “wonders” of science and art. In addition to titles on botany, geography,
and geology, for instance, the series included historical surveys of architecture, sculpture,
painting, and several of the decorative arts, complete with wood-engraved images of canonical
objects (Figs. 3.3 and 3.4).
Yet, the significance of the Merveilles series in popularizing art history has been
suprisingly overlooked. According to art historian Pascal Griener, France in the nineteenth
century showed comparatively little interest in producing illustrated handbooks of art history.
In contrast to Britain and Germany, Griener argues, where the market for such portable
volumes as Franz Kugler’s Handbuch der Kunstgeschichte thrived, France failed to support a
similar market, either through translations of Kugler’s work or through original

423
Jean-Yves Mollier, Louis Hachette (1800-1864): Le Fondateur d’un empire (Paris: Fayard, 1999),
123.

189
publications.
424
My work demonstrates that at least by the 1860s the opposite was true. The
Bibliothèque des Merveilles art history surveys were arguably the most widely disseminated
art histories of the nineteenth century. Not only did they circulate throughout France in
Hachette’s bookstores, but these surveys also crossed national and linguistic borders through
the dozens of editions and translations on sale in Britain, America, Italy, Spain, Poland, and
Russia. The same printed illustrations, moreover, were repeated in all of these versions,
providing a collection of images that unquestionably shaped art history’s canons during a key
transitional period. More than any other surveys produced in the nineteenth century,
Hachette’s Bibliothèque des Merveilles demonstrates how art history became a popular and
international field of knowledge. Beyond the specialized spheres of university classrooms and
museum galleries, art history infiltrated the wider spaces of modern life.

Charton and Hachette: A Partnership in Popular Publishing

During the first half of the nineteenth century, France often drew inspiration from
Britain in popular illustrated publishing. Quickly following on the heels of the London-based
weeklies The Penny Magazine (1832) and The Illustrated London News (1842), French
presses produced the Magasin pittoresque (1833) and L’Illustration (1843) in the image of
their British prototypes. Involved in both of these publications was Edouard Charton. Like
his English counterpart Charles Knight, Charton exploited the vast potential of affordable
illustrated reading material to educate the general public.
425
Like the Penny Magazine,

424
Pascal Griener, “Le livre d’histoire de l’art en France (1810-1850) – a genèse retardée. Pour une
nouvelle étude de la littérature historiographique,” in Histoire de l’histoire de l’art en France au XIXe
siècle, eds. Roland Recht et al. (Paris: Documentation Française, 2008), 167-86.

425
On Charton (1807-1890), see Michèle Degrave, Un sénonais illustre, Edouard Charton (Flavigny:
STM, 1991); Marie-Laure Aurenche, Edouard Charton et l’invention du Magasin pittoresque (1830-
1870) (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2002; and Annie Lagarde-Fouquet and Christian Lagarde, Edouard
Charton (1807-1890) et le combat contre l’ignorance (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes,
190
Charton’s Magasin pittoresque offered readers a collection of illustrated articles on a wide
variety of topics for the price of just two sous per weekly issue.
426
Charton openly credited
Knight and his magazine with inspiring the French publication and providing numerous
illustrations in the form of stereotypes: the Magasin pittoresque became a reality “only after
having known the success of the Magazines in England, and especially that collection
published in London...by Charles Knight.”
427
Similar to Knight, Charton’s goals for his
magazine centered on the popularization of general knowledge, which significantly included
the history of art. Illustrated articles in the Magasin pittoresque habitually featured art
masterpieces ranging from Egyptian pyramids to modern paintings (Fig. 3.5).
Charton quickly gained a reputation in France for his publications of the “most
healthy popularity” and for doing more than any other figure “to vulgarize” knowledge and
forward “the public good.”
428
After a decade of directing the Magasin pittoresque, Charton
became in 1843 a founding member of L’Illustration. Although his contribution to the

2006). According to Lagarde-Fouquet and Lagarde, Charton was a proponent of scientific progress, the
emancipation of people through education, and the use of illustrated publishing to advance these
commitments. Both in his personal philosophies and his varied activities, Charton was similar to
Charles Knight. See 9-10.

426
In the nineteenth-century, one sou was equal to 5 centimes or 1/20 of a franc. The Magasin
pittoresque (hereafter MP), issued continuously until 1914 (although after 1850, it went from weekly to
monthly). Charton founded the weekly with Euryale Cazeaux and the printer Alexandre Lachevardière.
It was published in the same quarto format as the Penny Magazine and at a closely comparable price,
and also reached high circulation figures of between 60,000 and 100,000. Charton was responsible for
the majority of decisions in the publication of the magazine, including selection and editing of the texts
as well as the choice and production of illustrations. Cazeaux shared the editorship with Charton until
1837, when, according to the Magasin pittoresque, he relinquished his responsibilities with the
magazine to pursue “industrial” endeavors. See MP (1837), introductory statement. On the Magasin
pittoresque and its “rôle capital dans la popularisation de la gravure sur bois,” see Remi Blachon, La
Gravure sur bois au XIX siècle: l’âge du bois debout (Paris: Les Editions de l’Amateur, 2001), 93-94.

427
MP 1 (1833): ii. See also the discussion of this exchange in Chapter 1.

428
As late as the 1880s, French newspapers were still praising him for these accomplishments. See the
review article of Charton’s memoirs Le Tableau des Cébès in Le Journal des debats, 12 Nov. 1882,
which described his works “de la plus saine popularité” and went on to say that “il a plus fait à lui seul
que des associations pour vulgariser les connaissances utiles,” possessed as he was by the passion “du
bien public.”

191
magazine ended soon after its foundation, Charton continued his involvement with illustrated
publishing for decades.
429
In the late 1850s, the already well-established firm of Hachette
proposed several new projects with Charton as directing editor, including the long-running
illustrated travel journal Le Tour du monde (1860-1914) and the equally enduring
Bibliothèque des Merveilles.
430

Hachette’s firm was founded in 1826 and by the 1830s had become a leader in
educational publishing in France, providing school textbooks and professional periodicals for
instructors and administrators.
431
Although government orders for Hachette’s schoolbooks
were sizable during the Restoration, these orders boomed in the context of the education
legislation passed under François Guizot as Minister of Public Instruction (1832-37).
432
The
so-called Guizot law of 28 June 1833 mandated primary education for every French town of at
least 500 people.
433
Hachette was therefore at the center of important changes in public

429
Other founders were publisher Jean-Jacques Dubochet, journalist Jean-Baptiste Paulin, and
geographer Adolphe Joanne. Charton’s involvement with L’Illustration ended in 1844. See Aurenche,
“La Naissance de l’Illustration ou le nouvellisme illustré,” in Edouard Charton, 307-34.

430
By the end of 1890, 130 titles in the Bibliothèque des Merveilles had been published. In the
twentieth century, volumes in the series were issued more sporraticly, with the final volume in the
series appearing in 1954.

431
On the history of the firm, see Mollier and Eileen S. DeMarco, Reading and Riding: Hachette’s
Railroad Bookstore Network in Nineteenth-Century France (Bethlehem: Lehigh University Press,
2006). The professional education journals included Le Lycée and Journal de l’Instruction publique,
while the books covered every level of education, ranging from nursery schools (salles d’asile) to the
university.

432
Ibid., 12, 123, and 170-73. By 1832, the firm had secured important orders from the Ministry of
Public Instruction for what ultimately totaled hundreds of thousands of primary school textbooks,
including books on reading and grammar, arithmetic, geography, and history. With such commissions,
Hachette’s firm was well on its way to becoming one of the most important and enduring publishers in
France. Upon the death of founder Louis Hachette in 1864, he left a successful family-owned
publishing company that lasted until after WWII, when it became the international, multimedia
conglomerate it remains today. Hachette-Filipacchi is now owned by Lagardère Media, and publishes
such recognizable magazines as Elle and Paris-Match. See www.lagardere.com or www.hfmus.com.

433
The law required each commune with a population of more than 500 to provide a primary school and
to subsidize the cost of schooling for the indigent. The effects of this law were not immediate, and the
opening of schools did not necessarily guarantee the attendance of every school-age child. However,
192
education. Though the firm also published books for university students, Hachette was
dedicated from its inception to providing access to learning for audiences beyond the most
educated and wealthy book buyers.
During the 1850s, Hachette expanded its markets to new audiences. First, the firm
moved beyond the production of school textbooks to offer books of general literature to an
even wider public. Then, after Louis Hachette attended the 1851 Great Exhibition in London
and learned of the innovations of publisher W. H. Smith, who had introduced railroad
bookstalls in Britain in 1848, Hachette trained his eye on the vast potential market of French
rail riders.
434
In 1852, he began negotiating with railroad companies for control of such
bookstalls throughout the country.
435
Soon, Hachette’s firm not only owned and managed the
stalls, it also made the final decisions about what books would be sold in these
establishments.
436
Like many British publishers, who had issued cheap collections of “railway

the impact on growing literacy in France was significant. On this law and its effects, see Mollier 170-
73 as well as François Furet and Jacques Ozouf, Lire et écrire, l’alphabétistion des français de Calvin à
Jules Ferry (Paris: Minuit, 1977) and Françoise Mayeur, Histoire générale de l’enseignement et de
l’éducation en France: de la révolution à l’école républicaine (1789-1930) (Paris: Nouvelle Librairie
de France, 1981).

434
On Hachette’s visit to London and his interest in Smith’s innovation, see Mollier, 293-300. W. H.
Smith remains the major bookseller in train stations across the UK today. On Smith, see Charles
Wilson, First with the News: The History of W. H. Smith 1792-1972 (London: Jonathan Cape, 1985).

435
On Hachette’s railroad bookstores, see Jean Mistler, La Librarie Hachette de 1826 à nos jours
(Paris: Hachette, 1964); Hachette année 150: La Librairie Hachette de 1826-1976 (Paris: Hachette,
1976), 18-21; Elisabeth Parinet, “Les bibliothèques de gare, un nouveau réseau pour le livre,”
Romantisme 80 no. 2 (1993): 95-106; Isabelle Olivero, L’Invention de la collection: De la diffusion de
la littérature et des savoirs à la formation du citoyen au XIXe siècle (Paris: Institut Mémoires de
l’Édition Contemporaine, 1999), 208-11; David Finkelstein, “Globalization of the Book 1800-1970,” in
A Companion to the History of the Book, eds. Simon Eliot and Jonathan Rose (Oxford: Blackwell,
2007), 332-33; and DeMarco.

436
By 1859, after complaints from fellow publishers that Hachette held an unfair monopoly over
railroad book sales, the firm began to display and sell books from rival firms. Yet, Hachette still
maintained ultimate control of the materials sold in its stalls, and the French government did not stand
in the way, because part of the original agreement between the firm and the railroad companies was to
sell only materials stamped by the Second Empire censors. Even with the beginning of the Third
Republic in 1871, when such censorship ended, Hachette retained power to police the offerings in his
193
reading” in the 1840s, Hachette designed a number of similar series of portable books for rail
travelers. These books were printed on cheap, lightweight paper in small sizes—around 18
cm—with paper covers for easy packing and carrying. In contrast to the predominance of
novels in British rail libraries, however, Hachette sought to provide a more diverse selection
of reading materials; to that end, he issued collections of affordable informational handbooks,
in addition to works of fiction.
437
In his proposition to the rail companies, Hachette claimed
that his series would be “as useful as they were attractive,” would be printed in “a handy
format” to fit easily “into the pocket or the travel bag,” and would be offered at “a moderate
price.” In sum, he hoped to “turn the forced leisure and boredom of a long journey into a
means for the pleasure and instruction of all.”
438
The first to sign Hachette’s contract for
railroad bookstores was James Rothschild on behalf of the Compagnie du Nord on 25 May
1852. By July of the following year, Hachette had signed with nine other railroad companies
and opened forty-three bookstalls. In 1896, the number of such stalls reached 1,179.
439

Hachette’s simply outfitted stalls consisted of a counter where books, journals, and
other objects were displayed. These stalls became the first venues in France exclusively
dedicated to the sale of small-format, affordable books; they also brought such books to
remote corners of the country, making them into objects of common consumption in new and

station stalls. On this “monopoly” and the complaints from other publishers, see Parinet, 97-101;
Olivero, 209-11; and Mollier, 300-301 and 310-19; and DeMarco.

437
As Charles Knight noted in 1854, “Railway Libraries” in Britain meant “single volumes, printed in
small type on indifferent paper, and sold mostly at a shilling” and were “mostly wholly devoted to
novels, English or American.” Charles Knight, The Old Printer and the Modern Press (London: John
Murray, 1854), 277. One of the first of these “Railway Libraries” was that of George Routledge, which
began in 1849. See Patricia J. Anderson and Jonathan Rose, eds., British Literary Publishing Houses
1820-1880, Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol. 106 (London: Gale Research Inc., 1991), 278-80.

438
“Hachette et Cie ont eu la pensée de faire tourner les loisirs forcés et l’ennui d’une longue route au
profit de l’agrément et de l’instruction de tous.” Hachette année 150, 18.

439
Parinet, 96. For details about the signing of these contracts, see Mollier, 307-10.

194
significant ways.
440
The first series offered by Hachette in its railroad venues was the
“Bibliothèque des Chemins de Fer,” a collection established in 1853 that comprised books in
seven categories, each signified by a differently colored cover, but none of these categories
included art history books.
441
This series produced nearly five hundred volumes in the first
decade, after which time no new publications were issued.
442
The Bibliothèque des Merveilles
was a continuation of the “useful knowledge” category of the earlier series, but it was also
conceived and marketed as an entirely new collection of volumes, especially with its novel
inclusion of art history books.
443

Popular Art History in 1860s France
The Bibliothèque des Merveilles became one of the most enduring and widely
distributed of Hachette’s series. The importance of this series for the field of art history,
however, has gone unrecognized. When historians have acknowledged the Merveilles books,

440
Olivero, 208 and Parinet, 106.

441
These categories were: travel guides (red), history and travel literature (green), French literature (tan
or cream), classical and foreign literature (yellow), useful knowledge (specifically agriculture and
industry, in blue), children’s books (pink), and miscellaneous works (salmon). In France, the concept of
the “bibliothèque” as a collection of books dates from the seventeenth century, but by the nineteenth
century this term referred to a series of small-format, affordable books published by a single firm that
was marketed as a collection. Often, such “bibliothèques” were signified by matching cover designs
and colors. See Olivero, 15 and 30. The Bibliothèque des Merveilles was easily identified by its bright
blue paper cover or blue cloth binding with gold lettering.

442
On the “Bibliothèque des Chemins de Fer,” see Mistler, 141; Hachette année 150, 18-21; Gouleven
Guilcher and Claude Witkowski, “La Bibliothèque des Chemins de Fer,” Bulletin du bibliophile 4
(1987): 475-99; Parinet, 105; Mollier, 303-4; and Olivero, 72-73; and DeMarco.

443
Other series published by Hachette that developed out of the “Bibliothèque des Chemin de Fer”
categories were the Bibliothèque Rose of illustrated children’s books and the Guides Joanne, a series of
travel guides that dominated the market in France for the rest of the century. Both of these were
likewise sold in Hachette’s railroad bookstores.

195
it has been in reference to their role in the popularization of science.
444
Indeed, the majority of
the Merveilles volumes concerned scientific topics; but from its initial conception, the
Merveilles series included books devoted to art as well.
445
The original contract for the
publication noted that the series was “destined...to spread among the non-professional public
and young people the knowledge of what is most worthy of admiration in nature, science, art,
and industry.”
446
In a publication announcement for the series, Charton wrote that, alongside
the “prodigious discoveries” of science, the “masterpieces of the arts, painting, sculpture,
architecture....are for us an inexhaustible source of charming surprises.”
447
Art therefore
constituted a primary focus of the Merveilles series.
448

444
For studies that focus on the series as a popularizer of science, see Mistler, 196; Bruno Béguet,
Maryline Cantor, and Ségolène Le Men, La Science pour tous (Paris: Réunion des Musées Nationaux,
1994); Jean Glénisson, “Le Livre pour la jeunesse,” in Histoire de l’édition française, eds. Henri-Jean
Martin and Roger Chartier, vol. 3 (Paris: Promodis, 1985), 437; Daniel Raichvarg, “La ‘Bibliothèque
des merveilles:’ l’explosion de la littérature scientifique pour la jeunesse dans la seconde moitié du XIX
siècle,” Revue des sciences humaines 99 no. 1 (1992): 154 and Raichvarg and Jean Jacques, Savants et
Ignorants: une histoire de la vulgarisation des sciences (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1991), 174-7;
Degrave, vii and 37-39; Valérie Tesnière, “Le Livre de science en France au XIX siècle,” Romantisme
80, no. 2 (1993): 67-77; and Olivero, 178.

445
The categories of the series titles included natural and physical sciences (31%), arts and artistic
industry (28%), human sciences and ethnography (24%), and geography and travel (20%).

446
“MM. Louis Hachette et Cie ont entrepris la publication d’une bibliothèque destinée, sous le titre de
Bibliothèque des Merveilles, à répandre parmi les gens du monde et la jeunesse la connaissance de ce
que la nature, les sciences, les arts, et l’industrie ont de plus digne d’admiration.” The contract for the
Bibliothèque des Merveilles was signed 15 Nov. 1864 by Emile Templier on behalf of Hachette and by
Charton as editor; it is included in file HAC 53.7 “Edouard Charton” at the Institut Mémoires de
l’Edition Contemporaine (IMEC) in Caen. Louis Hachette, the founder of the firm, died that year on
July 31. Templier was Hachette’s son-in-law and equal partner in the firm since his marriage to
Hachette’s daughter Louise in 1849.

447
See the publication announcement for the “Bibliothèque des Merveilles” signed by Edouard Charton
in the 1867 volume of Hachette’s sale catalogues at IMEC. A second announcement can be found in
the post-text of the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève copy of Paul Féval’s Mari Embaumé published by
Hachette et Cie in 1866. This second copy is dated Jan. 1, 1866 and lists the first six volumes as
available for purchase. As early as 1837, Charton had considered a “Bibliothèque du Magasin
Pittoresque,” which would have included a series of works on science, history, art, literature, and
industry in an octodecimo format with between 200 and 250 pages. Only four works in this series were
published, but the proposed format, length, and coverage of topics for the series was very close to the
later Bibliothèque des Merveilles. See advertisement in MP 48 (1837): 384. Aurenche and Lagarde-
196
When Hachette and Charton began work on the series, the publication of popular
books about artistic subjects was not unusual in France. Many of Hachette’s rivals offered art-
making manuals, artist biographies, art dictionaries, and works of art criticism, such as Salon
reviews.
449
One of the most prolific publishers of art manuals was the Paris firm of Roret,
which, beginning in 1825, issued practical “how-to” guides of painting, sculpture,
architecture, and printmaking, as well as books on the “art” of piano-tuning, gardening,
embroidery, calligraphy, and table setting.
450
While such “art books” were already quite
common, the Bibliothèque des Merveilles introduced something new to the popular book
market in France. Charton as editor of the series sought specifically to provide art histories
for his readers. Because of this new focus on art’s history, the Bibliothèque des Merveilles
provides an ideal lens for understanding the popularization of the history of art in France.
As in Britain, general education in the history of art initially concerned private
endeavors more than public institutions. State-funded museums lacked programs of education

Fouquet and Lagarde suggest that this proposed collection was in fact the origin of the Merveilles
series. See Aurenche, 413-16 and Lagarde-Fouquet and Lagarde, 115-16.

448
The titles and first editions of the Merveilles art books are as follows: André Lefèvre, Les Merveilles
de l’architecture (1865); Louis Viardot, Les Merveilles de la peinture (vol. 1 on the Italian schools,
1868 and vol. 2 on the European schools, 1869); Viardot, Les Merveilles de la sculpture (1869);
Georges Duplessis, Les Merveilles de la gravure (1869); Albert Jacquemart, Les Merveilles de la
céramique (3 vols. 1867-69); Alexandre Sauzay, La Verrerie depuis les temps les plus reculés jusqu’à
nos jours (1868); Ferdinand Lastreyie du Saillant, Histoire de l’orfévrie depuis les temps les plus
reculés jusqu’à nos jours (1875); and Albert Castel, Les Tapisseries (1876). Other art-related books in
the series (but which are not organized as historical surveys) include J. Menant, Ninive et Babylone
(1888), Henri Bouchot, Jacques Callot: Sa vie, son oeuvre, et ses continuateurs (1889), and Edmond
Pottier, Les Statuettes de terre cuite dans l’antiquité (1890).

449
For example, the well-known firm of Hetzel published in this period a volume on the art of
Michelangelo, Leonardo, and Raphael by Charles Clément that saw several editions between 1861 and
the 1880s, a number of art dictionaries, Théophile Gautier’s Salon de 1847, Ludwig Pfau’s Etudes sur
l’art, Viollet-le-Duc’s numerous books on architectural design, a history of Flemish painting, and a
manual on perspective.

450
See, for instance, Louis-Charles Arsenne, Manuel du peintre et du sculpteur; ouvrage dans lequel on
trait de la philosophie de l’art et des moyens pratiques (Paris: Roret, 1833). Between 1825 and 1900,
more than 100 titles were published in the Roret series.

197
for either specialists or non-specialists, while primary and secondary schools included no art
history teaching in their curricula.
451
In the 1860s, France had only just begun to implement
art history instruction in institutions of higher education. Decades behind its German-
speaking neighbors, France founded an art history professorship at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts
in 1863. Held first by Viollet-le-Duc, who resigned the position in under a year, and then by
Hippolyte Taine, the position was more of a lectureship in the curriculum of art students than a
program to train art historians.
452
For the general public not studying to be professional artists,
few avenues existed for formal art history training.
In this same decade, however, commercial publishers and popular educators—most
notably Hachette and Charton—collaborated to provide more informal art history instruction
for the general public. Building on the precedent set by the Magasin pittoresque, the
Merveilles series offered information about art and its history in accessible illustrated
publications. The target audiences for the series, according to prospectuses and
advertisements, encompassed readers with beginning levels of education, including children as
well as adults, both male and female. The books were not designed for the use of scholars
with the advanced education and time needed to study topics in depth, or the money to acquire
numerous detailed publications for this purpose. As stated in a brochure of 1869, the
Merveilles books reached out to that larger category of readers who lacked the means to study
extensively in school.
453
The books intended to aid readers in teaching themselves the subject

451
The art-related subjects that were taught in primary and secondary schools included drawing and
music. For further discussion of the growth of education programs in French museums, especially at the
Ecole du Louvre, and the teaching of art history in French secondary schools, see my fourth chapter.

452
See Lyne Therrien, L’Histoire de l’art en France: genèse d’une discipline universitaire (Paris:
Editions du CTHS, 1998), especially 83-107.

453
See the brochure on the series in the 1869 volume of Hachette’s sales catalogues at IMEC. In it
interesting that both Charton and Hachette had originally intended to become school instructors, but
saw that they could reach and instruct a broader audience through publishing than through teaching.
198
of art history, and were therefore written for a wide variety of consumers. According to the
initial contract between Charton and Hachette regarding the series, it was Charton’s
responsibility to see that the Merveilles books “could be understood by readers of toutes les
classes,” and were amusing as well as educational.
454
Advertisements in Hachette’s
catalogues reiterated this purpose: “The Bibliothèque des Merveilles is suitable for all ages. It
is destined to form a sort of encyclopedia, instructive and recreational.”
455
As part of this
series, the art history books were to be succinct and condensed, digestible in a short time and
with little effort; they made basic narratives and canons of art history accessible to more
readers than ever before.
Charton, like the audience for his series, lacked training in art history. He wrote in his
memoirs that while he never gained “the aptitude for judgment and criticism” of art, he had
developed a profound “admiration” for canonical masterpieces. It was this approach, rather
than the specialized skills of connoisseurship, that Charton sought to provide for readers of his
series. Instead of learning to identify “faults” in “mediocre works,” Charton found it more
useful as a non-specialist to learn the standard works and to develop an appreciation for their
beauty and historical importance.
456
The authors he recruited to write the Merveilles art
histories were likewise self-taught art historians. Described in their contracts with Hachette as
“men of letters,” these authors—including Louis Viardot and André Lefèvre—were prolific,
producing a range of literary work, including writing on art. Viardot, for instance, had

454
See article 1 of the series contract. Italics in the original.

455
See descriptions in Hachette’s sales catalogues at IMEC, such as the July 1866 catalogue in the
section “Littérature Générale et Connaissances Utiles,” p. 34.

456
Edouard Charton, Le Tableau de Cébès: Souvenirs de mon arrivée à Paris (Paris: Hachette, 1882),
126: “Ce n’était, en effet, que d’admiration que je pouvait l’entretenir, car je n’ai pas eu d’aptitude pour
la censure et la critique, et je ne me suis jamais arrêté volontiers devant des oeuvres médiocres ou
mauvaises pour en relever les défauts.”

199
become well known for his travel accounts and his translations of Cervantes, Gogol, and
Pushkin. He also wrote art criticism and art history for such well-known publications as the
Gazette des Beaux-Arts and Charles Blanc’s Histoire des peintres de toutes les écoles.
457
He
was an avid art collector and traveled Europe with his wife Pauline, a famous and celebrated
singer, enabling him to visit a wide range of art museums and private art collections.
458

Another author of the Merveilles art histories, André Lefèvre, was likewise a diverse scholar
whose numerous works included studies in philosophy, race, religion, linguistics, classics, and
philology, as well as the history of art and architecture.
459
The background of these two
authors points to art history’s intersections with a range of related fields of knowledge.
Including histories of art within a Library of “Wonders” or “Marvels”—the Merveilles
titles were translated into English using both terms—further emphasizes the fluid boundaries
of art history at this time. In ancient Greece, the historian Herodotus made numerous lists of
the “seven wonders of the world.” These lists provided a lasting paradigm for appreciating the
world’s important monuments. The Merveilles series even included a volume entitled Voyage

457
Viardot contributed to Blanc’s volumes on the Spanish schools. See Charles Blanc, Histoire des
peintres de toutes les écoles, 14 vols. (Paris: Renouard, 1861-76).

458
For these Russian translations, Viardot had the assistance of Ivan Turgenev, a longtime friend of
Viardot and the supposed lover of Pauline. The Russian author actually moved with the Viardot family
to Paris, Baden-Baden, London, and finally Bougival. Viardot’s publications ranged from large and
expensive folio volumes, such as his Cervantes volumes illustrated by Gustave Doré, to many small
handbooks at cheap prices, such as his Musées d’Europe volumes and his translations of Gogol and
Pushkin, all of which appeared in Hachette’s “Bibliothèque des Chemins de Fers.” For the few sources
on Viardot’s biography, see Mollier, 330; Michèle Beaulieu, “Louis-Claude Viardot, collectionneur et
critique d’art,” Bulletin de la société de l’histoire de l’art français (1984): 243-62; and Nicole Barry,
Pauline Viardot (Paris: Flammarion, 1990).

459
Lefèvre translated classical texts into French, including those of Lucretius and Virgil, and
contributed to the popular Histoire de France illustrée, which saw three editions between 1859 and
1900. He taught ethnology and linguistics at the Ecole d’Anthropologie. This biographical information
comes in large part from the files for the dictionary of French art historians currently in preparation at
the Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art, which Philippe Sénéchal kindly permitted me to consult. See
also Legarde-Fouquet and Legarde, 116.

200
aux sept merveilles du monde.
460
In this volume, only one monument was extant by the
nineteenth century: the Egyptian pyramids at Giza, as seen in a vignette with a palm-lined
vista of the Nile leading to a pyramid in the distance (Fig. 3.6). The fact that the pyramids are
also ever-present in art history surveys demonstrates how interest in the world’s wonders has
carried over into the history of art. In the early modern period, the notion of wonders and
marvels of art had a strong appeal for Grand Tour travelers and wealthy collectors. Books
such the Meraviglie di Roma from 1750 offered tourists a collection of ancient and Christian
artistic marvels to commemorate their visit to Rome.
461
The establishment of a
wunderkammer, or a “cabinet of curiosities,” also became a common practice for aristocrats of
Europe.
462
The wunderkammer specifically joined man-made or artistic creations with natural
wonders, emphasizing the longstanding connections between the history of science and the
history of art.
During the nineteenth century, the notion of “wonders” became closely associated
with the popularization of knowledge across a number of fields. No longer the command of
elite collectors, the “wonders of the world” began to frame introductory studies of both natural
history and art history. While the objects of man and nature often merged in such studies, as
they did in the early modern wunderkammer, these objects were increasingly arranged in
historical progressions. The wonders of the world became the wonders of world history in the
nineteenth century. This can be seen, for example, in Charles Knight’s Pictorial Gallery of

460
Lucien Augé, Voyage aux sept merveilles du monde (Paris: Hachette, 1878). For Augé, the seven
wonders included the Colossus of Rhodes, the Tomb of Maussollos at Halicarnassus, the Temple of
Diana at Ephesus, the Lighthouse of Alexandria, the Pyramids at Giza, the Statue of Jupiter at Olympia,
and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

461
Meraviglie di Roma (Rome: Giovanni Zempel, 1750).

462
See Paula Findlen, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern
Italy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), especially chapter one, “A World of Wonders in
One Closet Shut,” 17-47.
201
Arts where the innovations of science, agriculture, industry, and art were presented to the
public in an affordable illustrated book. The organization of Knight’s publication was indeed
historical, as it traced the progess of these fields from prehistory to the modern period. A
similar approach also proved foundational for the displays of the Sydenham Crystal Palace,
where life-sized plaster models of dinosaurs joined casts of architectural and sculptural
masterpieces to teach a general public about world history. Geological evolution met artistic
evolution in the displays at Sydeham, allowing viewers to imagine these transitions in full and
vibrant color.
The Bibliothèque des Merveilles followed a similar objective, presenting historical
progressions of art and science together as a collection of “wonders.” As Viardot argued in
his sculpture survey, studying art history “must interest those who would desire to reanimate
the existence of a deceased people, to reconstitute a past civilization with its debris, as one
reconstitutes with fossils an antediluvian world.”
463
The books in the Merveilles series
therefore enabled readers to picture the past in their present and to engage with history through
its material remains, an aspect that connects to archaeology as well. This engagement with
“wonders,” moreover, defined an important teaching method; as stated in a brochure for the
series, “admiration” was the recognized “daughter of knowledge,” but knowledge broadly
conceived.
464

Corresponding with this “wonders of the world” approach to art history was an
explicit connection to world travel. As the title Voyage aux sept merveilles du monde

463
Viardot, Les Merveilles de la sculpture (1869), 32. He writes that it must interest “ceux qui aiment à
ranimer l’existence d’un peuple mort, à reconstruire avec ses débris une civilisation passée, comme on
reconstruit avec les fossiles un monde antédiluvien.”

464
See publication brochure for the Bibliothèque des Merveilles inserted into the 1867 volume of
Hachette catalogues at IMEC. On centrality of “wonder” to the popularization of science, see Anne
Secord, “Botany on a Plate: Pleasure and the Power of Pictures in Promoting Early Nineteenth-Century
Scientific Knowledge,” Isis 93 (2002): 28-57.

202
demonstrates, part of the experience of learning about world monuments involved taking
actual and virtual trips around the world. The development of new means of transportation,
such as the railroad and the steamship, enabled a much larger population in nineteenth-century
Europe to travel, both throughout their own countries and internationally.
465
For these actual
voyagers, the Merveilles art histories could function as travel guides or as preliminary reading
prior to travel. Because landmarks of art history represented some of the most popular
destinations, surveys like the Merveilles volumes could serve as preparation for an informed
travel experience. In their light-weight and pocket-sized formats, these surveys could also
serve as on-sight guides that gave art objects a historical context for visitors.
At the same time, these affordable art histories reached out to readers unable to travel
in person to view masterpieces in far-flung parts of the globe. International travel remained
expensive and much of the public could not afford to pay ticket prices for long train and
steamship journeys or for lodging away from home. The price of a second-class round-trip
ticket from Paris to London during the 1851 Great Exhibition was 30F, while in the 1870s it
cost between £8 and £12 (that is, 200F to 400F) for a round-trip ticket between England and
Italy.
466
By contrast, many more people could afford to buy an illustrated art history book in
Hachette’s Bibliothèque de Merveilles, which cost only a few francs. Viardot, who authored
both the painting and sculpture volumes in the Merveilles series, addressed the dual purpose of
actual and imagined travel in his books. These art histories, he stated, offered not only guides

465
On this rise in travel, see Jeffrey Alan Melton, Mark Twain, Travel Books, and Tourism: The Tide of
a Great Popular Movement (London: University of Alabama Press, 2002); John Pemble, The
Mediterranean Passion: Victorians and Edwardians in the South (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987); and
James Buzard, The Beaten Track: European Tourism, Literature, and the Ways to Culture, 1800-1918
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993).

466
Mollier, 297 and Pemble, 107.

203
for travelers, as did his earlier unillustrated volumes in the series Les Musées d’Europe.
467

They also possessed “an evident utility for those who wanted to instruct themselves before
travel or those who could not travel to instruct themselves.”
468

The function of illustrations for this virtual voyaging was key. More than with written
description alone, which served best when viewers had direct access to works of art, readers of
illustrated books like the Merveilles surveys could undertake mental journeys through the
provided images. The growing importance of illustrations in travel books can be seen in a
range of Hachette’s publications. First, the travel guide series “Guides Joanne,” which
Hachette issued as railroad reading along with the Bibliothèque Merveilles, included images
within the text pages that depicted sites along the designated routes.
469
In a number of these
Guides Joanne, art objects amounted to “must-see” items and were depicted in illustrations.
Hachette often recycled these illustrations between the travel guides and the Merveilles
surveys. For example, Joanne’s guidebook to the Chateau of Fontainebleau provided images
of the Oval Court, the Porte Dorée, and the Galerie François I at the palace (Fig. 3.7).
470
In
Les Merveilles de l’architecture, the same images appeared as examples from the art historical

467
Viardot’s Musées d’Europe series was published in the “Bibliothèque des Chemins de Fer” between
1855 and 1857 and thus were the first books on art sold in railroad stations. The series included
volumes on the museums of France, Italy, Germany, Spain, and England, Belgium, Holland and Russia.
These were first issued by L. Maison, then in 1855 Hachette bought the rights and the books were
revised and reissued in the late 1850s. They were printed in the same octodecimo format as the later
Merveilles volumes, and sold for between 1.25 and 1.5F. See series contract in IMEC file HAC 59.3
“Louis Viardot.”

468
Louis Viardot, Les Merveilles de la peinture, vol. 1 (1868), 2: “j’ai la confiance que le présent
volume sera d’une utilité bien plus manifeste pour ceux qui veulent s’instuire avant de se déplacer ou
qui ne peuvent se déplacer pour s’instuire.”

469
Hachette’s Guides Joanne brought together the earlier Guides Richard published by the firm of
Audin, the rights for which were purchased by the firm of Maison in 1836. In 1855, Hachette acquired
the rights to these well-known Guides Richard through the purchase of Maison’s firm. Adolphe Joanne,
Charton’s fellow founder of L’Illustration, was brought on as editor for Hachette’s new series of
guidebooks, which included reprints of the Guides Richard as well as newly written volumes. See
Mollier, 344-45.

470
Adolphe Joanne, Fontainebleau, Collection des Guides-Joanne (Paris: Hachette, 1867).
204
period of the French Renaissance. The repeated signatures of wood engravers Lancelot and
Trichon further evidence the reuse of the same images (on these artists, see Appendix 1). In
both contexts, the carefully rendered visual details—such as the framing device of the large
tree at the left and the figures in fashionable dress that gather in the courtyard of the Porte
Dorée—create a striking mental picture for the reader and stimulate the desire to visit the
celebrated site.
One well-known artist whose work demonstrates these connections between travel
and art history was the Barbizon landscapist Charles-François Daubigny. Before becoming
successful as a Salon painter in the 1860s, Daubigny had worked for decades as an illustrator
of popular books.
471
For Hachette’s Guides Joanne, Daubigny provided the drawings for
dozens of small but detailed landscape scenes. For example, his image of the “Embarcadero
of the Railroad to Calais” that appeared in Elisée Reculs’ Londres Illustré skillfully condensed
a scene of ships on the river, as well as a crowd of people outside the train station, into a tiny
vignette (Fig. 3.8). He even captured the movement of the boats in the wind and the clouds of
smoke that emit from their smokestacks, effects that the anonymous wood engraver adeptly
translated into the print medium. Daubigny also provided for Hachette designs after famous
works of art, some of which appear in the Merveilles surveys. Included in Les Merveilles de
la sculpture, for instance, was an intricately delineated view of a funeral monument by Jean
Goujon, complete with the moving detail of a grieving Diane de Poitiers leaning over her
husband’s body, which prominently displays the child-like signature of Daubigny at the lower

471
On Daubigny’s work as an illustrator, see my Appendix 1, as well as Madeleine Fidell-Beaufort,
“The Graphic Art of Charles-François Daubigny” (Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1974); Fidell-
Beaufort and Janine Bailly-Herzberg, Daubigny (Paris: Geoffroy-Dechaume, 1975); and Michel Melot,
“A Painter Between Two Worlds: Charles-François Daubigny,” in The Impressionist Print (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 17-20.

205
left (Figs. 3.9 and 3.10).
472
Not only do these images by Daubigny highlight the artistic talent
involved in these popular book illustrations in nineteenth-century France; they also show how
important art monuments were being popularized through such illustrations in travel guides
and histories of art.
A similar reuse of artists and images occurred between the Merveilles surveys and Le
Tour du monde, Hachette’s illustrated magazine dedicated to travel. This magazine combined
large, detailed wood engravings with vivid written accounts of the adventures and discoveries
of world travelers. An advertisement for this journal acknowledged the expense and hazards
endured by these travelers; then it quickly promised buyers of the journal an “agreeable
distraction...without a single peril.” “Make the trip around the world with us,” it beckoned
readers.
473
Through similar visual and verbal formats, the Merveilles art histories transported
readers to art monuments around the world without ever having to leave their homes.
As in Le Tour du monde, the Merveilles art histories coupled evocative language with
visually simulating illustrations. Each Merveilles volume included dozens of wood
engravings after existing works of art, which were not frivolous additions, but were essential
to the purpose of these books.
474
An advertising brochure for the series makes explicit the
importance of these images:
Numerous prints and maps are mixed into the text in order to clarify and expose to the
eyes themselves what would be more difficult to comprehend by the effort of the mind

472
Viardot loosely attributed the monument to Jean Cousin rather than Jean Goujon. The monument
resides in Rouen Cathedral.

473
See post-text advertisement for Le Tour du monde in Elisée Reculs, London illustré, 2nd ed.,
Collection des Guides-Joanne (Paris: Hachette, 1862).

474
The architecture volume included 50 illustrations, the sculpture volume had 62, the two volumes on
painting had 18 and 12 respectively, the printmaking volume had 34, the gold-working volume had 62.
In many cases, this number grew with later editions.

206
alone. Often the view of a machine, a work of art, a building, or a natural object, can
say more in a moment than the longest and most skilled of descriptions.
475

The images provided an immediate visual counterpart to the written text and enhanced the
didactic and pleasurable experience of the book. For instance, in the section on the ruins of
Egypt in the architecture survey, Lefèvre evocatively described the “black abyss” and “thick,
suffocating air” inside the Pyramids, the Sphinx “devoured by the leprosy of time,” and the
“systematic forest” of the colonnades and obelisks at Thebes, a phrase which is made visually
compelling in an illustration of the Temple of Karnak (Fig. 3.11).
476
The rows of ruined
columns indeed seem to grow out of the barren earth like a grove of trees. The Kailasanatha at
Ellora, Lefèvre wrote in his section on Indian architecture, was a “jewel in stone, grand like La
Madelaine, made from a single rock that had been cut, dug out, sculpted in every sense,”
which again could be instantly verified by the reader in a nearby image (Fig. 3.12).
477
The
profusion of sculptural detail in this monument—which we have seen before in Fergusson’s
drawing that appeared in his Illustrated Handbook in 1855 (Fig. 2.25)—was conveyed even in
the restrained size of the illustration.
In the case of the Lion’s Gate in Mycenae, the illustration (paired with an image of the
Treasury of Atreus) was directly inserted within the relevant textual description (Fig. 3.13):
One enters the acropolis by the gate called Lion’s. The blocks are enormous,
quadrangular and horizontal; with a height of five meters thirty, a length of three, the
opening is surrounded by a vast lintel...[the illustration appears here] Two lions,
standing up on their hind legs, press their forepaws onto a column placed between

475
“De nombreuses gravures, des cartes, sont mêlées au texte de manière à l’éclaircir et à exposer aux
yeux mêmes ce qu’il serait moins facile de saisir par le seul effort de l’esprit. Souvent la vue d’une
machine, d’une oeuvre d’art, d’un édifice, d’un objet naturel, en dit bien plus, en un moment, que la
plus longue et la plus habile des descriptions.” See illustrated brochure on the “Bibliothèque des
Merveilles” in the 1869 volume of Hachette’s sales catalogues at IMEC.

476
Lefèvre, Les Merveilles de l’architecture, (1865), 26-30.

477
Lefèvre, Les Merveilles de l’architecture, 2
nd
ed. (1867), 48.

207
them: they are facing one another. Their heads, which have been broken, attained the
height of the capital.
478

Not only does this descriptive language paint a verbal picture of the monument for the reader,
but the visual image that corresponds to this description emerges at its very center. The reader
engages simultaneously with words and images that evoke an experience of the ancient site.
Moreover, the image renders aspects that the words do not: the monument lurks amidst
crumbling stone walls, reminding the viewer of the extreme age of this ancient Mediterranean
structure.
The surveys of painting and sculpture followed a similar approach. Viardot’s detailed
descriptions accompanied by example images brought famous works of art housed in a variety
of locations before the eyes of readers. About Rembrandt’s Night Watch, he wrote:
This civic guard, such that it pleases Rembrandt to show us, hardly resembles the
troops of today: no order, no uniforms; the most complete freedom of action and
equipment; a bizarre mixture of people, attitudes, costumes, a hodge-podge of
weapons, guns and halberds, caps and hats, breast plates and doublets. Nothing could
be more picturesque.
479

The reader could then compare this “hodge-podge” to the crowded and dynamic composition
of the painting as it appears in a nearby illustration (Fig. 3.14). Details of the painting from
Amsterdam were made available for readers of Viardot’s book. This balanced double
language of text and image in an art history handbook can be compared to the format of
Fergusson’s 1855 Illustrated Handbook of Architecture (see discussion in Chapter 2). Here,

478
Lefèvre, Les Merveilles de l’architecture, 4th ed. (1874), 16-19: “On entre dans l’acropole par une
porte dite des Lions. Les blocs sont énormes, quandrangulaires et horizontaux; haute de cinq mètres
trente, large de trois, l’ouverture est surmontée d’un vaste linteau...Deux lions, dressés sur leurs pattes
de derrière, appuient leurs pattes de devant sur une colonne placée entre eux: ils se font face. Leurs
têtes, qui été brisées, atteignaient la hauteur du chapiteau.”

479
Viardot, Les Merveilles de la peinture, vol. 2, 2nd ed. (1872), 195: “Cette garde civique, telle qu’il
plaît Rembrandt de nous la montrer, ne ressemble guère aux troupes d’aujourd’hui: aucun order, aucun
uniforme; la plus complète liberté d’action et d’équipement; un bizarre mélange de gens, d’attitudes, de
costumes, d’armes dépareillées, arquebuses et hallebardes, casques et chapeaux, cuirasses et pourpoints.
Rien de plus pittoresque.”
208
as in Fergusson book, the ease of transitioning between reading and viewing became integral
to the instruction of art history.
In its relation to history, science, and travel, the Bibliothèque des Merveilles presented
art history as a subject of “useful knowledge.” In its sales catalogues, Hachette continually
listed the series under the heading of “Littérature générale et connaissances utiles.” The idea
of art history as useful knowledge was not unique to the Bibliothèque des Merveilles, but was
also central to Knight’s Penny Magazine and Pictorial Gallery of Arts. Like Knight, Hachette
did not employ this concept in reference to school textbooks, which were listed in Hachette’s
catalogue in a separate section as “Education et Instruction (Enseignement).” “Connaissances
utiles” formed an even broader category, meant for the general education of a variety of
readers.
480
Learning art history connected audiences with the historical past and with sites
around the world. It promoted the appreciation of human creations as part of the history of
civilization, which was considered appropriate knowledge for the modern citizens of France.

Art History and the “Painter of Modern Life”
During the same decade that the Merveilles series introduced its handbooks of art
history, the art critic Charles Baudelaire published his essay “The Painter of Modern Life.”
Baudelaire’s now well-known advice for artists to engage with modernity might at first seem
at odds with art history education. Yet, a rereading of the essay can put in perspective the
growing interest in art history. Art, according to Baudelaire, should respond to modern life
and popular culture. His ideal artist was not a successful academic history painter, who

480
It should also be noted that the Merveilles volumes were advertised in Hachette’s catalogues as
appropriate for prizes given to students of secondary schools, that is lycées and collèges. While not used
in schools as textbooks, they were nonetheless marketed as rewards for school children and as
educational items for the family library. See Hachette’s catalogues at IMEC, such as Extrait du
Catalogue des Livres Reliés pour les Distributions de Prix from June 1867, 8. Such prizes were
traditionally distributed in July and August at the end of the school year, and defined an important
marketing category for French publishers. See Mollier, 129.
209
cloaked his painted figures in false historical costuming, but rather the illustrator of a popular
magazine: Constantin Guys. Guys’ sketchwork for the Illustrated London News provided
images of travel, urban life, and the Crimean War—in short, pictures of modern reality—for
the magazine’s readers. But engaging with modernity for Baudelaire did not mean rejecting
art’s history; the critic insisted instead that the art of each historical period presented its own
particular modernity. “There was a form of modernity for every painter of the past,” he
wrote.
481
In proclaiming the importance of the present for contemporary artists, Baudelaire
also provided justification for studying the art of the past. Art history and modernity were not
contradictory; rather art’s history involved distilling the modernity from artistic productions of
the past.
Under Charton’s editorship, the Bibliothèque des Merveilles promoted the study of art
history in similar terms. Like Baudelaire, who praised the “barbarous” but “original” styles of
Mexican, Egyptian, and “Ninevehite” art, the Merveilles books informed readers about
Mayan, Egyptian, and Assyrian art as evidence of particular historical periods (Figs. 2 and
3.15).
482
Appreciating a variety of past styles was more important for both Baudelaire and
Charton than promoting a single absolute ideal of art. Moreover, Baudelaire championed
Guys as a “man of the world,” who wanted to “know, understand, assess everything that
happens on the surface of our spheroid.”
483
The artist avoided elite “intellectual and political
circles” and engaged instead with everyday life. He traveled widely, sketching his
experiences of foreign peoples and places. In this, Baudelaire’s Guys was comparable to the
target audience of the Bibliothèque des Merveilles. Charton’s hoped his non-specialist readers
would be similarly lured by a passionate curiousity about their world and its “wonders.”

481
Baudelaire, “The Painter of Modern Life,” 403.

482
Ibid., 406.

483
Ibid., 397.
210
Baudelaire’s choice of Guys for the focus on his essay highlights the centrality of
wood-engraved illustrations to modern life in the 1860s. The sketches by Guys that
Baudelaire praises from the Illustrated London News would have appeared in print as wood
engravings, the only medium available for high volume printing of text and image
simultaneously. As Baudelaire’s essay demonstrated, this illustration medium formed a
connective tissue between the spheres of high art and popular culture. Guys’ original artistic
creations could be widely disseminated through wood engravings. Similar connections
between high art and popular culture emerge in the Merveilles art history surveys, where the
most valued and canonical works of high art circulated to a popular audience through wood-
engraved images.
As in Britain, wood engravings after artists’ drawings dominated the popular book and
periodical market in France until the end of the century, and they appeared in the most widely
disseminated publications. According to art critic Etienne-Jean Delecluze writing in 1856, the
public had become “accustomed to finding every written description accompanied by a drawn
representation;” for them, seeing information expressed simultaneously by a text and a wood
engraving was “a common, even indispensable, mode of publication.”
484
Other voices agreed
with Baudelaire that wood engraving classified as a uniquely modern medium. Paris publisher
Ambroise Firmin-Didot wrote in 1863 that wood engraving corresponded “marvelously” with
the recent technological developments of electricity, railroads, and other forms of rapid
communication, in contrast to the intaglio process of printmaking that was “too slow” in its

484
After describing how information is expressed “tout à la fois par un texte et une gravure sur bois,” he
continues: “Ce qui, jusqu’en 1820, n’avait fait produire que des ouvrages exceptionnels, est devenu
aujourd’hui un mode de publication usuel, indispensable même, tant le public s’est promptement
accoutumé à trouver toute description écrite accompagnée d’une représentation dessinée.” Etienne-Jean
Delecluze, Les Beaux-Arts dans les deux monde en 1855: Architecture, sculpture, peinture, gravure
(Paris: Charpentier, 1856), 392-3. Delecluze was the art critic for the Journal des débats and biographer
of Jacques-Louis David.

211
production “to be sufficient for representing things instantaneously.”
485
Where photography
has become the medium most commonly associated with instantaneity in the nineteenth
century, it was in fact wood engraving that first brought rapidity, cheapness, widespread
circulation—that is, modernity—to illustrated publishing. The revolutionary effects of wood
engravings have been recognized in many other fields, including literature, history, science,
the history of education, and the history of the press.
486
Art historians have been slower to
address the immense changes wood engravings brought to their field.
Today, historians of art are arguably most familiar with the progression of “modern”
media described by Walter Benjamin in his essay, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical
Reproduction.” According to Benjamin, lithography first “enabled graphic art to illustrate
everyday life” and “to keep pace with printing,” a role that was quickly “surpassed by
photography.”
487
Wood engraving, in contrast, is entirely absent from Benjamin’s narrative.
As art historian Stephen Bann aptly argues, Benjamin’s “judgment rides roughshod over the
different criteria of achievement and importance” in use during the nineteenth century.
488

Although Bann’s observation pertains specifically to the lack of scholarly attention to burin

485
Amboise Firmin-Didot, Essai typographique et bibliographique sur l’histoire de la gravure sur bois
(Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1863), 288-89. Delecluze also wrote that with “une execution facile, prompte, et
relativement si peu dispendieuse...l’impression et la publication des gravures sur bois sont devenues
aussi rapide que celles des livres.” See Delecluze, 392.

486
See, for example, Keri A. Berg, “Contesting the Page: The Author and the Illustrator in France,
1830-1848,” Book History 10 (2007): 73; Maurice Samuels, The Spectacular Past: Popular History and
the Novel in Nineteenth-Century France (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004); Beth S. Wright,
“‘That Other Historian, the Illustrator’: Voices and Vignettes in Mid-Nineteenth Century France,”
Oxford Art Journal 23, no. 1 (2000): 113-36; Béguet, Cantor, and Le Men, La Science pour tous;
Raichvarg and Jacques; Celina Fox, Graphic Journalism in England during the 1830s and 1840s (New
York: Garland, 1988); and Joshua Brown, Beyond the Lines: Pictorial Reporting, Everyday Life, and
the Crisis of Gilded-Age America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002).

487
Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” Illuminations, ed.
Hannah Arendt, trans. Harry Zohn (London: Fontana, 1992), 213.

488
Stephen Bann, Parallel Lines: Printmakers, Painters, and Photographers in Nineteenth-Century
France (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 9.
212
engraving in the modern period, his remarks are just as pertinent to wood engraving. Bann’s
critique, in conjunction with Baudelaire’s essay, illuminates the need to recognize a wider
range of modern media that shaped the history of art.

The Art History Survey in France
What better way to quickly grasp the “particular modernity” of each artistic period
than through a general survey of art history illustrated with wood engravings? Indeed, the
Merveilles art books were organized as historical surveys; they focused on chronological
progressions from prehistoric and ancient eras to the modern period. For example, Lefèvre’s
Les Merveilles de l’architecture, the first of the art history surveys (though the fifth book in
the series), began with a discussion of prehistoric monuments (Fig. 3.16), proceeded to the
ancient cultures of Egypt, Assyria, India, Greece, and Rome (Figs. 3.11 and 3.17), then turned
to Byzantine and Islamic architecture (Fig. 3.18), the European Middle Ages and the
Renaissance, before ending with the nineteenth century (Fig. 3.19). Lefèvre described the
book’s goal in a later edition of his survey:
[It would] follow, in logical order, the progress and decline of architecture, since
its point of origin...up to the magnificent and refined conceptions of the Egyptian
colonnades, the grand terraces of Assyria, the Greek temples, the amphitheater and
the basilica, Romanesque and Gothic cathedrals, and finally the palaces, theaters,
and railroad stationsof the modern age.
489

Such a progression should sound familiar; it follows the same basic trajectory outlined in
Knight’s Pictorial Gallery of Arts in 1847, which still functions to organize survey narratives
to this day.

489
“Il y aurait plaisir et intérêt à suivre, dans un order logique, les progrès et aussi les défaillances de
l’architecture, depuis son point de départ...jusqu’aux conceptions magnifiques et raffinées des
colonnades égyptiennes, des grandes terrasses d’Assyrie, des temples grecs, de l’amphithéâtre et de la
basilique, des cathédrales romanes et gothiques, enfin des palais, des théâtres et des gares de chemin de
fer.” André Lefèvre, Les Merveilles de l’architecture, 4th ed. (Paris: Hachette, 1874), 2.

213
Like other books classified as surveys, Hachette’s art histories were general rather
than specific in their coverage, providing what was often called in France a “resumé” of the
field. In contrast to the many monographic studies of the art of specific regions, periods, and
artists published at the time, the Merveilles volumes rapidly summarized the principal
monuments of art across all historical periods. While necessarily selective in their choice of
works, the authors proclaimed that their books as suitable for developing a basic familiarity
with art history. As Viardot stated, “I hope to offer a summary history...where arranged in its
place is every eminent master and every outstanding work from all times and all countries.”
490

Moreover, Hachette’s art histories were elementary rather than erudite, with a clear
didactic purpose. Their texts avoided elaborate philosophical discussions and theoretical
debates. As Lefèvre explained, the enterprise of determining a philosophy of architecture is
“incompatible with [the] restrained framework” of his book.
491
Or, in the words of Viardot,
these books provided simple histories focused on the works of art themselves, in contrast to
scholarship of “German erudition” that “[erected] on...fragile debris vast systems of history
and esthetics.”
492
A contemporary reviewer described Charton’s various publications as
“serious without inducing boredom, possessing imagination without the loss of control,
instructive without being pedantic, and full of ideas without chimeras.”
493
These descriptors
are particularly apt regarding the Merveilles volumes.

490
“J’espère leur offrir une histoire sommaire...où se rangeront à leur place tout maître eminent et toute
oeuvre marquante de tous les temps et de tous les pays.” Viardot, Les Merveilles de la peinture, vol. 1
(1868), 2.

491
Lefèvre, Les Merveilles de l’architecture, 4th ed. (1874), 344.

492
Commenting on “l’érudition allemande” in the context of the Aegina marbles, Louis Viardot writes
that the German authors “élevèrent sur ces fragiles débris de vastes systèmes d’histoire et d’esthétique”
while “nous n’y verrons que des oeuvres d’art.” Viardot, Les Merveilles de la sculpture (1869), 71.

493
See review article in the Journal des débats from 12 Nov. 1882: “Sérieux sans ennui, ayant de
l’imagination sans dévergondage, instructifs sans pédantisme, larges d’idées sans chimères.”

214
As was the case with other surveys from the period, the amount of original research
invested in the Merveilles surveys was minimal. Viardot wrote in his painting survey that he
admitted “without hesitation that a book such as this one is hardly more than a
compilation.”
494
The sources cited by the authors are balanced between the established
authorities of art history—such as Pliny, Vasari, Winckelmann, Lessing, Montfaucon, Séroux
d’Agincourt, Lanzi, Diderot, Charles Blanc, and Hippolyte Taine—and more popular and
widely-known works, including the writings of Chateaubriand, Hugo, Stendhal, and Goethe,
as well as accounts of travel and articles from the Magasin pittoresque. For example, Lefèvre
cited Hugo’s by-then famous writings on the Alhambra as well as Magasin pittoresque articles
on a range of art monuments, from the Acropolis to the Louvre. Meant to appeal to the
greatest number of readers instead of providing a definitive study of art history, these books
incorporated a kind of art history that would be familiar, comprehensible, and memorable to
the public.
Much scholarly attention has been paid to the growing appreciation of national
monuments in nineteenth-century France. With Alexandre Lenoir’s Musée des monuments
français, which opened in 1795 and displayed salvaged architectural works from the ancien
régime in a public museum, an ongoing effort began to record, preserve, and appreciate the
historical architecture of France.
495
This interest in French monuments continued with the
publication of the nineteen-volume Voyages pittoresques et romantiques dans l’ancienne
France between 1820 and 1878, as well as the establishment of the Commission of Historical

494
Viardot, Les Merveilles de la peinture, vol. 1 (1868), 2: “je conviens sans peine qu’un livre ainsi fait
n’est guère qu’une compilation.”

495
On Lenoir’s museum, see Andrew McClellan, “Alexandre Lenoir and the Museum of French
Monuments,” in Inventing the Louvre: Art, Politics, and the Origins of the Modern Museum in
Eighteenth-Century Paris (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 155-197.

215
Monuments in 1837 and its Mission Héliographique in 1851.
496
Today the lithographs from
the Voyages pittoresques albums and the photographic work of the Commission are among the
best known images of historic French architecture. Many of the same monuments were
illustrated in the Merveilles architecture survey, such as the prehistoric monoliths in Brittany,
the Roman ruins of the Pont du Gard, the Romanesque cathedrals at Le Puy and Poitiers, the
Gothic cathedrals of Notre Dame, Chartres, and Amiens, the medieval castles of Carcassonne
and Coucy, and the chateaux of Chenonceau and Chambord.
Like their British and German precursors, however, the Merveilles books did not stop
with these national monuments, presenting instead an international and even global survey of
art. Though the volumes championed Paris as the modern Athens, credited France as the
birthplace of Gothic architecture, and named Versailles as the model for all palaces that
followed, they simultaneously sought to teach the narratives of world art history.
497
Lefèvre’s
architecture volume, for example, included descriptions and images of Indian temples,
Assyrian and Egyptian monuments, Byzantine churches, and Arabic mosques and palaces, in
addition to the architecture of Europe. Although they were not illustrated, Lefèvre’s survey
also mentioned the Great Wall of China and the Porcelain Tower at Nanjing, the Mayan
temples at Palenque and Cholula, and the Cambodian temple complex of Angkor Wat.

496
On the Voyages pittoresques, see Baron Isidore Taylor, Charles Nodier, and Alphonse de Cailleux,
Voyages pittoresques et romantiques dans l’ancienne France (Paris: Didot Frères, 1820-78); Gordon N.
Ray, “Baron Taylor and the Picturesque,” in The Art of the French Illustrated Book 1700-1914 (New
York: The Pierpont Morgan Library, 1982), 164-72; and Alfred Fierro, “Voyages pittoresque dans
l’ancienne France,” in Histoire de l’édition française, ed. Henri-Jean Martin and Roger Chartier, vol. 3
(Paris: Promodis, 1985), 302. These albums were published in folio format in installments; they
include hundreds of finely made lithographs as well as textual histories of the different regions and
localities of France; and bound, many of the volumes weigh upwards of 25 pounds. Therefore, they are
exclusive collectors items that contrast distinctly with the small, light, and cheap Merveilles volumes.
The Mission Héliographique was the first photographic study of historical monuments in France. On
this, see Philippe Néagu and Jean-Jacques Poulet-Allamagny, Anthologie d’un patrimoine
photographique (Paris: Caisse Nationale des Monuments Historiques, 1980); André Jammes and
Eugenia Parry Janis, The Art of French Calotype (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 48 and
52-66; and Shelley Rice, Parisian Views (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997), 52.

497
Lefèvre, Les Merveilles de l’architecture, 2nd ed. (1867), 55, 210, and 322.
216
Viardot’s sculpture survey likewise included works from ancient Egypt, Assyria, Greece, and
Rome, as well as modern European objects from a variety of countries.
The Merveilles painting surveys, in contrast, which were published in two volumes—
Italian art and European art—focused more exclusively on Europe. Through this Eurocentric
lens, however, these books included details of world history within their narratives. For
instance, while briefly discussing the Middle Ages, Viardot described the schism between
West and East that produced the Byzantine Empire and its artistic culture. He continued this
approach in sections on the Spanish school in which he described the defeat of the Moors in
Granada, the discovery of America by Columbus, and the colonization of Peru and Mexico.
Likewise, in the section on the German school, the author described how the Thirty Years War
(1618-48) slowed the production of art and other cultural endeavors after the flowering of
German art with Dürer, Cranach, and Holbein.
498
The story of art that Viardot offered for his
readers was not removed from human experience in general; it integrated art into the evolution
of humanity.
Stylistic hierarchies privileging Western art remained an important element in the
Merveilles surveys; yet, a continuous expansion of the art history canon was also evident. For
instance, while the Parthenon registered as the “culmination” of artistic perfection, the
Kailasanatha in India was transformed “by the hand of man into a masterpiece of art,” and
thus “must be counted among the marvels of architecture” and “admired” alongside the
famous Greek temple (Fig. 3.12).
499
Lefèvre informed his readers about the “grandeur” and
“grace” of this foreign monument, however “naive” it might seem compared to the “noble

498
Another progressive addition to Viardot’s painting surveys was the mention of a female artist. He
calls Angelica Kauffmann a “charming student” of Mengs who was “known by her spirit, grace, and
affability,” with a remarkable talent for portraiture and a style that influenced artists into the nineteenth
century. Viardot, Les Merveilles de la peinture, vol. 2, 2nd ed. (1872), 107.

499
Lefèvre, Les Merveilles de l’architecture (1865), 59-60 and 2nd ed. (1867), 47-48.

217
spirit” of Greek art.
500
The author also observed that many travelers preferred the
“harmonious” design of the Byzantine church Hagia Sophia (Fig. 3.18) to St. Peter’s in Rome,
and praised the “architectural genius” of Islamic styles, particularly the Alhambra and the
Mosque of Cordoba in Spain.
501
Romanesque and Gothic styles similarly received notice: the
German Romanesque churches in the Rhine Valley, such as Speyer, were called “flowers” of
medieval architecture, while the Gothic cathedral of Chartres was seen as an “immense poem”
reflecting the history of this world and the next.
502

Like Lefèvre, Viardot measured other styles against that of ancient Greece: “it is
Greece, always Greece,” he wrote, “that one must return to in order to find in every creation
the seeds and origins of our modern civilization.”
503
However, Viardot also recognized the
“just, vibrant, agreeable, and solid” color of Egyptian painting and credited the “antique and
primitive civilization” of Egypt as the place where one must “look for the origins of all the
arts.”
504
These divided origins of art history are reflective of changing standards of historical
art in the nineteenth century. At the Universal Exposition in Paris in 1867, for example, the
display of the wooden sculpture Ka-Aper (called Ra-em-Ké in Viardot’s survey) provoked a
reevalution of Egyptian art, as the work potentially rivaled even Greece in the realistic
depiction of the human body (Fig. 3.15). According to archaeologist François Lenormant, the
“statue, as a study of nature, as a striking and life-life portrait, is unsurpassed by any Grecian

500
Ibid., 2nd ed (1867), 48-53.

501
Ibid., 135 and 163.

502
Ibid., 189 and 217.

503
Viardot, Les Merveilles de la peinture, vol. 1 (1868), 10. He wrote: “C’est à la Grèce, toujours à la
Grèce, qu’il faut remonter pour trouver en toutes choses les germes et les origines de notre moderne
civilisation.”

504
Ibid., 8 and Viardot, Les Merveilles de la sculpture (1869), 5.

218
work...The mouth, parted by a slight smile, seems about to speak.”
505
This work, now in the
Cairo Museum, has continued to be a foundational example of Egyptian sculpture, being
featured in later surveys ranging from Ménard’s Histoire des Beaux-Arts (Paris, 1875) to
Frederick Hartt’s A History of Painting, Sculpture, Architecture (New York, 1976) (for further
examples, see Appendix 2).
With Egypt, ancient Assyria offered for the Merveilles authors “an entirely new
chapter in the general history of the arts,” as it had for Fergusson in his survey of world
architecture.
506
Viardot called the Assyrian monuments “inestimable” and drew attention to
the fact that only several decades earlier, works such as the Winged Bulls and the Lion Hunt
reliefs were absent from museums and art history books.
507
Both Viardot and Lefèvre
rehearsed the story of their discovery, including the contributions of Botta, Layard, and
Botta’s successor in France Victor Place, as well as their subsequent arrival at the Louvre and
the British Museum in the late 1840s (for further discussion, see Chapter 2).
Other new additions to the canon were foregrounded as well. Of the Venus de Milo,
rediscovered in 1820, Viardot wrote, “this mutilated statue is the most precious debris of
ancient art that Paris can pride itself in possessing” and later called it “the most magnificent
specimen of Greek art” that had overthrown the Louvre Diana as the highlight of the
museum’s ancient sculpture collection.
508
Again, he found it beneficial to relate the story of
its rediscovery by the ambassador of France to Constantinople, reminding readers of its
relatively recent status as a standard masterpiece of art history. Of course, as a patriotic

505
This passage by Lenormant was quoted in Viardot, Les Merveilles de la sculpture, (1869), 6-10.

506
Viardot, Les Merveilles de la sculpture (1869), 41.

507
Ibid., 57.

508
Ibid., 79.

219
Frenchman, Viardot had much to gain in claiming that the statue possessed by the Louvre was
the pinnacle of Greek art rather than the British Museum’s Parthenon marbles, for which
Knight had claimed a similar status. It is not surprising that Viardot calls Lord Elgin a
“ravisseur” and accuses him of pillaging the marbles that now take his name; yet, Viardot
could not deny the benefit of having these “precious relics of art...in a secure location,” and
only regretted that the “thief” of the marbles had not been French.
509
Following his discussion
of the Louvre Venus, Viardot provided an extensive section on the Elgin Marbles, arguing that
they are “the most beautiful works of art that the genius of man has produced.”
510
By this
time, no survey of art history could neglect to mention both the Venus de Milo and the
Parthenon marbles: they had been unquestionably assimilated into the canon.
Some objects considered canonical in the nineteenth century have since disappeared
from surveys of art history. The most pronounced example is Titian’s St. Peter Martyr, which
was seen as the artist’s best work by many in the nineteenth-century. For instance, J. M. W.
Turner’s lectures on landscape painting at the Royal Academy in 1811 called the work the
“standard” of Titian’s “power.” It had also been brought by Napoleon to the Louvre in 1802
with other artistic war spoils, which is where Turner saw the work. After returning to Venice
in 1816, the painting was accidentally destroyed by fire in 1867, just before the first edition of
Viardot’s survey was published.
511
Nevertheless, the work served as a frontispiece to the first
volume and continued to appear in all later editions and translations of Viardot’s work (Fig.
3.20). It also appeared as a full-page image in the Magasin pittoresque, in Blanc’s Histoire de

509
Viardot, Les Merveilles de la sculpture (1869), 150, and 165-66.

510
Ibid., 165.

511
On the movements and reception of the painting in the 1800s, see Patricia Meilman, “Out of
Oblivion: The Later Fortuna Critica of Titian’s “St. Peter Martyr Altarpiece,” in Memory and Oblivion:
Proceedings of the XXIXth International Congress of the History of Art, ed. Reinink Wessel and Jeroen
Stumpel (Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999), 256-7. It was also praised by Reynolds,
Benjamin West, Constable, Fuseli, and Ruskin, particularly for its treatment of landscape and color.
220
peintres, and in numerous other art history surveys, including Wilhelm Lübke’s Grundriss der
Kunstgeschichte (Stuttgart, 1860)—in its multiple German editions and its translations into
English, French, Danish, Finish, Swedish, and Russian—as well as Roger Peyre’s Histoire
générale des beaux-arts (Paris, 1894) and Nancy Bell’s Elementary History of Art (London,
1874). After the turn of the twentieth century, however, the painting no longer appeared in
surveys. Its disappearance might very well be a result of the shift from wood-engraved to
photographic illustrations; because Titian’s painting had never been photographed before it
burned, its canonical status could not be maintained in absence of a photographic
reproduction. Where wood engravings had laid the groundwork for much of the art history
canon in the nineteenth century, photographic versions of the same works were required for
these foundations to endure beyond the decline of wood engraving as a medium.
The canon presented in the Merveilles surveys is one of historical rather than
contemporary art. Leaving the judgment of current art to critics like Baudelaire, the authors
explicitly avoided “premature critiques” of the most recently produced works, arguing that
only “posterity will judge” which will survive the test of time.
512
Viardot wrote that he “must
stop himself” before discussing the most recent artists, as the following generations “will
know better than us which names and which works will avoid being forgotten.”
513
He went on
nevertheless to provide a list of names of numerous artists shown in the Musée de
Luxembourg, the contemporary art museum in Paris, and those who had received awards at
the Universal Exposition of 1867.
514
Rather than a mere list of artists, Lefèvre’s architecture

512
Lefèvre, Les Merveilles de l’architecture, 2nd ed. (1867), 325.

513
Viardot, Les Merveilles de la peinture, vol. 2, 2nd ed., (1872), 336.

514
These artists include Scheffer, Delacroix, Vernet, Delaroche, Meissonier, Gérome, Cabanel,
Theodore Rousseau. Viardot follows the same approach in his sculpture survey, mentioning Carpeaux
and numerous other lesser-known artists.

221
survey discussed and illustrated Charles Garnier’s Opera, which was at the time not yet
finished, and the railroad viaduct at Chaumont (Fig. 3.19).
515
The image of the viaduct with
its dramatic diagonal slicing through space captured the new power and speed of train travel in
the nineteenth century, an effect underscored in the juxtaposition of this modern engineering
feat with the ambling pedestrians on a nearby dirt road. Though he praised these recently
designed structures, Lefèvre also remained skeptical that they represented the best examples of
contemporary architecture. Would they become part of the historical canon of art? “Who
knows?” Lefèvre responded, recognizing the limitations of his own perspective as an historian
writing in the 1860s.
516

Above all, the authors of the Merveilles surveys demonstrated that art had a rich and
varied history that corresponded to its time and place of production. As Lefèvre argued in the
conclusion to his first edition, the “absolute beauty” of Greek art represented a relative ideal,
one that fit the climate of Greece and the lifestyle of the people. “The extended restraint of
Greek conception,” he stated, “does not agree with the complexity of our needs and customs,”
and only the future will show what masterpieces of contemporary art would be added to the
chefs-d’oeuvres of the ancients.
517
Like Baudelaire, Lefèvre was waiting for the appropriate
art for his modern moment.

Art History on the Move: Circulation in France and Beyond
With the Bibliothèque des Merveilles, the illustrated art history survey reached new
extremes of accessibility, affordability, and portability. In contrast to the folio volume of

515
The illustration of Garnier’s Opera was added in the second edition.

516
Lefèvre, Les Merveilles de l’architecture, 2nd ed. (1867), 325.

517
Lefèvre, Les Merveilles de l’architecture (1865): “L’étendue restreinte des conceptions grecques ne
convient pas à la complexité de nos besoins et de nos moeurs.”

222
Knight’s Pictorial Gallery and the more expensive handbook volumes of Fergusson’s survey
of architecture, these French books introduced a dramatically smaller, cheaper format for the
survey (Fig. 3.21). They were published as an 18-mo jésus, a compact size (18 x 11.5 cm)
initiated in France in 1838 by the publisher Gervais Charpentier for novels and classics.
518
A
book of this size can contain a great deal of textual material, with its dense page layout and
narrower margins; it can be easily carried from place to place, comfortably held in the hand
when reading, and conveniently stored in a private home. According to Isabelle Olivero, this
format made it possible for people who had previously obtained reading materials only
through rental services to own their own copies and to build home libraries.
519

Moreover, the Merveilles books were sold for just a few francs each, with a paper
cover for 2F or a decorative blue cloth binding with red edges for 3F (Figs. 3.3 and 3.22).
520

For illustrated books, these prices were particularly cheap, and advertisements for the series
claimed the volumes were not only affordable by those with “les plus petites bourses,” but
were also within the reach of “tout le monde.” Of course, these claims are relative, and 2F
was beyond the means of many readers; some urban workers made as little as 1,40F per
day.
521
Yet, it was by far the cheapest price for illustrated art history books anywhere in
Europe, and contrasted dramatically with luxury illustrated art histories published at the time,

518
On the development of Charpentier’s format, see Mollier, 211 and 320 and Olivero, 49 and 52-56.

519
Olivero, 70.

520
This price was often discounted up to 25%. See account sheets bound in the 1867 catalogue of
Hachette et Cie at IMEC. At times, this price also fluctuated slightly. It was listed variously at 2.75 F
for sealed edges [tranches jaspées] and 3 F for gilt edges, and for 2.25 F and an additional 1.25 F for
blue percaline or glazed cotton binding and red edges. See, for instance, The Publishers’ Circular 37,
no. 876 (1874): 189.

521
This amount reflected the lowest wage earned by Limoges porcelain workers in 1855. See Roger
Price, A Social History of Nineteenth-Century France (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1987), 200.

223
such as Charles Blanc’s well-known Histoire des peintres de toutes les écoles.
522
This latter
work included fourteen volumes published between 1861 and 1876, each of which covered a
regional school of painting and included numerous large, wood-engraved portraits of artists
and reproductions of their works. It sold for 630F, or between 30 and 60F per volume (Figs.
94 to 96).
523
The composition of Histoire des peintres included pages with wide margins, as
well as text printed with generous spaces between lines (Figs. 3.23 and 3.24). This layout was
far from cramped or overly dense, as each page was arranged with a careful balance of text,
image, and blank space. In contrast, the pages of the Merveilles books, in keeping with the
purpose of Charpentier’s octodecimo format, were more closely packed with text and image,
leaving a thinner margin around the text and less space between the lines and around the
images (Fig. 3.25). Indeed, the format condensed the amount of text that would typically take
up several volumes into a single volume of only a few hundred pages.
Blanc’s Histoire des peintres additionally included details useful to the collector and
connoisseur, such as example signatures of each artist and a comprehensive list of their
existing works, neither of which are included in the Merveilles surveys. This information
would assist in making attributions and thus guaranteeing the authenticity of an artist’s work.
To be sure, Blanc’s book is a “history of painting” in the tradition of Vasari and not an

522
The most inexpensive books in France during this period were sold for less than one franc and often
included no, or very few, illustrations. For instance, the series “Bibliothèque Nationale” begun in 1863
sold for 25 centimes per volume and included a single illustration in each. In comparison, daily
newspapers were 1 sou (5 centimes) and illustrated magazines were 2 sous (10 centimes) and up. See
Olivero, 92 and 101.

523
This information on Blanc’s Histoire des peintres is taken from a post-text advertisement in the
Bibliothèque Nationale de France copy of A. Destremau, Manuel de l’histoire de l’art (Paris: Renouard,
H. Loones Successeur, 1882). The abridged edition of four in-quarto volumes sold for 200 F. Charles
Blanc (1813-1882) was one of the most influential art historians and arts administrators of the
nineteenth century. In 1848, he became Directeur des Beaux-Arts and President of the Commission des
Monuments Historiques and in 1859, he founded the Gazette des Beaux-Arts. He later became the first
professor of Art History at the Collège de France in 1878, and was a member of the Académie de
Beaux-Arts and the Académie Française. On Blanc, see Therrien, 133-43 and Patricia Mainardi, The
End of the Salon: Art and the State in the Early Third Republic (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1993).
224
introductory survey of art history. It was meant for wealthier buyers or institutions that could
acquire and store multiple large, heavy volumes. In contrast, the Merveilles books were
designed for highly mobile readers who desired a compact and concise version of art
history.
524
As in Manet’s Railroad, where the woman has taken her book into the urban
spaces of Paris, Hachette’s Merveilles series enabled art history to intersect with the bustling
pace of modern life.
Not only were their formats portable and their prices affordable, but the art histories in
the Merveilles series also saw the widest circulation of any surveys in the period. They were
sold throughout France, reaching even remote areas by way of their sales in Hachette’s
railroad bookstalls. Although the French rail system had a slow start relative to both Britain
and Germany, more than 20,000 km of rail line were laid and put into use during the Second
Empire (1852-1871).
525
The need in France for a funding system that combined private
investments with state resources, in part responsible for the measured growth of rail

524
According to Georges Perrot, Blanc’s Histoire des peintres volumes—“cette compilation très
inégale”—were widely distributed to municiple libraries throughout France (or at least several
installments of the work). As Director of Fine Arts after 1870, Blanc had the means to assure that his
book was circulated to important institutions. See Perrot, L’Histoire de l’art dans l’enseignement
secondaire (Paris: A. Chevalier-Marescq et Cie, 1900), 58. Francis Haskell refers specifically to the
“popularity” of Blanc’s book, reminding us that the term “popular” is relative. The book was without
doubt widely known and studied in France in the nineteenth century, but was also certainly
cumbersome to use in its multi-volume format as well as expensive to purchase, limiting its ownership
to elite buyers and libraries. Wider audiences could not afford to own these volumes or transport them
in a pocket or purse in the same way as the Merveilles volumes. Perrot also mentions Blanc’s
Grammaire des Arts du Dessin, which was even more widely circulated than his Histoire des peintres,
reaching “la plus petite sou-préfecture.” Yet, Perrot goes on to critique the book as “mal fait pour
initier à ces études ceux qui les abordaient la première fois,” given that it was “ambitieux et laborieux”
and lacked clarity. He also states that the book “n’offre point un resumé, même très sommaire” of art
history. See Haskell, Rediscoveries in Art: Some Aspects of Taste, Fashion, and Collecting in England
and France (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1976), 58-59. It is worth noting that his criticisms of
Blanc’s book are precisely the things praised by reviewers of the Merveilles surveys.

525
The first rail line, the Paris-St. Germain, opened in France in 1837, but in 1850 France still had only
3000 km of track compared to 14,500 in the U.S., 9700 in Britain, and 6000 in Germany. See Ian
Kennedy and Julian Treuherz, The Railway: Art in the Age of Steam (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 2008), 24, 68, and 119.

225
development between 1837 and 1850, also helps to account for the centralized system that
allowed Hachette to control such a vast share of the popular book market through his
monopoly on station stalls.
526
Hachette’s book sales exploited this expansive means of
transportation in ways no other publisher, French or foreign, could match.
527

The marketing for the Merveilles surveys drew upon the new rail networks, making
them the art history books with arguably the widest distribution in nineteenth-century
France.
528
Hachette did not stop at railroad stalls, however, but set up shops at steamboat
stations of several French companies, one of which became transatlantic in 1861, further
extending the scope of its markets.
529
In order to reach the broadest possible audiences,
advertisements for the Merveilles series, unlike those for several other Hachette
publications—including books aimed at “workers”—did not designate a specific social class
as their target.
530
Rather, the intended readership was left open-ended; the Merveilles books
were advertised as part of the “Bibliothèques Populaires” destined for “les gens du monde”
and “la jeunesse.”
531
Like the diverse masses of railroad travelers, potential buyers of the
Merveilles art history books spanned a range of social levels.

526
On the lack of private investment capital for railroads in France, the mixed system of private and
government funding, and the related slow start for the French rail system, see ibid., 68-70.

527
Mollier, 293-99 and 452. For instance, W. H. Smith never held the same monopoly with his railroad
bookstalls, and other publishers set up stalls in the stations of Ireland and Scotland after 1860.

528
Tracing the sales of these books in specific stations has proven difficult, a challenge also noted in
Parinet, 105. Even if the numbers sold in each station could be verified, the identities of the actual
buyers would of course remain unknown.

529
Hachette année 150, 21. At the turn of the century, Hachette extended his sales network further,
adding stalls in the new métro stations. See DeMarco, 13.

530
See listing for “Littérature populaire spécialement destinée aux ouvriers des villes et des campagnes”
in 1868 volume of Hachette’s catalogues at IMEC. These books for workers were priced at 1F per
volume.

531
See brochure of “Livres à l’Usage des Bibliothèques Populaires” dated August 1868 bound into
1868 volume of Hachette’s sale catalogues at IMEC. The categories of “gens du monde” and “la
226
Over the years, the Merveilles surveys saw multiple editions, with edition sizes
between 3000 and 7500 copies.
532
Although such an edition size was average for the period
(but also much higher than the 600-900 average of the 1830s), the size was deliberately
limited so that new editions with updated information could be consistently issued.
533

Lefèvre’s architecture survey, first published in 1865, saw re-editions in 1867, 1870, 1874,
1880, and a sixth and final edition in 1884, bringing the total number of copies into the tens of
thousands, comparable to many of the nonfiction bestsellers of the period.
534
Hachette’s other
art history volumes were issued in numerous editions as well.
535

The Merveilles art history surveys in these many editions also circulated well beyond
French borders to markets throughout Europe and the U.S. The original French-language
versions were offered in various countries—for instance, Hachette maintained an

jeunesse” were repeatedly used to designate the audience for Hachette’s works of “general literature
and useful knowledge.” “Gens du monde” specifically referred to a non-specialist majority as opposed
to “savants” denoting an enlightened and elite minority. On the definition of “gens du monde” in the
context of popular publishing, see Raichvarg and Jacques, 30.

532
This discrepancy is evidenced in various sources. Article 4 of the series contract states that Charton
will plan for a new edition after the exhaustion of a previous edition, which will “le mettre au courant
des nouvelles découvertes qui pourraient avoir en lieu, ou des nouveaux faits qui se seraient produits.”
The publication announcement states that the series volumes, “étant imprimé à quelques milliers
d’exemplaires seulement pour chaque édition, il sera facile de les tenir incessamment au courant de tous
les progrès des sciences et des arts.” According to Aurenche and Lagarde-Fouquet and Lagarde, some
books in the series were published in editions of 5,500 copies, such as Flammarion’s Les Merveilles
Célestes (although the authors do not cite a source for this figure). See Aurenche, 432 note 70 and
Lagarde-Fouquet and Lagarde, 145. Valérie Tesnière suggests that the editions sizes were between
5000 and 7500 and on average the books were printed in total editions of 14,000 copies. However,
these numbers are in reference to the science volumes; Tesnière does not discuss the statistics of the art
volumes. Nor does she cite her source for these numbers. See Tesnière, 73 and 77 note 17. As Mollier
notes, the Bibliothèque des Chemins de Fer volumes were often printed in editions of 3000, a choice
that seems likely to have been repeated with the Merveilles volumes. See Mollier, 329.

533
On the changes from the 1830s to the 1860s in edition sizes of French books, see Olivero, 143.

534
Martyn Lyons, “Les best-sellers,” in Histoire de l’édition française, vol. 3, eds. Henri-Jean Martin
and Roger Chartier (Paris: Promodis, 1983-86), 368-401. See also Olivero, 143-45.

535
Between the 1860s and 1880s, the two painting volumes, the sculpture volume, and the volumes on
printmaking, ceramics, and glassmaking all had four editions each. The gold-working and tapestries
volumes were published in two editions each.
227
establishment in London from which it advertised and sold copies of the books—while
translations of these surveys appeared in at least five European languages.
536
Spanish editions
emerged in 1867; English, Italian, Russian and Polish editions were offered starting in the
1870s (Figs. 3.26 and 3.27).
537
In some cases, such as the Spanish editions, Hachette held the
copyright to the translations and directly sold them in Spain; the books were published under
the series name “Biblioteca de las Maravillas” and included versions of the architecture,
painting, sculpture, and printmaking volumes.
538
In other cases, Hachette sold the rights of
translation to foreign firms, such as the Brothers Treves in Milan, Sampson Low, Son, and
Marston in London, and Scribner, Armstrong, and Co. in New York. The Italian and
American versions appeared in series—the “Biblioteca della Meraviglie” and the “Illustrated
Library of Wonders” respectively—both of which grouped the art books together under the
subsets “Meraviglie dell’Arte” and “Wonders of Art.”
539
The London translations were, in

536
The London office was at 18 King William Street, Charing Cross. See “Select List of Popular French
Works Published by Hachette and Co,” from Nov. 1871 bound into the 1871 volume of Hachette’s sales
catalogues at IMEC. This source listed the price per volume of the Merveilles books at 2s. Ads for the
Merveilles series sold from the London office also appeared in the Publishers’ Circular between 1874
and 1882.

537
The sculpture volume was translated into Russian in St. Petersburg in 1871, and the architecture
volume was published in Polish in Warsaw in 1873. It is interesting that no German translations have
surfaced, but, as Mollier notes, contracts between Hachette and German firms for translations were
more rare than those with other countries. See Mollier, 388. The lack of German translations might also
be because of an already saturated market for art history handbooks in Germany.

538
Unlike the other translations, the Spanish “Biblioteca de las Maravillas” was advertised in catalogues
published by Hachette. See February 1868 “Catálogo de la Livreria Española de L. Hachette y Cia” in
the 1868 volume of catalogues at IMEC. This catalogue names Charton as series director with D.
Mariano Urrabieta as director of translation.

539
The “Meraviglie dell’Arte” included translations by L. Chirtani of the architecture, Italian and
European painting, sculpture, and printmaking volumes. The books were printed in the same
octodecimo format but with a light pink color for the paper covers. In the preface to the Italian painting
volume, the publishers claim that the books were, like the Bibliothèque des Merveilles in France, “utile
per la diffusione del gusto artistico.” See Le Meraviglie della pittura antica e italiana (Milan: Fratelli
Treves, 1874). The price of these Italian translations was between 2 and 2.50 Lira. Hachette had also
contracted in 1863 with the Brothers Treves for translations of Tour du monde articles and illustrations.
See Mollier, 387. The American “Wonders of Art” included translations of the painting volumes, the
architecture volume, the sculpture volume, and the glass-making volume. These were sold at $1.50 per
228
contrast, sold individually and never grouped as a series.
540
As a sales catalogue issued in
1871 by Hachette’s London office stated, “the fact that nearly all the books [in the Merveilles
series] have been successfully brought out in more than four languages, and the immense sales
of the series in France, are their best recommendations.”
541
These books saw such ready
translation by foreign publishers in part because no authors’ rights were paid in the
transaction. Hachette had contracted each of the Merveilles volumes to their authors for a
one-time payment of between 800 and 1200F. The firm therefore owned the copyright to all
the books in the series and could sell the translation rights at will.
542
The series contract
specifies that “the money that can be procured from ceding the right of translation of each
volume in one or several foreign languages would belong to MM. Louis Hachette et Cie.”
543

Not all of these translations constituted exact copies of the texts in the original French
versions. The Wonders of Sculpture published by Sampson Low in London, for instance,
though for the most part a direct translation, added a translator’s note signed “N. D’Anvers,”
as well as a number of additional footnotes throughout the text. N. D’Anvers was the
pseudonym of Nancy Bell, a translator and author of art history surveys in Britain, whose

volume. See post-text advertisement in Louis Viardot, Wonders of Sculpture, 2nd ed., trans. N.
D’Anvers (New York: Scribner, Armstrong, and Co., 1873).

540
Sampson Low published translations of the painting, sculpture, printmaking, ceramics, and
glassmaking volumes. The titles were Wonders of Italian Art (1870), Wonders of European Art (1871),
Wonders of Sculpture (1872), Wonders of Engraving (1871), History of the Ceramic Art (1874), and
Marvels of Glass Making (1870).

541
See the “Select List of Popular French Works Published by Hachette and Co.” dated November 1871
in the 1871 volume of Hachette’s sales catalogues at IMEC, 11-12.

542
Article 2 of the series contract specified the authors’ one-time payment amount as 800F (although
for certain authors this was raised, such as Louis Viardot, who was paid 1200F for each of his painting
and sculpture volumes) as well as the fact that “la propriété pleine et entière de la dite collection
appartiendra à MM. Louis Hachette et Cie.” Charton was to be paid ten centimes per volume printed
for his role as editor.

543
“Les sommes que pourrait produire la cession du droit de traduire le dit volume en une or plusieurs
langues étrangères appartiendraient à MM. Louis Hachette et Cie.” See series contract, article 7.

229
works will be discussed in detail in Chapter 5. Bell’s introductory note praised Viardot’s
work as “full of interest” but regretted “the incompleteness and injustice of his chapter on
Sculpture in England.” While Viardot’s original French text had praised England’s leadership
in industry, it denied that England could rival the accomplishments of ancient Greece, except
perhaps in the secondary genres of busts. It is in this chapter on English sculpture that Bell
made the most interventions through detailed footnotes, asserting her voice as an art historian.
The American version of the Wonders of Sculpture, published by Scribner’s in New York, was
an exact copy of Bell’s English translation—the translator’s note is identical and similarly
signed “N. D’Anvers”—but an unsigned section on American sculpture was appended as a
final chapter. Thus, each translation could, and often did, alter the original text in ways that
emphasized its national context of publication.
544
Of course the act of translation itself was an
important means of popularization, and, at the same time, responded to the wide sales and
popularity of the original books. Foreign publishers understood that by offering versions of
the Merveilles surveys in their native language, they could reach audiences who would not
buy the books in French. While Hachette had endeavored to provide information in basic,
comprehensible French with its Merveilles series, other publishers made the works even more
widely accessible through their translations.

The Illustrations of Art History
Foreign publishers variously adapted the written texts of the Merveilles surveys, but
reused the same illustrations in all of these adaptations (Figs. 3.28 and 3.29). These
illustrations therefore became some of the best-known art history images, viewed by hundreds

544
In an 1867 contract between Hachette and Sampson Low for the translation of several books in the
Merveilles series (but not the art history surveys, as these contracts apparently do not survive), it is
specified that the London publisher is free “to introduce into their English translation free of charge any
alterations which they may make in the text” and to add “any fresh cuts [that is, illustrations]” to their
versions. See IMEC file HAC 59.1 “Sampson Low.”
230
of thousands of international readers during the nineteenth century. Today, in our era of
digital reproduction, when we are bombarded with detailed, full-color copies of these same
artworks in books and on websites, the Merveilles wood engravings seem humble and highly
interpretive. Already in 1953, William Ivins dismissed such illustrations as “little more than
travesties of the objects they purported to represent.”
545
Despite their lack of mimesis,
however, these images readily signified the same famous works of art that appear in even the
most recently published surveys, from the Laocoon to Michelangelo’s Creation of Man to
Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa. Indeed, these collections of wood-engraved illustrations,
which were repeated again and again in internationally circulating popular books, did much to
shape the enduring canons of art history (for further examples of this continuity, see Appendix
2).
Just as the technology of stereotyping had made it possible for Knight to disseminate
his Penny Magazine art history images beyond Britain in the 1830s and to recycle them in
later publications, the newer process of electrotyping allowed Hachette to copy cheaply the
Merveilles illustrations for use in all later editions and for sales to foreign publishers. This
process provided more accurate and durable metal plates than the earlier stereotyping
method.
546
After a wax mold was taken of the wood-engraved block, an electric current was
used to deposit a layer of metal onto the wax. The thin metal relief plate thus produced was
then mounted onto a block of wood for printing. Because the electotype plates reproduced not

545
William M. Ivins, Prints and Visual Communication (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1969; first
edition, 1953; reprint, 1985), 39.

546
According to Michel Melot et al., the electroplating process was invented in 1836. See Prints:
History of an Art (New York: Rizzoli, 1981), 104. See also Philip Gaskell, A New Introduction to
Bibliography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972), 206; and Rob Banham, “the Industrialization of
the Book 1800-1970,” in A Companion to the History of the Book, ed. Simon Eliot and Jonathan Rose
(Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), 280.

231
only the images but also the signatures of the French illustrators from the original blocks, their
source in Hachette’s Bibliothèque des Merveilles was made all the more evident.
The purchase of “electros” or “clichés” produced from wood engravings proved
significantly cheaper for publishers than commissioning new illustrations.
547
Once they
purchased the electrotyped plates, foreign publishers could print the illustrations on their own
presses simultaneously with their translated texts and in numbers limited only by the life of
the plate. A large part of Hachette’s financial returns on the Merveilles books derived from
the sales of illustrations. Hachette controlled the reproduction of all illustrations for the books
and could sell them for its own exclusive profit. The electros became the property of the
purchasing publisher once they had been paid for.
548
In contrast, when purchasing illustrations
in other media from Hachette, such as steel engravings or lithographs, the cost was higher, the
number of copies was limited, and the foreign publisher contracted the printing from Hachette.
The finished prints would have been sent to the foreign publisher to be bound into the books
later.
549

Even when a foreign publisher added additional illustrations to their translations of the
Merveilles volumes—such as Sampson Low in London, which appended numerous
“autotype” photographs and prints from the “woodbury permanent process” to its translations

547
The word “cliché” was used in the nineteenth century to designate a number of different objects.
There was the cliché typographique, or relief plate used in typographic printing, which included
electrotypes of wood engravings. There was also the cliché en taille-douce, which was a metal plate
created with intaglio processes, where ink fills grooves in the metal rather than remains on the surface
as in a relief plate. And there was the cliché photographique, or photographic negative. On the varied
meanings of the word, see Jean Adeline, Les Arts de reproduction vulgarisé (Paris: Ancienne Maison
Quantin, Librairies-Imprimeries Réunies, 1894), 134. In English, “cliché” was used most often for the
electrotyped plate after a wood engraving.

548
See contracts in IMEC file 59.1 “Sampson Low.”

549
See the contract signed 17 Oct. 1867 for an English translation of Jules Gouffé’s Livre de Cuisine in
IMEC file HAC 59.1 “Sampson Low.” This contract specified that the right of translation would cost
£40, the clichés of wood engravings would cost £48, and the plates of chromolithographs—limited to
16 plates in sets of 1000—would cost £251. The chromolithos were to be printed by Hachette.

232
(Fig. 3.30)—these volumes still included the original wood-engraved illustrations as well.
550

The addition of these tonal photographic plates with their striking deep and velvety blacks
required pasting the images onto pages that were later bound into the volumes, which not
surprisingly elevated the price for the English translations. They were listed in the British
book trade journal Publishers’ Circular from 1870 at 12s 6d (between 15 and 16F, or around
eight times the price of the Merveilles surveys). Few other foreign publishers utilized the still
expensive technology of photomechanical reproduction, which was well advanced in London
at the time.
551

Photography did play a role in the production the original Merveilles wood
engravings, however. In the architecture survey, for instance, the images of the Parthenon, the
Temple at Paestum, and the Erechtheum were drawn after the photographs of Ferrier and
Soulier, and identified as such in the captions (Fig. 3.17). The illustrations of the Laocoon and
the Venus de Milo were presumably based on the photographs of Adolphe Braun, as I
mentioned in my introduction (Fig. 1).
552
But, as in L’Illustration and other illustrated
periodicals, where wood engravings were similarly taken from photographs and captioned as

550
For instance, Wonders of Italian Art (1870) included 10 Autotypes in addition to 29 wood
engravings, while Wonders of European Art (1871) included 16 “reproductions by the woodbury
permanent process” in addition to 12 wood engravings. In contrast, Wonders of Sculpture (1872) did
not add any photographically produced images, but included all of the wood engravings from the
Merveilles volume. On the autotype and the woodburytype, see Anthony Hamber, “A Higher Branch
of the Art”: Photographing the Fine Arts in England, 1839-1880 (Amsterdam: Gordon and Breach,
1996), 166-76 and Gerry Beegan, The Mass Image: A Social History of Photomechanical Reproduction
in Victorian London (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).

551
On photomechanical reproduction in nineteenth-century London, see Beegan. Duplessis’s Les
Merveilles de la gravure (1869) did include three images labeled as “heliogravures” as well as a final
section on “heliographie” as a recent invention allowing photographs to be printed with the etching
process, which he credits to Niépce.

552
Ségolène Le Men, “Trois regards sur le Laocoon: la caricature selon Daumier, la photographie selon
Braun, le livre d’histoire de l’art selon Ivins,” in Le Laocoon: histoire et réception, ed. Elisabeth
Décultot, Jacques Le Rider, and François Queyrel (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2003), 195-
220.

233
such, the drawn and printed illustrations remained the format viewed by the public of the
Merveilles surveys, not the original photographs.
553
Nowhere is this mediating relationship
between photographs and wood engravings clearer than in Gaston Tissandier’s Merveilles de
la photographie, published in the Merveilles series in 1874. Both a history of the medium of
photography and a guide to its practice, the book was nonetheless illustrated with wood
engravings. Not only did this print medium keep the cost of the book down, but it also
allowed for the inclusion of instructional diagramatic images impossible to procure with
photographs. Even when discussing photography as a cutting-edge technology of
reproduction, wood engravings still served as the more efficient choice to illustrate such
claims.
Publishers further capitalized on their investment in the Merveilles wood engravings
by including these images in other publications. As discussed above, Hachette reused images
from the surveys in its travel guidebooks. The London firm of Sampson Low, having
purchased the electrotypes from Hachette for its translations of the Merveilles surveys, also
employed these illustrations in its numerous other art history books, including Louis Viardot’s
Painters of All Schools (1877), a revised and expanded version of the author’s Merveilles
surveys of painting, as well as Bell’s Elementary History of Art (Fig. 3.31) and Leader Scott’s

553
According to the preface of Le Tour du Monde, “la photographie enfin qui se répand dans toutes les
contrées du globe, est un miroir dont le témoignage matériel ne saurait être suspect et doit être préféré
même à des dessins d’un grand mérite dès qu’ils peuvent inspirer le moindre doute. Dans les cinquante-
deux livraisons que nous venons de terminer, plusieurs de nos gravures les plus remarquables ont été
faites d’après des photographies.” See Tour du Monde 1 (1860), vii and as quoted in Aurenche, 398. It
is also worth noting that the first photograph was not printed in L’Illustration until 31 Mar. 1890. On
the mediating relationship of wood engraved illustrations to photographic reproductions, Anne-Claude
Ambroise-Rendu, “Du Dessin de presse à la photographie, 1878-1914,” Revue d’histoire moderne et
contemporaine 39 (1992): 6-28 and Jeannene M. Przyblyski, “Moving Pictures: Photography,
Narrative, and the Paris Commune of 1871,” in Cinema and the Invention of Modern Life, ed. Leo
Charney and Vanessa Schwartz (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 263-64.

234
(Lucy Baxter) Sculpture Renaissance and Modern (1886).
554
Both Hachette and Sampson
Low additionally recycled the illustrations in advertisements for their publications. Hachette
illustrated its New Year’s or “Etrennes” catalogues with images of the Laocoon from Les
Merveilles de la sculpture and a Goya print from Les Merveilles de la gravure, while Sampson
Low included ads in the illustrated Christmas issues of the Publishers’ Circular for his
translations of the Merveilles surveys: the 1870 and 1871 issues presented copies of the
Merveilles illustrations of David’s Rape of the Sabine Women, Masaccio’s Tribute Money, and
numerous classical sculptures.
555

The fact that Hachette paid no copyright fees to any artist of the Merveilles wood
engravings helped to accelerate their exchange as electrotypes. In the series contracts,
Hachette specified its exclusive control over the use of the images and no artists were named
in these documents.
556
Therefore, when Hachette sold electrotypes to foreign publishers, it
was for a flat rate, either a single price for the entire set of images or a rate per square

554
The firm of Sampson Low was well established in London, having opened its doors in 1790. In
1837, it launched the bi-weekly trade journal Publishers’ Circular, of which it was later (in 1867)
solely responsible for printing and distribution. The firm was also respected for its connections with
foreign publishers, especially in France and the U.S. As the preface to the journal declared, the firm
possessed “a large stock of popular foreign educational, literary, and scientific works always on hand”
and received “fast-train parcels...from the continent twice a week.” See Publishers’ Circular, 17 Jan.
1874, 51. The close relations between Hachette and Sampson Low and Co. can be seen in the efforts of
Edward Marston, a partner in the London firm, to raise money for booksellers and printers who were
victims of the Seige of Paris in 1870 and 1871. The 37,500F raised were sent to Paris and distributed to
the victims by Hachette’s firm. See Ernest Chesneau, “Les Grands éditeurs anglais,” Le Livre (1885):
182-87.

555
See “Catalogue des Livres d’Etrennes” from 1870 in the 1869 volume of Hachette’s sales catalogues
at IMEC.

556
Article 1 of the series contract specified that Charton was responsible for providing the arrangements
necessary concerning the execution of the illustrations. No artists were mentioned. Other contracts for
specific volumes from the series, which appear in IMEC file HAC 1.46 “Bibliothèque des Merveilles,”
disclose that Hachette held the rights to the images. For instance, the contract for Jean Pierre Moyner’s
Le Théâtre Vu Derrière la Rideaux dated 1872, which specified that although the author designed the
illustrations for the volume, these illustrations were the property of Hachette et Cie, who “pourront en
disposer comme bon leur semblera.”

235
centimeter of plates produced. The lack of artists’ rights on these images resulted from
several factors. First, because the artists of the copied works had for the most part been long
deceased, those originals were clearly within the public domain.
557
Second, line-drawn
reproductions of fine art that could be considered “extracts” of the originals, rather than
mimetic reproductions or “copies,” were free from copyright. Stephen Bann explains this
exemption for such line drawings and locates its origin in an 1812 court case.
558
Although the
original case dealt with metal engravings, it set a precedent for the later use of wood-engraved
illustrations after contemporary works of art that appeared in the popular press. Bann
emphasizes that there was a distinction in status in the nineteenth century, both legally and
artistically, between the “higher and lower grades of reproduction.”
559
Where metal
engravings were situated at the highest end of this spectrum, were considered works of art in
themselves, and therefore required the purchase of copyright, wood engravings were at the

557
The law of July 19-24, 1793, the original copyright law in France, declared that the heirs of the
author (or artist) controlled reproduction rights until ten years after the author’s death. On July 14,
1866, this period was extended to fifty years after the author’s death. For the texts of these and other
laws pertaining to French copyright, see the appendices to Georges Chabaud, Le Droit d’auteur, des
artistes, et fabricants (Paris: Imprimerie de la Gazette du Palais, 1908). Today, the “public domain”
status of works out of copyright is often circumvented by museums, which control the reproduction of
works in their collections by copyrighting an official copy and charging fees for its use. On this
practice, see Susan Bielstein, Permissions, A Survival Guide: Blunt Talk about Art as Intellectual
Property (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006).

558
The case was between painter and critic Charles-Paul Landon and printer Pierre Didot. Didot
brought a charge against Landon for including in his publication Annales du Musée line engravings
after works of contemporary French art that had already been reproduced in engravings of much higher
quality by Didot. After several appeals, the court decided in favor of Landon, ruling that his derivative
simple line drawings were not of sufficient quality to be forgeries of Didot’s engravings. See Bann,
Parallel Lines, 31-33. On similar nineteenth-century court cases in Britain in which the “copy” was
defined as something “so near to the original as to give to every person seeing it the idea created by the
original” and also an image that competed with the original for profit, see Peter Jaszi, “Toward a
Theory of Copyright: The Metamorphoses of ‘Authorship,’” Duke Law Journal no. 2 (1991): 476.

559
Ibid., 33-35. In her discussion of public domain issues today, Bielstein notes that scholarly art books
are impossibly expensive, their price driven by the reproduction rights for their images, although these
images serve, above all, the purposes of information and learning. Perhaps the distinct visual
differences between wood-engraved illustrations in nineteenth-century art books and photographic
illustrations today, despite their similar didactic functions, can spark questions about our current
system, in which the purchase of an “authentic copy” can only be made at such a high cost.
236
opposite end of this spectrum. Their use for informational and didactic, rather than artistic,
purposes exempted them copyright.
For all of these reasons, the market for wood-engraved art history illustrations
operated on a different scale from the sales of artistic reproductions. Publishers contracted the
production of these prints from artists—both draftsmen and engravers on wood—in a “work
for hire” arrangement, with the understanding that the artist held no continual rights to their
images. The exchange of wood-engraved illustrations controlled by publishers then became
part of an industrial, large-scale, and international economy of goods. Far from denying these
wood engravings a role in nineteenth-century art culture, however, this scale of mass
production and distribution made such images all the more important in shaping art history.
These wood engravings did as much to consolidate enduring canons of art history monuments
as similarly mass-produced photographic reproductions, which, more than any other media,
have been credited with this development.
560
André Malraux famously claimed that “art
history is the history of that which can be photographed;” I suggest that art history is just as
accurately the history of that which can be illustrated.
561
It was the trade in wood engravings
that first made art history accessible, affordable, and trans-national.

The Illustrators of Art History
Though Hachette’s firm claimed full responsibility for the Merveilles illustrations, it
is nonetheless possible retrieve the identities of many artists who created these once famous
art history images. In the nineteenth century, wood engraving could provide a healthy income
for artists, and publishers often worked with veritable armies of illustrators, both draftsman

560
For the literature on photography’s revolutionary role in art history, see my introduction.

561
André Malraux, “Museum without Walls,” in The Voices of Silence, trans. Stuart Gilbert (Garden
City, NY: Doubleday, 1953), 30.

237
and engravers (cutters). The medium was indeed more of an industrial craft than a technique
for making original art (although groups of original artistic wood engravers did emerge at the
end of the century).
562
According to an article in La Presse covering Hachette’s display at the
1867 Exposition Universelle, the firm at the time employed 130 draftsmen and 200
engravers.
563
Nineteenth-century print historians Henri Bouchot and Georges Duplessis both
cited Hachette’s firm as an important supporter of wood engravers in Paris.
564

Hachette’s Bibliothèque des Merveilles therefore provides a useful context for
understanding the role of wood engravers in the popularization of art history. The title pages
of the Merveilles art history surveys cited several draftsmen. Lefèvre’s architecture survey
named Emile Thérond and Dieudonné-Auguste Lancelot (on these and other artists mentioned
in this section, see Appendix 1). In his painting surveys, Viardot cited A. Paquier (Figs. 3.14,
3.20, and 3.28), and in his sculpture survey, he named Hippolyte Chapuis, J. Petot (Fig. 3.25),
and Paul Sellier. In this latter publication, the list was followed by a telling “etc.,” a word that
encompassed not only the other draftsmen, but also the dozens of engravers who were never
cited on the title pages. The majority of illustrations displayed the signatures of either the

562
On these movements in France, see Pierre Gusman, La Gravure sur bois en France au XIXe siècle
(Paris: Editions Albert Morancé, 1929), 42-48. In 1885, wood engravers and woodcutters united to
form the Société artistique de la Gravure sur Bois Originale, for which Stéphane Pannemaker was the
first president. That same year the Revue illustrée was founded to promote original works (it ran until
1902). Another important journal in this movement was L’Image (1896-98), and original print albums
such as L’Estampe originale (1893-1894) included woodcuts as well. Artists involved included
Auguste Lepère, Bracquemond, Albert Besnard, Pierre Gusman, and Henri Rivière. Also involved
were the bibliophilic societies, such as the Société des Amis des Livres. In 1902, a dedicated exhibition
for historical and contemporary woodcuts and wood engraving opened at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, and
following that, in 1911, a new artists’ society, the Société de la Gravure sur Bois Originale was founded
under Pierre Gusman.

563
Louis Énault, “Les Livres de la Maison Hachette,” La Presse (Paris), 21 Sept. 1867.

564
Henri Bouchot, Le Livre: L’Illustration, La Reliure, Etude historique sommaire (Paris: Quantin,
1886), 236 and Georges Duplessis, Les Graveurs sur bois contemporaines (Paris: Bonaventure et
Ducessois, 1857), 9. Both Bouchot and Duplessis were curators at the Cabinet des Estampes of the
Bibliothèque Nationale.

238
draftsmen or the engravers and often both.
565
As Remi Blachon notes, often the only means of
learning the identities of these illustrators is through their signatures at the bottom of
published illustrations. These names enable us to identify the draftsmen responsible for
Lefèvre’s architecture survey—Thérond (Fig. 3.17), Lancelot, Alexandre De Bar (Fig. 3.11),
and Hercule Catenacci—as well as the engravers, including Eugène Meunier, Antoine
Bertrand (Figs. 3.12 and 3.13), Charles LaPlante, Eugène Sotain, Alfred Cordier (Fig. 3.18),
Auguste Trichon, Hotelin et Hurel, Achille Pouget, Théophile Hildibrand, Alphonse J. F.
Minne, Pierre and Charles Laly, and either Alfred or Edward Etherington. For Viardot’s
painting volumes, Paquier was apparently the sole draftsman; the engravers included Léon
Chapon, Jules Robert, Joseph Ansseau (Fig. 3.14), LaPlante, Adolphe Gusman, Jacob Ettling
(Fig. 3.28), François Pannemaker, and H. Koch. For Viardot’s sculpture survey, the draftsmen
were Chapuis, Petot, Sellier, and Charles-François Daubigny, and the engravers included
Thérond, La Plante, Hildibrand, Félix Jean Gauchard, and Ettling.
This cumbersome list of more than thirty artists highlights the collaborative work that
went into the creation of the Merveilles art history images. Few of these artists specialized in
such work; rather, most simultaneously produced illustration projects for a wide range of
genres, including science manuals, travel guides, and children’s literature. This point allows
an appreciation of the link between popular art history surveys and other general market
publications in the nineteenth century, and by extension, the intersections of art history and
other fields. Publishers produced and marketed these popular art histories outside the sphere
of high art; yet through their texts and accompanying illustrations, these books brought the
most valued masterpieces of high art into the domain of popular culture.

565
Blachon, 188.
239
Few of these artists are well known today. Hachette also worked with better-known
illustrators, such as Tony Johannot and Gustave Doré, both of whom Hachette’s contracts
mentioned individually, and whose works were original designs, not reproductions after
existing works of art.
566
The firm’s catalogues described the books by these more famous
illustrators as “grand luxe” and listed their prices as between 25 and 200F.
567
By contrast, the
contracts never mention the artists of the Merveilles series; not suprisingly, their names
remain less familiar to historians today. An important exception was Daubigny, who designed
several images for Lefèvre’s architecture survey and Viardot’s sculpture survey.
Though many of these wood engravers are now unknown, their work was widely
recognized in the nineteenth century, both in France and beyond, as it appeared in numerous
internationally circulating publications. They contributed to the journals Magasin pittoresque
and Tour du monde, as well as to art books such as Blanc’s Histoire des peintres de toutes les
écoles. An advertisement for Tour du monde that appeared in Reculs’ Londres Illustré in
Hachette’s Guides Joanne described the importance of the journal’s illustrations and the fame
of the artists who designed them:
Illustration here is the object of particular care. There does not exist a publication in
which the design and the engraving can be more useful than in a travel journal. Thus
we have secured the collaboration of the most distinguished designers. Mm. Français,

566
See, for instance, the 1861 contract for Louis Viardot’s Don Quichotte from IMEC file HAC 59.3
“Louis Viardot.” This contract mentions that the folio volume book will be printed “avec les
illustrations de Gustave Doré.” On these artists as illustrators of literature, see Blachon, “L’Age de
Gustave Doré: La Gravure de Teinte,” in La Gravure sur bois, 143-55; Philippe Kaenel, Le Métier
d’illustrateur, 1830-1880: Rodolphe Töpffer, J.-J. Grandville, Gustave Doré (Paris: Messène, 1996);
William Cole, “Literal Art? A New Look at Doré’s Illustrations for Danté’s Inferno,” Word & Image
10, no. 2 (1994): 95-106; and Rachel Schmidt, “The Romancing of Don Quixote: Spatial Innovation
and Visual Interpretation in the Imagery of Johannot, Doré, and Daumier,” Word & Image 14, no. 4
(1998): 354-70.

567
See July 1868 catalogue in the 1868 volume of Hachette’s sales catalogues at IMEC. On the
extraordinary cost of Hachette’s illustrated bible with the designs of Alexandre Bida, see Mollier, 427-
28. Not only was the artist paid a huge amount of 10,000 F to travel to the holy land for research and
sketching, but the production of the book cost over one million francs, setting a new record for a French
publisher’s investment in a luxury illustrated book.

240
Daubigny, G. Doré, Jules Noël, Thérond, de Bar, Lancelot, Grandsire, Sabatier, etc.,
have already furnished us with a very large number of drawings that have been
entrusted to our premier engravers.
568

Among the names listed, Daubigny, Thérond, De Bar, and Lancelot all worked as well on the
Merveilles art history surveys. Other artists who contributed to both the Merveilles art history
surveys and Tour du Monde included draftsmen Catenacci and Chapuis as well as engravers
Bertrand, Gauchard, and Hildibrand (on the numerous others, see Appendix 1). Through the
circulation of this journal, the reputation of these artists reached beyond French borders. As
an advertisement for Tour du monde in Publishers’ Circular states,
This “journal of voyages,” published under the care of M. Edouard Charton (by
Hachette et Cie), is famous, and indeed unequalled, throughout the civilised world
for the original and masterly character of its narrations—for the brilliancy, power,
and accuracy of its illustrations.
569

Publishers in Germany, Spain, England, and Italy contracted with Hachette for the right to
translate the journal articles and the purchase of electrotypes of the illustrations.
570
The work
of the journal’s illustrators therefore became known across Europe in the early 1860s. When
their names later appeared on the images in the Merveilles art history surveys, which also
circulated in these same countries, they must have been a familiar sight for readers.
Blanc’s Histoire des peintres was another acclaimed publication on which a number
of the Merveilles art history survey artists collaborated. This multi-volume work included

568
See post-text advertisements in Reculs, London illustré: “L’illustration en est l’objet de soins
particuliers. Il n’y a pas, en effet, de publication à laquelle le dessin et la gravure puissent être plus
utiles qu’à un journal de voyages. Aussi nous sommes-nous assurés du concours des dessinateurs les
plus distingués. MM. Français, Daubigny, G. Doré, Jules Noël, Thérond, de Bar, Lancelot, Grandsire,
Sabatier, etc., nous ont déjà fourni un très-grand nombre de dessins qui ont été confiés à nos premiers
graveurs.”

569
Publishers’ Circular, 8 Dec. 1871, 988.

570
Mollier, 387.

241
some 3000 wood engravings produced by more than a hundred different artists.
571
For
example, Paquier, whose first name remains unknown, contributed hundreds of designs for the
images in Blanc’s book. By 1868, when the first edition of the initial volume of Viardot’s
painting survey was published, Paquier’s name would have been respected in France for his
years of work on Blanc’s book, and specifically on reproductive drawings after Old Master
paintings. Additional artists who worked on both the Histoire des peintres and the Merveilles
art histories included draftsmen Daubigny and Catenacci, and engravers Pannemaker and
LaPlante, among many others catalogued in Appendix 1.
Numerous nineteenth-century historians of printmaking recognized the importance of
wood engraving as an illustration medium. In his multi-volume publication on contemporary
French printmakers, Henri Beraldi, for example, observed that the foremost “mission” of
wood engraving was “the accompaniment, the ornamentation...the decoration of the
typographic text.” The most fitting epithet for this medium was, he continued, “wood
engraving serves to illustrate books.”
572
Emile Bayard likewise claimed that publications were
demanding images as never before: “the least text, in one word, requires its images.”
573

Bayard also described a general “soif d’image” or “thirst for images” and observed how the
public was conquered by “the immediate spectacle” that wood engraved illustrations offered
“to the eyes.”
574
Finally, George Duplessis argued that wood engraving was in fact “the most
original art created in the nineteenth century:”
It is not painting that is original...you find everywhere only pastiches and
reminiscences; it is not sculpture, almost extinct today in France...it is not line

571
Blachon, 191.

572
Beraldi, vol. 6, 12 note 1: “la gravure sur bois sert à illustrer les livres.”

573
Bayard, 1.

574
Ibid., 16.

242
engraving and etching, which with the exception of a few masters easy to count, has
only a very small number of representatives; it is thus the gravure sur bois destined to
ornament books that is our true creation.
575

Duplessis thus proclaimed the significance of wood engraving not only for nineteenth-century
book illustration, but also for the production of original art. Agreeing with Baudelaire,
therefore, he hoped that printed illustrations could lead the way for modern art.
A practicing printmaker in his own right, Félix Bracquemond also appreciated the
unique qualities of wood engraving, especially the double language of text and image made
possible with this medium:
The harmony between these two elements, text and image, which form the ensemble
of the typographic material, is the essential condition of the ornamentation of a book.
Text and vignettes must create a tableau without interruption of the material.
Let me explain.
The vignette must bond itself to the text without changing the color, the material of
the page. It brings, it is true, an element of precise and concentrated description that
allows it to be read in an instant, while the “letter” can only slowly and successively
describe the same subject. But the intimate liaison, the fusion of these two
descriptions, text and image, must be continued, must support each other by a unity of
material.
576

[L’harmonie entre ces deux éléments, texte et image, qui forment l’ensemble de la
matière typographique, est la condition de la qualité de l’ornementation d’un livre.
Texte et vignettes doivent faire tableau sans interruption de matière.
Je m’explique.
La vignette doit se lier au texte sans changer la couleur, la matière de la page. Elle
apporte, il est vrai, un élément de description précis et concentré se lisant en un
instant, tandis que “la lettre” n’avait que longuement et successivement dépeint le
même subjet. Mais la liaison intime, la fusion de ces deux descriptions, texte et
image, doivent se continuer, se soutenir l’une l’autre par l’unité de matière.]

575
Duplessis, Les Graveurs sur bois, 7-8: “Ce n’est pas la peinture qui est originale...vous ne trouverez
partout que pastiches et réminiscences; ce n’est pas la sculpture, presque éteinte aujourd’hui en
France...ce n’est pas la gravure au burin et à l’eau-forte, qui, à l’exception de quelques maîtres bien
faciles à compter, n’a qu’un bien petit nombre de représentants: c’est donc la gravure sur bois destinée à
orner les livres qui est notre véritable création.”

576
Félix Bracquemond, Etude sur la gravure sur bois et la bibliographie (Paris: H. Beraldi, 1897), n.p.
Bracquemond initially studied lithography, spent a short time in the painting studio of Ingres, then
became an important figure in the original etching revival. See Beraldi, vol. 3, which is dedicated to
Bracquemond.
243
The profound effect of wood engraving on the art world was therefore widely acknowledged
in the nineteenth century. The impact of this medium and its artists on the field of art history
remains underappreciated. The illustrators of the Bibliothèque des Merveilles brought that
same unique double language described by Bracquemond to the art history survey. These
artists provided visual examples of art objects that could be “read in an instant” while the text
“slowly and successively” fit the objects into a historical narrative, connecting them to one
another and to a broader history of world art. Alongside the erudite theorists and art historians
commonly credited as the founders of the field, these popular illustrators deserve recognition
for their particular role in the history of art history.

Modernizing a History of Art

From the Recueil de Crozat published in 1729, with its engraved reproductions of the
greatest European paintings and drawings from French collections—Francis Haskell has
called it the first “art book”—to Bernard de Montfaucon’s fifteen-volume Antiquité expliquée
et représentée en figures (1719-24) and Seroux d’Agincourt’s six-volume Histoire de l’art par
les monuments depuis sa décadence au IVe siècle jusqu’à son renouvellement au XVI (1811-
1823), French illustrated art histories have been recognized for their important role in the
history of art.
577
Yet, as represented in such luxurious, multi-volume publications, art history
remained largely the domain of an elite. The information provided in these illustrated texts
was not readily accessible to those with limited education and wealth, nor were their formats
portable or easily stored in a modest home. All this changed in the 1860s with Hachette’s
Bibliothèque des Merveilles. For the first time, French illustrated histories of art were
available in a compact format for an unprecedentedly low price. They drew upon the cutting-
edge technology of wood engraving and electrotyping. They could be purchased in

577
Francis Haskell, The Painful Birth of the Art Book (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1988).
244
convenient locations like train stations, brought in a pocket or purse for the train journey, and
taken home to fit a small shelf or storage space. They circulated beyond France to
international readers. Knowledge about art history, both written narratives and visual
examples of its canonical objects, was no longer beyond the reach of a general public. With
the Merveilles surveys, the audience for art history books expanded dramatically, as the
epitome of high art—the “wonders” of architecture, painting, and sculpture—became part of
modern popular culture.

245

Figure 3.1. Edouard Manet, The Railway, 1872-73, oil on canvas, National Gallery of Art,
Washington, D.C.

Fig. 3.2. Detail of Manet’s The Railway.
246

Fig. 3.3. Paper cover from Louis Viardot’s Les Merveilles de la peinture

Figs. 3.4. Pages from Viardot’s Les Merveilles de la peinture with illustration of Dürer’s Four
Apostles, signed Paquier

Fig. 3.5. Page from the Magasin pittoresque with illustration of Raphael’s Portrait of Pope
Leo X
247

Fig. 3.6. Page with illustration of the Egyptian pyramids from Lucien Augé’s Voyage aux sept
merveilles du monde (1878)

Fig. 3.7. Illustration of the Chateau of Fontainebleau from Les Merveilles de l’architecture,
Bibliothèque des Merveilles (1867) and Fontainebleau, Guides Joanne (1867)

Fig. 3.8. Illustration designed by Charles-François Daubigny, from Elisée Reculs’ Londres
illustré, Guides Joanne (1862)
248

Fig. 3.9. Illustration designed by Daubigny of Jean Goujon’s Tomb of Louis de Brézé in
Rouen Cathedral from Viardot’s Les Merveilles de la sculpture (1869)

Fig. 3.10. Detail of Daubigny’s signature from Fig. 3.9

Fig. 3.11. Illustration of the Temple of Karnac from Lefèvre’s Les Merveilles de l’architecture
(1865), signed Alexandre de Bar
249

Fig. 3.12. Illustration of the Kailasanatha at Ellora, India from Lefèvre’s Les Merveilles de
l’architecture, signed Bertrand

Fig. 3.13. Illustration of the Treasury of Atreus and the Lion’s Gate in Mycenae, from
Lefèvre’s Les Merveilles de l’architecture, signed Bertrand
250

Fig. 3.14. Illustration of Rembrandt’s Night Watch from Viardot’s Les Merveilles de la
peinture, vol. 2 (1872), signed Paquier and J. Ansseau

Fig. 3.15. Page with illustration of Egyptian sculptures from Viardot’s Les Merveilles de la
sculpture

Fig. 3.16. Illustration of prehistoric monuments from Les Merveilles de l’architecture
251

Fig. 3.17. Illustration of the Erechtheum from Les Merveilles de l’architecture, signed E. T.

Fig. 3.18. Illustration of Hagia Sophia from Les Merveilles de l’architecture, signed Cordier

Fig. 3.19. Illustration of the Viaduc de Chaumont from Les Merveilles de l’architecture
252

Fig. 3.20. Frontispiece illustration of Titian’s St. Peter Martyr from Viardot’s Les Merveilles
de la peinture, vol. 1, signed Paquier

Fig. 3.21. Size comparison of Knight’s Pictorial Gallery of Arts (left) and Viardot’s Les
Merveilles de la sculpture as an octodecimo.
253

Fig. 3.22. Cloth cover of Les Merveilles de l’architecture

Fig. 3.23. Folio volumes of Charles Blanc’s Histoire des peintres de toutes les écoles

Fig. 3.24. Page from Blanc’s Histoire des peintres de toutes les écoles with Murillo’s
Immaculate Conception
254

Fig. 3.25. Pages from Les Merveilles de la sculpture with illustration of the Niobe group,
signed J. Petot

Fig. 3.26. Paper cover of Le Meraviglie della pittura, Biblioteca delle Meraviglie (Milan,
1874)
255

Fig. 3.27. Cloth cover of Wonders of European Art (London, 1871)

Fig. 3.28. Illustration of the Battle of Issus Mosaic from Pompeii from Les Merveilles de la
peinture, vol. 1, signed Paquier and Ettling

Fig. 3.29. Illustration of the Battle of Issus, from Le Meraviglie della pittura
256

Fig. 3.30. Woodbury-type illustration of Holbein’s Meyer Madonna from The Wonders of
European Art (London, 1871)

Fig. 3.31. Illustration of the Battle of Issus from N. D’Anvers’ Elementary History of Art, 2nd
ed. (1882), with electrotype plate cropped slightly on both sides, signed Ettling (the signature
of Paquier has been cropped out)
257
Chapter 4: Art History in Print: Teaching Art’s History in the French Third Republic

On the walls of the fifth Impressionist Exhibition in 1880 hung a variety of scenes
from Parisian contemporary life. Prominently displayed among them was a print series
featuring a canonical work of art history: the Etruscan Man and Wife Sarcophagus from the
late 6th century BCE (Figs. 4.1 and 4.2). Edgar Degas’s Mary Cassatt at the Louvre: The
Etruscan Gallery (1879-1880) depicts fellow artist Cassatt—whose work also hung in the
1880 exhibition—during a visit to the Louvre galleries with her sister Lydia. Mary stands
upright, confidently leaning on her umbrella with her back to the viewer as she faces the
Etruscan sarcophagus in its large glass case. Lydia appears to the left of Mary, sitting on a
bench and holding, almost to eye level, a small book. Like Mary, Lydia focuses her gaze on
the Etruscan object. In addition to its technical virtuosity—Degas intricately combined
softground etching, drypoint, aquatint, and traditional etching to achieve the subtle and varied
effects visible in the nine extant states of his print—the subject of Degas’s image is similarly
rich and complex.
578
In particular, it speaks to the crucial role of art history in the visual
culture of fin de siècle France, reminding viewers how historical works of art were revitalized
and popularized in this period through public museums, newly accessible art books, and
printed reproductions.
As Mary and Lydia directly engage with the effigy of the Etruscan couple in the space
of the Louvre gallery, Lydia is caught in the act of shifting her eyes between the object and her
book, which has presumably referenced the work of art. Though her head turns toward the

578
On this print series and the other related works, such as Mary Cassatt at the Louvre: The Paintings
Gallery (also 1879-1880), see Nancy Mowll Mathews, Mary Cassatt and Edgar Degas (San Jose: San
Jose Museum of Art, 1981); Sue Welch Reed and Barbara Stern Shapiro, Edgar Degas: The Painter as
Printmaker (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1984), catalogue numbers 51 and 52; and Michel Melot,
The Impressionist Print, trans. Caroline Beamish (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 152-54
and 181-85. The nine states of The Etruscan Gallery are held in numerous international collections,
including the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, and the Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts at UCLA.
258
sarcophagus, her body aligns with the book’s open pages, as if she has just glanced up to
verify the information supplied there. Such information could of course be textual, but was
likely as well to be visual, given the burgeoning market for illustrated guidebooks and art
histories in this period. An illustration of the sarcophagus in Lydia’s book would of course
relate to the Etruscan object itself, while it would equally relate to Degas’s printed
representation. Just as the book provided access to the work of art both in and beyond the
Etruscan Gallery, Degas’s etching brought the sarcophagus into the space of the Impressionist
exhibition.
Degas’s choice of the Man and Wife Sarcophagus would have been especially
resonant for his original viewers, as the effigy was a relatively new addition to the Louvre.
The work had entered the museum collections in 1863, with the Marquis Campana acquisition
of Greek, Etruscan, and Roman antiquities.
579
Among the thousands of objects in the
Campana acquisition, the sarcophagus quickly achieved canonical status in art history.
Featured among the art monuments illustrated in Charles Bayet’s 1886 art history survey
Précis d’histoire de l’art, the work (and its companion piece in the Museo Nazionale di Villa
Giulia in Rome) has continued to appear in surveys of art history and studies of Etruscan art to
this day (Figs. 4.3 and 4.4).
580
Rendered frontally through delicate gray lines built up to create
subtle shadow, the printed image in Bayet’s book is more descriptive and documentary than
Degas’ depiction. Yet both views capture the striking intimacy and strangely playful
expressions of the ancient figures.

579
Alain Pasquier, The Louvre: Greek, Etruscan, and Roman Antiquities (Paris: Éditions Scala,
Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 1991), 7.

580
For examples of general surveys, see my Appendix 2. See also Otto Brendel and Francesca
Ridgway, Etruscan Art (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995). From the early twentieth century,
the more common “Man and Wife” sarcophagus featured in surveys has been the Villa Giulia version.
259
Building upon the themes introduced in Degas’s print, this chapter examines the
further popularization of art history in late-nineteenth century France. It focuses on the series
of educational illustrated art history books in which Bayet’s Précis appeared: the Bibliothèque
de l’Enseignement des Beaux-Arts (or Library of Fine Arts Instruction). Between 1881 and
the turn of the twentieth century, the series produced more than fifty volumes. Much like the
book Lydia holds up to her eyes in Degas’s print, these volumes were compact and portable,
designed for use by new students of art history, including school-age children. Indeed, the
Enseignement series was conceived with the express goal of introducing art history to new
French audiences, a goal that gained particular importance during the republican period.
The French Third Republic is well known for its dedication to public instruction.
Indeed, the modern national education system in France was founded under the administration
of Jules Ferry in the 1880s.
581
Yet, the importance of art history within this new system has
been rarely recognized. After 1882, the history of art began to be included in the curriculum
for French secondary school children. As the passage of new curricular laws often leads to a
boom in related textbooks, these changes spurred a parallel rise in popular art history
publishing, especially illustrated surveys. Whereas important recent work has been done on
drawing education in French primary schools during this period, as well as the establishment
of art history courses in French universities, the popular pedagogy of art history has been

581
Pierre Albertini calls the period prior to Ferry’s administration “l’ancien régime scholaire.” The
dates of Ferry’s administration are somewhat complicated. He was Minister of Public Instruction and
Fine Arts from 1879 to 1880, in 1882 and in 1883, as well as Prime Minister from 1880 to 1881 and in
1883. The majority of the education laws that now bear his name were passed between 1881 and 1882.
See Albertini, L’École en France, XIX-XX siècle, de la maternelle à l’université (Paris: Hachette, 1992),
3 and 64, as well as the very useful chart of Third Republic ministers in Patricia Mainardi, The End of
the Salon: Art and the State in the Early Third Republic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1993), 152-3.

260
almost entirely overlooked.
582
This chapter will demonstrate how the dissemination of
knowledge about art history in France, which began in the private book market of the Second
Empire, became extended, standardized, and institutionalized under the Republic.

The Call for Art History Education

Even before the Ferry education laws had been passed, numerous voices began to
argue for the necessity of art history education and the teaching of taste to French citizens. In
1879, art historian and future arts administrator Henry Havard published a letter in pamphlet
form that outlined some of these arguments.
583
First, Havard recognized the importance of art
for “a free people:” it constituted an indispensable subject not just for “the dominant and
privileged class” but as a “stamp of civilization” and therefore a social necessity for the
French people as a whole. More specifically, he continued, French artistic production had
historically been the “envy of the world.” In order to maintain this superiority, especially in
the face of competition from England, Belgium, Austria, and Germany, Havard described how
the French government had taken steps toward art education for its citizens in the form of
drawing instruction.
584
But, Havard contended, learning to draw was not enough. While

582
On drawing instruction in primary schools, see Molly Nesbit, Their Common Sense (London: Black
Dog, 2000) and Mainardi, The End of the Salon, 66-72. The laws passed on 21 May 1878 and 14 Jan.
1881 made the teaching of drawing part of the school curriculum. On university teaching of art history,
see Lyne Therrien, L’Histoire de l’art en France: genèse d’une discipline universitaire (Paris: Éditions
du CTHS, 1998). Therrien briefly mentions the secondary teaching of art history in her study. See 390.

583
Henry Havard, Lettre sur l’enseignement des beaux-arts (Paris: Quantin, 1879). This was printed as
an octodecimo pamphlet and was sold at 1F. Havard also published an article repeating the arguments
of this “letter” in Le Siècle, 10 June 1880. Havard (1838-1927) was exiled after the Paris Commune
and he spent time in Holland studying Dutch art and serving as a correspondent to French journals
including the Gazette des Beaux-Arts. He was granted full amnesty in 1880. In 1887, he was named
Inspector of Fine Arts. For Havard’s biography, I consulted the files for the forthcoming publication
from the Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art in Paris Dictionnaire critique des historiens de l’art actifs
en France.

584
On France’s recognition of its inability to compete as an industrial power, and its resulting focus on
artistic and luxury production, see Debora Silverman, Art Nouveau in Fin-de-siècle France (Berkeley:
261
manual drawing instruction tended to produce only mediocre artists, he argued, a more
intellectual education that viewed art as the “patrimony of humanity” would create in students
a sensitivity for beauty and the ability to discern quality in works of art.
585
For Havard, one
could understand Raphael without learning to draw, and therefore art instruction should be a
development of the mind more than a training of the hand.
586

At the same time, however, Havard set a clear limit for the intellectual level of his
suggested program. He distinguished his approach from the erudite theoretical and
connoisseurial scholarship also burgeoning in France at this time. In 1863, institutions of
higher education introduced professorships of aesthetics and art history, starting with the
École des Beaux-Arts and the Collège de France.
587
By the 1880s, art history was being

University of California Press, 1989), 52-54 and Mainardi, 62-65. As Silverman summarizes, “France
was unable to compete successfully in an international market suddenly transformed by the meteoric
rise of German and American industrial power” at the end of the century. Moreover, France’s
“reputation as the mecca of taste, fashion, and luxury” was similarly threatened by craft production in
England, Austria, and Germany. As a result, the French state redoubled its efforts to support the French
decorative arts. For a summary of this competition between nations and France’s ultimate state-
sponsored program of design education, see also Gustave Larroumet, L’Art et l’état en France (Paris:
Hachette, 1895), 210-13.

585
Havard, Lettre, 18.

586
On the manual focus of drawing instruction, and the drawing curriculum’s divorce from artistic
instruction, see Nesbit, especially 26-31. Nesbit examines how drawing was implemented as a practical
skill, like writing, that would be useful in the daily life and work of all citizens, especially for the newly
enfranchised and educated masses. Drawing was taught as a basis for industrial rather than artistic
skills and it was only at the highest levels of the drawing curriculum that artistic drawing and the
copying of works of art was involved. See also Mainardi, 72.

587
Viollet-le-Duc was named the first Professor of Aesthetics Applied to the History of Art at the École
des Beaux-Arts in 1863. By 1864, he had been replaced by Hippolyte Taine, whose title was Professor
of Aesthetics and Art History. Charles Blanc became the first Professor of Aesthetics and Art History at
the Collège de France in 1878. Other early positions in the field include that of Georges Perrot, who
was named Professor of Archaeology at the Faculté des Lettres of the University of Paris (Sorbonne) in
1876, a position that allowed him to incorporate ancient art history into his courses. In 1893, Henry
Lemonnier became the first professor of art history at the Sorbonne, while a degree-granting department
was not founded there until 1899. On this history of the discipline in French higher education, see
Georges Perrot, L’Histoire de l’art dans l’enseignement secondaire (Paris: A. Chevalier-Marescq et
Cie., 1900), 43-44, and Therrien.

262
taught in professional art schools, museums, and university facultés throughout France.
588

Beyond the academy, wealthy collectors in France, often called amateurs, produced
meticulously researched scholarship on a variety of periods and styles in art history. As
Havard described, these critics and historians studied “with passion” the works of old masters,
digging in archives to analyze the evolution of an artist’s oeuvres, to define the qualities of
style and technique, to establish individual merit and artistic personalities, and to attribute
previously unidentified work.
589
Such scholarly endeavors on the part of “gens instruits” were
for Havard clearly praiseworthy and profitable; but they focused on specialized knowledge
that “become the property of a small number of initiates,” neglecting “the crowds” and the
“part of the public” more in need of instruction. “One must have the courage to say,” Havard
declared in conclusion, that “all these travaux savants...are without profit for the greater
public.”
590

To bring art education to this public, Havard called first and foremost for the
publication of new “Libraries of the Fine Arts,” or collections of “little didactic works” on
artistic topics, including the periods, countries, and schools of art history, which would be
both “admirably illustrated” and “very affordable.” Of course, Havard’s ideas about providing

588
In the 1880s, some form of art history was taught at the Fine Arts Schools of Dijon and Lyon, and at
the Facultés des Lettres of Lyon, Lille, Dijon, Bordeaux, and Montpellier. In 1882, the École du Louvre
was founded in which courses of archaeology and art history were taught. In 1887, a professorship of
French architecture was created at the Musée de Sculpture Comparée at the Trocadero Palace (est.
1879). See Perrot, 43-44; Larroumet, 82; and Therrien.

589
On the “collector-amateur” of Third Republic France, see Silverman, Art Nouveau, 111. She defines
these men as “specialists in a particular period or medium, connoisseurs and scholars of the objects in
their collections, recognized for their superior sensitivity and taste as much as for their often illustrious
social positions.” Of course, many of the amateurs Silverman identifies in her study also authored
more popular studies of art history, including volumes in the Enseignement series, such as Philippe
Burty, André Michel, Henri Bouchot, Paul Mantz, Victor Champier, Louis Gonse, Edmond Bonaffée,
and Havard himself. This fact highlights the overlapping spheres of elite scholarship and popular art
history.

590
Havard, Lettre, 35-36.

263
affordable illustrated art histories were not unprecedented in France. Already in the 1860s,
Hachette’s Bibliothèque des Merveilles had treated the history of art as a subject of general
knowledge and cultivation, rather than a means for developing the manual skills of drawing.
But unlike Hachette’s numerous drawing manuals that were sold as school textbooks, the
Merveilles art histories were never sold directly for use in schools.
591
Indeed, before the
publication of Havard’s letter, art history remained a subject neglected in French schools.
Havard called for an end to this lacuna through the production of art books specifically
directed at school children. In addition, he reasoned, cheap illustrated manuals could educate
teachers without the time and expense of specialized training, allowing them to bring fine arts
instruction into their classrooms.
Although not everyone agreed with Havard that drawing instruction should take a
back seat to art history education, an almost unanimous consensus saw a pressing need for
elementary art handbooks.
592
From its beginnings, the republican government had been
intensely concerned with the importance of art and art education for the French state, a
preoccupation made manifest in the union of the Fine Art Administration with the Ministry of
Public Instruction.
593
Debora Silverman’s pivotal Art Nouveau in Fin-de-siècle France (1989)

591
Drawing had been a subject taught in secondary schools for boys since the beginning of the
nineteenth century, and for girls since the Second Empire. See Albertini, 25, 51, and 54-55.

592
Émile Cardon, “L’Enseignement de dessin,” Le Soleil, 22 Aug. 1879, as pasted into the Album
Librairie Quantin, vol. 2, 328 from the Institut Mémoires de l’Édition Contemporaine (IMEC) in Caen,
hereafter cited as ALQ. This set of albums, of which IMEC owns volumes 2 and 4, was presumably
complied by an anonymous employee of Quantin’s firm. In includes pasted and inserted materials
relevant to the firm’s history, including press reviews, prospectuses, advertisements, catalogues, and
letters from the publisher to potential clients. It remains one of the few extant archival sources on the
history of the firm. While Cardon declared in his article that he disagreed with Havard on the secondary
importance of drawing instruction, he also asserted his total agreement with Havard on the need for an
“elementary library of the fine arts.”

593
The Ministry of Fine Arts and the Ministry of Public Instruction were joined in 1870. For a
statement of this new importance for art in republican France, see Edouard Charton’s 1875 report to the
French parliament on “the role of art in the democratic state,” as cited in Larroumet, 294-95. Charton
wrote that art was not only “pour quelques esprits délicats une source de joissances exquises et rare” but
264
has demonstrated the “indivisibility of institutional and aesthetic circles” during the late
nineteenth century.
594
Silverman’s study focuses on connections between private collector-
scholars and the state in supporting the decorative arts. Another significant but still
underappreciated aspect of this “indivisibility” between art and the French state was the
cooperation of the republican administrators, educators, and private publishers in the
promotion of art history instruction.

The Response: The Bibliothèque de l’Enseignement des Beaux-Arts

The publisher of Havard’s 1879 Letter was the newly established firm of Albert
Quantin. Just three years earlier, Quantin had purchased the firm from the successful Second
Empire printer Jules Claye. Claye printed books for the important Paris houses of Hachette,
Hetzel, and Calmann-Lévy as well as the journal Revue des deux-mondes. He was supposedly
the first to print wood engravings on steam-powered presses, and won medals at the Universal
Exhibitions of 1855 and 1867.
595
Quantin worked for Claye as director of press-works for
five years before purchasing the business on 15 May 1876 when Claye retired to avoid
financial ruin.
596
Renamed A. Quantin et Cie, the firm under its new ownership expanded to
incorporate the latest press technology, including updated presses and composing machines.

it was also “un besoin général, en tendant à développer dans le pays entiers le sentiment et l’amour du
beau, dont une nation ne saurait se désintéresser impunément, soit pour le progrès de sa civilisation, soit
pour sa gloire.” Therefore, Charton’s views on the social utility of art, which first appeared in his
publications of the Magasin pittoresque and the Bibliothèque des Merveilles (see Chapter 3), became
part of public policy under the republican administration.

594
Silverman, Art Nouveau, 127.

595
Claye was the student of Firmin Didot and established his printing business in 1837 on the Rue
Saint-Benoît in Paris. On Claye’s firm, see ALQ, vol. 4, 779 and Jean-Yves Mollier, “Une
Concentration réussie, la SA des Librairies-Imprimeries Réunies et la Maison Quantin,” in L’Argent et
les lettres: histoire du capitalisme d’édition, 1880-1920 (Paris: Fayard, 1988), 156.

596
On the history of Quantin’s firm, see the brochure describing Quantin’s participation in an 1883
exhibition in Amsterdam, as inserted in ALQ, vol. 4, 779 and Mollier as in ibid.

265
Quantin’s firm continued to print the Revue des deux mondes, adding as well the journals
Revue politique et littéraire, Revue scientifique, Gazette des Beaux-Arts, and L’Art pour tous.
By 1879, Quantin had expanded beyond printing the works of other firms to publish
under his own firm’s name, and had established himself as a specialist in luxury illustrated
books and periodicals. In 1880, he installed machines capable of producing plates in etching
and other intaglio media as well as electrotyping, giving him what book historian Jean-Yves
Mollier has called a “very real superiority” over other Paris printers in the domain of artistic
books.
597
That year, Quantin issued Le Livre, an journal that promoted the luxury editions of
his and other firms, as well as the Revue des arts décoratifs, an expensive and beautifully
designed illustrated monthly that became the “joint voice” of the Central Union of the
Decorative Arts and the Society for a Museum of Decorative Arts.
598
In various press reviews
from the late 1870s, Quantin’s firm received praise for its production of “masterpieces of
contemporary typography” and its ability to marry this typography with finely-made
illustrations, including etchings, sometimes in color, as well as wood engravings for
decorative flourishes.
599
Quantin printed books in a variety of collectible formats, comprising
different paper choices and versions avant la lettre. To be sure, the target audience for

597
Mollier, 156. By the mid-1880s, Quantin’s firm had the capabilities to print chromolithographs and
various photomechanical processes, including heliogravure, phototypie, chromotypography, and
photogravure to mechanically reproduce drawings. On this variety, see “Les Livres d’Étrennes pour
1886,” Le Livre, 10 Dec. 1885, 620-23.

598
On the Revue des arts décoratifs, see Silverman, Art Nouveau, 116-17. As Silverman notes, the
journal “was better suited to elite amateurs than to artisans, broadly defined, or the mass public,” given
its large folio-sized pages, its expensive price, and its high intellectual standard accessible only to a
“small circle of connoisseur-specialists.”

599
ALQ, vol. 2, 185-88.

266
Quantin’s early publications comprised bibliophiles, collectors, amateurs, and other gens de
goût.
600

While gaining this reputation for high-end publications, Quantin set out to become
equally well known for affordable educational books, and sought specifically to provide the
“Library of Fine Arts” that Havard had recommended. The publisher began an ongoing
collaboration with Jules Comte as the series editor. In Comte, Quantin chose a figure who
held various positions in the Ministry of Arts and was intimately concerned with French art
education.
601
Together, he and Comte designed the Bibliothèque de l’Enseignement des
Beaux-Arts, a title that drew attention to their educational goals. Although not the first series
of popular books Quantin issued— between 1878 and 1881, the firm also published the
Bibliothèque d’Histoire et de Géographie, which included handbooks on topics of history and
travel that sold for between 3 and 7.50F—the Enseignement series became the most
recognized and highly praised attempt by Quantin to shift away from the luxury market.
602

According to an anonymous chronicler of the firm, the series brought honor to the Maison
Quantin because of its particularly “useful character.”
603
Quantin himself emphasized the
novelty and wider reach of his new series in a letter addressed to publishers and booksellers
throughout France. Previously the firm’s books had been “of a price too elevated to be
suitable for all localities and all types of sales,” but, Quantin noted, his firm had “just begun

600
On Quantin as a publisher for bibliophilic circles, and in particular his collaborations with Octave
Uzanne, the so-called “high priest of fin-de-siècle bibliophilia,” see Willa Silverman, The New
Bibliopolis: French Book Collectors and the Culture of Print 1880-1914 (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 2008), especially 24.

601
When the series began, Comte was the head of the teaching division of the Fine Arts Ministry. By
1882, he had become inspecteur-général of drawing instruction. See Propsectus, ALQ, vol. 2, 294.

602
On the Bibliothèque d’Histoire et de Géographie, see ALQ, vol. 2, 219.

603
ALQ, vol. 2, 293.

267
the publication of a collection intended, both by its subject of interest and by its modest price,
to be sold by everyone everywhere.”
604

In addition to several practical art manuals, the Enseignement series included specific
studies of “all epochs, all countries, and all schools” of art history, thereby addressing
Havard’s charge.
605
The first four books appeared in 1881; by 1900, the series totaled fifty-
five volumes.
606
The art history books in the series encompassed numerous styles and media
of Western art history, such as Dutch painting and Italian sculpture, as well as several non-
Western traditions, including the art of Persia, Japan, China, and Indochina.
607
Indeed, the
volumes of the series were conceived as chapters of a “vast encyclopedia” of the history of
art.
608
One of Comte’s responsibilities as editor, which was comparable to Edouard Charton’s
role in the Bibliothèque des Merveilles, was to recruit authors for the series. Comte
demonstrated remarkable success in this endeavor, revealing widespread enthusiasm among
French administrators and educators for the goals of the series.

604
See letter dated Paris le 30 Nov. 1881 in ALQ, vol. 2, 295: “Jusqu’à présent nous n’avons pas eu
l’avantage d’être en relations direct avec vous, malgré l’importance de votre maison, nous ne nous
sommes pas étonnés de votre abstention, nos livres étant généralement d’un prix trop élevé pour
convenir à toutes les localités et a tous les genres de vente. Mais aujourd’hui nous venons de
commencer la publication d’une collection appelée par son intérêt et par son prix modeste à être vendue
par tous et partout.” The letter also mentioned the wholesale discount price of 2,50F for each volume.

605
Prospectus, as in ALQ, vol. 2, 294.

606
On this total, see Perrot, 60. The first four volumes were Henry Havard’s La Peinture hollandaise,
Edouard Gerspach’s La Mosaïque, Mathias Duval’s L’Anatomie artistique, and Max Collignon’s
L’Archéologie grecque.

607
The titles include Egyptian, Greek, Roman, and Etruscan art and archaeology; Romanesque and
Gothic architecture; Byzantine Art; French, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, and English painting; and French,
Italian, and Spanish sculpture, as well as histories of various art media such as glass, lace, faïence,
prints, lithography, books, mosaics, manuscripts, furniture, stained glass, porcelain, embroidery, coins
and medals, and tapestries. The non-Western volumes include Louis Gonse, L’Art japonais (1886);
Maurice Paléologue, L’Art chinoise (1887); Ernest Babelon, Manuel d’archéologie orientale (1888);
Albert de Pouvourville (Matgioi), L’Art indo-chinois (1894); and Albert Gayet, L’Art arabe (1893) and
L’Art persan (1895).

608
Pierre Paget, “L’Enseignement des Beaux-Arts et l’Université,” XIXe siècle, 12 Nov. 1882, as in
ALQ, vol. 2, 303-4.

268
The authors Comte recruited indeed comprised a veritable “who’s who” of French art
professionals. Some worked for the republican Ministry of Arts as directors and education
inspectors.
609
Others were professors at the École des Beaux-Arts, the Collège de France, the
École de Chartes, or at French institutions in the provinces or abroad.
610
Still others were
members of the Institut de France and its various Académies, curators at the Bibliothèque
Nationale or the Louvre, librarians at the École des Beaux-Arts or the Sainte Geneviève,
archivists at the Archives Nationales, and directors of arts magazines such as the Gazette des
Beaux-Arts or Revue des arts décoratifs.
611
According to an illustrated advertising brochure
for the series, “nothing is more difficult to produce than an elementary book...one must know
a great deal to say what is essential.”
612
To this end, the brochure argued, the series director
had secured the most competent and knowledgeable authors. Along with the “men of letters”

609
For instance, Edouard Gerspach served as Chef du Bureau des Manufactures Nationales; Paul Mantz
was Directeur de la Conservation and later Directeur Général des Beaux-Arts; Charles Chipiez was
Inspector de l’Enseignement du Dessin; Philippe Burty, Georges Lafenestre, and Paul Lefort were all
Inspecteurs des Beaux-Arts.

610
To name but a few examples, Mathias Duval was Professor of Anatomy at the École des Beaux-Arts
and the Faculté de Médicine. Gaston Maspéro and Eugène Guillaume were both professors at the
Collège de France. Anatole de Montaiglon was Professor at the École de Chartes. (The École des
Chartres was founded in 1821 as an institution for the study of history through archives and
documents.) Max Collignon was Professor of Greek and Roman Antiquities at the Faculté des Lettres
de Bordeaux and later Professor of Archaeology at the Sorbonne. Jules Martha was Professeur at the
Faculté des Lettres in both Dijon and Montpellier. François Lenormant taught a course of archaeology
at the Bibliothèque Nationale. Maspéro also founded the École Française de Cairo, a school for
Egyptian archaeology.

611
For example, Eugène Guillaume, Henri Delaborde, Henri Bouchot, and Georges Lafenestre were
members of the Institut, either the Académie des Beaux-Arts or the Académie Française, election to
which was the highest honor France offered its artists and savants. Delaborde and Bouchot were also
curators of the Prints Department at the Bibliothèque Nationale. Both Georges Lafenestre and André
Michel were curators at the Louvre, taught at the École du Louvre, and later taught art history at the
Collège de France. Michel also later edited a highly regarded illustrated art history survey: Histoire de
l’art, 9 vols. (Paris: Librairie Armand Colin, 1905-29). Eugène Muntz was the librarian at the
Bibliothèque de l’École des Beaux-Arts. Louis Gonse, Alfred de Lostalot, and Edmond Bonnafée were
on the administration of the Gazette des Beaux-Arts, and Victor Champier was director of the Revue des
arts décoratifs.

612
Illustrated brochure of the Enseignement series, as in ALQ, vol. 2, 301: “Rien n’est plus difficule à
faire qu’un livre élémentaire...il faut savoir beaucoup pour ne rien dire que l’essentiel.”

269
responsible for Hachette’s art history surveys in the Bibliothèque des Merveilles, these arts
professionals took up the cause of disseminating art history knowledge to new audiences.
Comte and Quantin created the series expressly to address the lack of popular art
books in France. As the series prospectus stated, “we see published daily the scholarly
research and luxurious volumes that witness the erudition and activity of our writers; but as
for classical and elementary works, nothing of seriousness has been attempted.”
613
With the
Enseignement series, Quantin in particular sought to offer works at a price as low as possible,
enabling them to be “within the reach of all budgets.”
614
Beginning with the first volumes in
1881, each book in the series was sold for 3,50F bound. Later this price changed to 4,50F for
the cloth-bound versions and 3,50F for the paper-bound alternative.
615
In order to achieve this
low price, Quantin drew upon formats already established for popular illustrated art history
books. Each volume was issued in a handbook format, measuring around 21cm in length.
616

The volumes were also printed in large editions, with at least 10,000 copies needed to cover
the cost.
617
The binding originally constituted an inexpensive cardboard covering designed to
protect the book during repeated use. As the prospectus described, this binding was important
because such “study books” were “destined to be often leafed through.”
618
Around 1884, the

613
“Nous voyons bien se publier chaque jour des recherches savant et de volumes luxueux qui
témoignent de l’érudition et de l’activité de nos écrivains; mais, en fait de livres classiques et
d’ouvrages élémentaires, rien n’a été tenté de serieux.” Series prospectus, as in ALQ, vol. 2, 294.

614
The prospectus describes the intention “de maintenir les volumes à la portée de toutes les bourses.”
Ibid.

615
See revised prospectus, as in ALQ, vol. 2, 300.

616
The format of the volumes was variously described as either “octavo,” “quarto-anglais,” or
“duodecimo.” See revised prospectus, as in ALQ, vol. 2, 300, as well as “A Student’s Library of Art,”
Atlantic Monthly 50, no. 297 (1883): 121. For further discussion of the term handbook, see chapter 2.

617
On this figure, see ALQ, vol. 2, 293. The prospectus also mentions the necessity of printing “un
grand nombre d’exemplaires” in order to provide fully illustrated and still inexpensive books.

618
Prospectus, as in ALQ, vol. 2, 294: “Ces livres d’étude, destinés à être souvent feuilleté.”
270
binding was altered; thereafter readers could choose between a paper cover or a decorated
cloth cover (Fig. 4.4).
Not everyone agreed, however, that the price for the series was as low as possible.
Writing in the Courrier de l’art in 1882, Eugène Veron regretted that the volumes could not
be sold for less, claiming that books were not truly popularized (vulgarisé) until they reached
1F per copy. Yet, Veron also admitted the difficulty in achieving this ideal with illustrated
volumes.
619
And the Enseignement volumes were profusely illustrated, each containing
between 100 and 200 images. As in Fergusson’s Illustrated Handbook of Architecture and the
Bibliothèque des Merveilles art history surveys, the images in the Enseignement series were
printed simultaneously with the text and inserted within the text pages. Reviewers responded
with enthusiasm to the function of these images as “genuine illustrations,” rather than
“ornamental pictures,” presenting information in conjunction with the text.
620
According to a
review in the London Times, this arrangement avoided the problems with separate “atlases” of
images that students too often employed “without referring to the text.”
621
Another reviewer
in the Tribune Medicale wrote that, thankfully, the Enseignement books were not livres
d’image; they broke with the “disastrous habit” that so often occurred with “these sorts of
publications” of providing lots of plates with little text.
622
Finally, Charles Clément writing
for the Journal des débats commented that the “chosen engravings...put on nearly every page
an example before the eyes of the reader, and they complete in the most useful manner this

619
Eugène Véron, Review of the Bibliothèque de l’Enseignement des Beaux-Arts, Courrier de l’art, 7
Sept. 1882, 426-7. While Véron complained that the price was “already too elevated” to render the
books “accessible to everyone,” he simultaneously and paradoxically regretted that they did not include
more luxuriously printed illustrations.

620
“A Student’s Library of Art,” 120.

621
Times (London), 5 June 1882, as in ALQ, vol. 2, 306.

622
Tribune médicale, 2 April 1882, as in ALQ, vol. 2, 308.

271
remarkable and useful publication.”
623
The illustrations clearly defined an important selling
point for the volumes.
Although the publisher and editor never explicitly admitted a debt to the earlier series,
the promotional language of the Bibliothèque de l’Enseignement des Beaux-Arts resembled
that of Hachette’s Bibliothèque des Merveilles.
624
According to the original prospectus, the
later series could “render real service to all ages as well as to all classes of our society.”
625
It
was likewise offered to both young men and young women, having been written with “clarity”
and deprived “of all display of useless erudition.”
626
Like the Bibliothèque des Merveilles,
these books served simultaneously “to instruct and interest” their readers, especially the non-
professional gens du monde and general jeunesse who were the target audience for the earlier
series as well. But the prospectus of the Enseignement series also mentioned a new audience
of “the youth of [French] high schools.” These students, despite years of studies in the
humanities, still searched “vainly” for information about the “marvels” (merveilles) of art.
627

The elementary works in the series intended to end this vain search, enabling students to
“learn easily the history and theory of art.”
628

623
Charles Clément, “Livres d’Art,” Journal des débats, 16 Dec 1882, as in ALQ, vol. 2, 314: “Il faut
ajouter que des gravures choisies...mettent presque de page en page un exemple parlant sous les yeux du
lecteur, et complètent de la manière la plus utile cette remarquable et utile publication.”

624
It is also worth noting that Henri Bouchot wrote volumes for both series: Le Livre: l’illustration, la
reliure, étude historique sommaire (1886) for the Enseignement series and Jacques Callot: sa vie, son
oeuvre, et ses continuateurs (1889) for the Bibliothèque des Merveilles.

625
Prospectus, as in ALQ, vol. 2, 294.

626
Ibid.

627
Ibid.

628
Revised prospectus, as in ALQ, vol. 2, 300.

272
Several reviewers praised in particular the level of instruction provided in the books.
According to Georges Berger writing in the Journal des débats, the volumes offered an
effective introduction to the various artistic topics:
Here are what we will call a truly useful popularization of the principles and
elementary philosophy of the fine arts, without the appearance of such a profound
erudition that it would be frightening for those for whom a special education or a
natural penchant has not prepared them to tackle the scientific abstractions of art.
629

For Berger, “erudition” was linked with “scientific abstractions,” and both of these were to be
avoided in such elementary volumes. “Science” in this period, both in French and English,
signified the highest level of research with its theoretical and systematic methodologies.
Indeed, the university represented the proper sphere of scientific studies in art history.
630
Just
as James Fergusson had attempted to avoid “all aspects of science” in his Illustrated
Handbook of Architecture (see chapter 2), the authors and reviewers of the Enseignement
volumes recognized that such books were no place for detailed scholarly argumentation.
Reviewers in Le Parlement and La Gironde, for example, praised the lack of “scientific
trappings.”
631
Or, as Henri Bouchot stated in his volume Le Livre, his work did not have “the
pretension of offering new information to men of science (gens de science).”
632
The reviewer

629
Georges Berger, “Bibliothèque de l’enseignement des beaux-arts,” Journal des débats, 19 Nov.
1883, as in ALQ, vol. 2, 302: “Voilà ce que nous appellerons une vulgarisation vraiment utile des
principes et de la philosophie elementaire des beaux-arts, sans l’apparat d’une érudition si profonde,
qu’elle devient effrayante pour ceux qu’une éducation spéciale où un penchant naturel n’a pas préparés
à aborder les abstractions scientifiques de l’art.”

630
Therrien specifically addresses the interest in founding art history as a scientific discipline in French
universities such as the Sorbonne. See 277-78.

631
See André Michel, “Variétés: La Bibliothèque de l’Enseignement des Beaux-Arts,” Le Parlement,
25 May 1882; G. Fonsegrive, Review of Archéologie Grecque by Max Collignon, La Gironde
Littéraire et Scientifique, Supplement to La Gironde (Bordeaux), 28 Jan. 1883. All of these reviews are
included in ALQ, vol. 2, 302-10 (although several are misdated in the handwritten notations by the
album author).

632
Bouchot, Le Livre, 7.

273
in the Atlantic Monthly summarized the book’s target audience: “The volumes are worth
buying and reading for whoever is interested in their subjects, unless he is already learned.”
633

Other respondents, however, praised the way some scholarly elements had been
included in the books. Although André Michel had extolled the removal of the “trappings” of
science, he also commended how the series volumes were “precise and scientific enough” that
the professional gens du metier could consult them with confidence, and, at the same time,
“clear and elementary enough that the gens du monde” could read them “without fatigue.”
634

For Michel, the volumes provided a “true education,” as they attempted not “to defend a
theory or elaborate a system, but to expose and explain the facts.”
635
For still other voices, it
was philosophy as much as scientific ambitions that should be avoided in introductory art
histories. According to the anonymous reviewer in the Atlantic Monthly, “it is not the logical,
but the chronological, arrangement which reaches most minds.” The Enseignement series
indeed promoted an historical approach to art history for its readers. The vast majority of the
series volumes, in addition to Bayet’s general survey, provided historical studies of particular
periods and artistic traditions within the broader context of human history. As Maurice
Paléologue stated in L’Art chinoise, his book would be a “sketch” of the history of Chinese
art, more than a specialized study for the professional art historian, connoisseur, or

633
“A Student’s Library of Art,” 125.

634
André Michel, Le Parlement, 25 May 1882, as in ALQ, vol. 2, 302-03. The term gens du monde has
been variously translated. In the Atlantic Monthly, the author uses the translation of “amateurs
generally,” implying non-professionals with an interest in art, a more fitting version in this context than
the “men of society” that is more commonly used by scholars today. See “A Student’s Library of Art,”
119. The term amateur in nineteenth-century France, on the other hand, signified more a specialist
scholar and collector. On this use of amateur, see Havard’s 1879 Letter and Silverman, Art Nouveau,
111.

635
Michel as in ibid: “C’est une exposition simple et nourris, un véritable enseignement. Il ne s’agit pas
de défendre un théorie ou d’élaborer un système, mais d’exposer et d’expliquer des faits.”

274
collector.
636
Unlike so many publications on non-Western art, Paléologue insisted that his
book focused on the objects with historical value rather than art that was “precious...to the
eyes of collectors.”
637
Other volumes in the series brought art history together with
archaeology, as did Jules Martha’s 1884 Manual d’archéologie étrusque et romaine. Martha
described how his elementary manual would examine both the art and the daily life of these
ancient cultures.
638
In an 1882 article in Le Siècle, Havard succinctly summarized the
approach of the series: “without great words, without long phrases, without sterile inquiries,
without declarations of law, without decrees,” the books provided an “easy and inexpensive
solution” to the lack of general art history instruction.
639
The books made basic historical
narratives available as an introduction to the field.
Avoiding arcane and highly specialized scholarship meant also avoiding an approach
affiliated with German art history from the period. According to Philippe Burty, “the revenge
(revanche) against heavy German erudition” was precisely what made the French
Enseignement series attractive and effective for beginning readers.
640
This contrast for Burty
was more than simply an opposing approach; it expressed French national pride and a distinct
anti-German sentiment in the wake of the Franco-Prussian war. Although widely respected in
circles of arts professionals, German-language art history was not unilaterally praised during
the nineteenth century. Many popularizers of the field viewed it as inappropriate for

636
Paléologue, 8.

637
Ibid., 9.

638
Jules Martha, Manuel d’archéologie étusque et romaine (Paris: Quantin, 1884). Martha’s book, like
Bayet’s Précis, also contained an illustration of the Etruscan Man and Wife Sarcophagus at the Louvre.

639
Henry Havard, “L’Enseignement des Beaux-Arts,” Le Siècle, 12 Feb. 1882, as in ALQ, vol. 2, 304-5:
“sans grands mots, sans longues phrases, sans enquête stériles, sans projets de loi, sans décrets, sans
arrêtés, sans discours, la solution facile et peu coûteuse.”

640
Philippe Burty, review of Jules Martha’s Manual d’Archéologie Grecque et Romaine, La République
Française, 30 June 1884.

275
beginning students and non-specialist audiences, in contrast to the more accessible art histories
published especially in Britain and France.
The international success of the Enseignement series proved immediate and enduring.
During the early 1880s, positive reviews appeared in dozens of journals in Paris and
beyond.
641
Sources also claimed that the first volumes, which were printed in editions of at
least 10,000, quickly sold out and the books went “back on the presses” to meet the
demand.
642
This success lasted even after Quantin renegotiated the ownership of his firm
several times between 1886 and 1890. On 16 January 1886, in order to augment his capital,
Quantin opened his firm to partial ownership by merchant Louis-Henry May and other
anonymous shareholders, turning the business into a société anonyme under the name of
“Companie Générale d’Impression et d’Édition, Ancienne Maison Quantin.”
643
Then, on 1
March 1890, the company merged with the Paris printing firms of Motteroz, Morel, and
Martinez to become the conglomerate of “Libraries-Imprimeries Réunies, Anciennes Maisons
Quantin, Motteroz, Morel, Martinet.”
644
The Enseignement series was ultimately purchased
and reissued in the early twentieth century by Alcide Picard & Kaan and their Librairie
d’Education Nationale. The title pages of the volumes evidence all of these changes, as well

641
These journals included Le Temps, Journal des débats, Le Parlement, L’Opinion, XIXe siècle, Le
Siècle, Le Rappel, Journal des artistes, Tribune medicale, Le Soleil, Courrier Français, Courrier de
l’art, Le National, La Loi, Le Pays, La Gironde (Bordeaux), République française, Intransigent,
Journal des arts, La Gironde, Indépendance Belge, Gazette Cologne, Times (London), The Hour (New
York), and The Atlantic Monthly.

642
Bulletin de la Maison Quantin, no. 2 (May-June 1886), as loosely inserted in ALQ, vol. 4.

643
According to Mollier, 50% of the stocks of the company were offered to shareholders at this time.
See Mollier, 158-59.

644
On the known details of these mergers, see ibid., 158-68. Mollier notes that despite the misinformed
statements of a number of Quantin’s contemporaries claiming that Quantin had retired from the
business, the printer-publisher continued to be involved in the company during all of these changes.
For instance, Edmond de Goncourt’s journal from 26 May 1889 stated that the Maison Quantin had
become the “prey” of the “button merchant [Louis Henry] May.” Although he turned over control of
business management to May in 1886, Quantin maintained a directing role within the enterprise.

276
as the lasting demand for the series across the shifting fortunes of Quantin’s firm. In his 1900
study on the pedagogy of art history in French schools, Georges Perrot specifically
recommended the series for students desiring a “résumé of art history” over and above Charles
Blanc’s now better-known Grammaire des arts du dessin. Where Blanc’s book failed to
provide such a summary of the topic, Perrot claimed, the Bibliothèque de l’Enseignement des
Beaux-Arts succeeded in offering useful handbooks for a “very moderate price.”
645
In the
words of an anonymous reviewer in La Loi, the volumes were “little books” that “everyone
knows.”
646

A Précis of Art History Across a Transitional Period

According to the original publication announcement, the series was to include general
histories of painting, sculpture, architecture, ornamentation, engraving, and music, as well as a
précis, or overall survey, of art history.
647
The majority of these volumes never saw
publication.
648
The précis was slated to appear in 1882 authored by Eugène Guillaume, a
highly respected sculptor and art historian. Guillaume was a member of the Institut, both
Professor of Sculpture at the École des Beaux-Arts from 1864 and the school’s director from
1865, the Director of Fine Arts from 1878, and Charles Blanc’s replacement as Art History
Chair at the Collège de France in 1882.
649
Moreover, as designer and namesake of the Third

645
Perrot, 99.

646
“Bibliographie: La Librairie Quantin,” La Loi, 28 Mar. 1886, as in ALQ, vol. 4, 737.

647
Prospectus, as in ALQ, vol. 2, 294.

648
This includes the sculpture, painting, architecture, and ornamentation volumes. The engraving
volume appeared in 1882 written by Henri Delaborde and the music volume appeared in 1884 written
by Henri Lavoix.

649
Guillaume was a member of both the Académie des Beaux-Arts and the Académie Française and
was named Inspecteur-Général de l’Enseignement du Dessin in 1880. On Guillaume, see Therrien, 143.

277
Republic program of national drawing education, Guillaume appeared an ideal choice to
author an introductory history of art.
650

The desire for such an art history survey was strong, as numerous reviews highlighted
the forthcoming publication of Guillaume’s book.
651
However, Guillaume never finished this
précis, perhaps because of his new commitments as professor at the Collège de France.
Instead, the lesser-known art historian and educator Charles Bayet completed the book for
publication in 1886. Bayet had already published the series volume on Byzantine art in
1883.
652
He had studied with Jules Comte at the École Normale Supérieure and the École
Française d’Athènes, and taught art history at the Faculté des Lettres and the École Nationale
des Beaux-Arts in Lyon.
653
Like Guilluame, therefore, he engaged professionally with the
issues and practices of art historical pedagogy.
Bayet’s Précis followed established precedents for an illustrated art history survey. It
drew together important works of world art from ancient eras to the present day, and adhered

650
Larroumet, 164 and 231 and Nesbit, 23-26. The méthode Guillaume, in which drawing served as the
universal language of education and the foundation for the various trades and professions, was written
into the decree of 14 Jan. 1881 and became official curriculum at that time.

651
See, for instance, Michel’s review in the Parlement; Pierre Paget, “L’Enseignement des Beaux-Arts
et l’Université,” XIXe siècle, 12 Nov. 1882; Jean François’s review in L’Opinion, 27 July 1882. These
are all pasted into the ALQ, vol. 2, 302-04. See also Eugène Véron’s review in the Courrier de l’art, 7
Sept. 1882, 426-7 and “A Student’s Library of Art,” 119.

652
Charles Bayet, L’Art byzantin (Paris: Quantin, 1883).

653
Bayet was a student of the École Normale Supérieure and the École Française de Rome before
finalizing his studies in Athens. He taught courses of art history and archaeology, specifically medieval
art, at the Fine Arts School and the Faculté des Lettres of Lyon in the 1880s. In 1896, he was named
Director of Primary Education and in 1902, Director of Higher Education, revealing his ongoing
dedication to public education in France. See Therrien, 114, 284, 368. Bayet’s relationship to Comte as
a fellow student at the École d’Athènes might further explain his selection to replace Guillaume as
author of the general survey. The École Française d’Athènes was founded in 1846 as an institution for
studies in Greek language, archaeology, and ancient history. See George Weisz, The Emergence of
Modern Universities in France, 1863-1914 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 21 and
Therrien, 264. It is also worth noting that Bayet’s background in Byzantine art and archaeology, a non-
classical subject, might have influenced him to produce a less classically focused and more global
survey of art history, which his Précis certainly was.

278
to an increasingly stable canon of illustrated monuments. Beginning with Egyptian and
Assyrian art, the book followed the standard progression of styles through Greek, Etruscan,
and Roman, to early Christian and Byzantine, to Romanesque and Gothic, finally covering the
Renaissance through the eighteenth century. The non-Western traditions Bayet covered,
including Islamic, Indian, and Japanese art, appeared together after the section on Byzantium.
Like other surveys from the period, the Byzantine period constituted a gateway for breaking
with the connected chronology of Western styles and inserting art history’s “others.” Art
historian Robert Nelson has studied this hybrid status of Byzantine art as both within and
removed from the Western tradition.
654
Though he neglects to include Bayet’s Précis among
the surveys he examines, Nelson’s work demonstrates how Bayet’s organization helped to
solidify lasting conventions of the survey.
Worth emphasizing as well is Bayet’s inclusion of Japanese art. Earlier surveys
considered only Indian and Chinese art as part of the art history canon; Bayet’s book
highlights the arts of Japan alongside these other Asian traditions. The rise of Japonisme in
France after 1860 undoubtedly played a significant role in this addition. Bayet discussed and
illustrated a range of Japanese objects, from an elaborately decorated temple facade, to a
sculpted Buddha, to a small-scale ivory figure, to a woodblock print by Hokusai (Fig. 4.5).
“The history of Japanese art,” he observed, “has been, in these last years, illuminated by a new
light.”
655
Affecting collectors and artists, as well as art historians, the growing French interest
in the arts of Japan has been well studied.
656
What remains to be recognized is how such well-

654
Robert S. Nelson, “Living on the Byzantine Borders of Western Art,” Gesta 35, no. 1 (1996): 3-11.

655
Bayet, Précis, new ed. (1908), 143.

656
Colta Feller Ives, The Great Wave: The Influence of Japanese Woodcuts on French Prints (New
York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1974); Gabriel P. Weisberg et al., Japonisme: Japanese
Influence on French Art, 1854-1910 (Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1975); Siegfried Wichman,
Japonisme: The Japanese Influence on Western Art in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (New
279
known trends in modern art affected the popularization of art history. Just as the addition of
the Etruscan sarcophagus to the Louvre inspired Degas to blend art’s past and present in his
1880 etching, the fascination with Japanese art increased art history’s relevance as well. In
1883, art collector and Gazette des Beaux-Arts editor Louis Gonse authored one of the first
general histories of Japanese art. Initially issued by Quantin in two finely designed illustrated
volumes, which included delicate etchings, photomechanical “heliographs,” and brightly
colored lithographs of dozens of Japanese objects, Gonse’s L’Art japonais was soon reissued
as an affordable handbook in Quantin’s Enseignement series.
657
More than a subject useful
for the wealthy collector, Japanese art had become a major chapter in the history of art.
The design of Degas’s Etruscan Gallery print series (Fig. 4.1) clearly shows the
influence of Japanese woodblock prints, such as the one depicted in Bayet’s Précis (Fig. 4.5).
Its dominant diagonals—from the bench where Lydia sits, to Mary’s left arm and umbrella, to
the lines of the display case—all register the impact of Japanese woodblocks on the artist.
Also similar to such Japanese printmakers as Hokusai, Degas provided a candid view of
everyday life, showing active, unidealized bodies, including a prominent figure rendered from
behind. Moreover, Degas might have chosen to focus on the Etruscan sarcophagus in his print
given its supposed Asian style. Bayet’s Précis addressed in particular the Asian facial features
of the Etruscan couple and their contrast with Greco-Roman styles. At that time, the origins
of Etruria remained what Bayet called “an enigma” for historians, allowing this Asian
influence to resonate as plausible if not substantiated. Perhaps Degas found himself drawn to

York: Harmony Books, 1981); Deborah Silverman, Art Nouveau in Fin-de-siècle France: Politics,
Psychology, and Style (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 126-33; Deborah Levitt-
Pasturel, “Critical Response to Japan at the Paris 1878 Exposition Universelle,” Gazette des Beaux-Arts
119, series 6 (1992): 68-80; Max Put, Pleasure and Plunder: Japanese Art in the West 1860-1930
(Leiden: Hotei, 2000).

657
Louis Gonse, L’Art japonais (Paris: Quantin, 1883) and Louis Gonse, L’Art japonais, Bibliothèque
de l’Enseignement des Beaux-Arts (Paris: Quantin, 1886). The handbook version was republished in
numerous editions until 1926, with an English translation appearing in 1892.
280
these mysterious and non-classical elements of the sarcophagus, which, like Japanese prints,
formed a challenge to traditional design styles. Works of art history, including both Japanese
and Etruscan objects, could serve as an “agent of French modernity.”
658

With Japanese art, other additions to the canon in Bayet’s book further highlight the
dynamic scope of art history at this time. Like the Louvre’s newly acquired Man and Wife
Sarcophagus, Bayet’s Précis also included the Nike of Samothrace, which had been excavated
in 1863 and was displayed at the Louvre from 1867. Few later surveys have failed to illustrate
the now canonical sculpture. Though Bayet’s original Précis excluded contemporary art,
following the precedent of many previous surveys, his 1893 edition dedicated a detailed
section to modern French art.
659
Not only were Gros’s Plague House at Jaffa, Ingres’s
Apotheosis of Homer, and Delacroix’s Barque of Dante discussed and illustrated, but this
edition also incorporated the work of several now famous modernists, or what Bayet called
“the new art of the nineteenth century.”
660
Both Courbet’s Stonebreakers and Millet’s
Gleaners were illustrated, for instance, while the author mentioned the Barbizon painters, the
caricaturists Gavarni and Daumier, and Manet as the “head of the Impressionist school.”
661
In
concluding this section, Bayet praised these French artists for foregoing “the conventions of
academic beauty,” revealing that by the 1890s, basic narratives of art history were beginning
to champion the avant-garde, a theme that would soon become the basis of twentieth-century
modernism. Similarly with regard to modern architecture, Bayet praised the work of Baltard
and Labrouste, claiming that the distinction between engineering and architecture seemed

658
Silverman, Art Nouveau, 129.

659
Charles Bayet, Précis elémentaire d’histoire de l’art (Paris: Ancienne Maison Quantin, Librairies-
Imprimeries Réunies, May et Metteroz, 1893).

660
Bayet, Précis (1893), 300.

661
Ibid., 300-301.

281
“arbitrary and puerile,” and thereby setting a precedent for later surveys that positioned iron
architecture as the basis of a new style.
662
Thus, Bayet’s Précis can be seen as a significant
point of transition between the art history surveys of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It
was one of the first such books to make the change from a “modern art” that began in the
Renaissance to a “modern art” that began in nineteenth-century France. This shift established
a new organization that would predominate in art histories to this day.
Bayet’s Précis equally registers a slow but fundamental shift in the illustration media
of the survey. Indeed, the book offers a unique perspective through which to examine the
changes in book illustration from wood engraving to photographic technologies. The images
in the original 1886 edition had the appearance of wood engravings, the technique most
widely employed to illustrate art history surveys prior to Bayet’s. These illustrations were
based on linear drawings, were inserted within the text pages, shared the same flat gray tone of
the printed text, and often included the characteristic artist signature beneath the image (Fig.
4.3). Yet, according to an advertising brochure for the series, “current processes of direct
reproduction permitted [the publisher] to obtain a most faithful exactitude.”
663

How could such abstracted and interpretive line drawings claim to provide “a most
faithful exactitude?” To be sure, what was being “exactly and directly” reproduced was not a
mimetic copy of the original work of art, but rather an artist’s rendering of that work in a
drawing. Photography constituted a tool of mediation rather than the starting point for these
images; a photograph mechanically reproduced the original drawing without the second
manual translation needed for a wood engraving. The camera photographically transferred the
drawing to a metal plate, which was then chemically etched to produce a relief surface that

662
Ibid., 308.

663
Illustrated brochure, as in ALQ, vol. 2, 301: “Les procédés actuel de la reproduction direct nous ont
permis d’obtenir une exactitude des plus fidèles.”

282
could be printed simultaneously with the text.
664
The printed page seen by the reader
nonetheless appeared strikingly similar to pages illustrated with wood engravings. Only the
“engraving” step was done mechanically.
Some reviewers recognized the novel process, calling the images “photogravures,” a
term that is somewhat surprising given its more common use to describe the transfer of a
photographic negative onto a metal plate for printing. But here the term signified the use of
photography as a tool employed during the process of printing.
665
In other cases, reviewers
entirely overlooked the photographic aspect of the illustrations. For instance, a review in the
New York newspaper The Hour called the illustrations “admirable cuts,” a term that had long
been used to refer to wood engravings.
666
This reviewer also praised how the monuments of
art had been “fully and graphically described,” further emphasizing the base medium of
graphic drawings. Another reviewer in the Atlantic Monthly similarly lauded the images for
being “well drawn.”
667

The use of photography as a hidden mediator also contributed to Degas’ Mary Cassatt
at the Louvre series. According to Sue Welch Reed and Barbara Stern Shapiro, the artist

664
On this definition of “process” or “photomechanical” reproduction, see Gerry Beegan, The Mass
Image: A Social History of Photomechanical Reproduction in Victorian London (New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2008), 8. In particular, the photographic reproduction of line drawings began with the work
of Paris printer Firmin Gillot and his son Charles. In 1876, Charles Gillot opened the first photo-relief
business and by the 1880s, his gillotype process began to challenge wood engraved illustrations in price
and speed. See Beegan, 73-74. Although Gillot was never credited in Bayet’s Précis, a version of his
process was most likely used in printing the illustrations.

665
As Willa Silverman notes, photogravure was the collective term for techniques that “exploited
diverse chemically treated surfaces (metal, wood, glass, stone) onto which photographic images were
transferred.” I would emphasize that the term also encompassed the photographic transfer of drawn
images, as in the case of the Enseignement volumes. See Silverman, The New Bibliopolis, 25.

666
The Hour (New York), 11 Feb. 1882, as in ALQ, vol. 2, 305.

667
“A Student’s Library of Art,” 120.

283
employed photographs of his own drawings in the process of his formal experimentation.
668

As an amateur photographer, Degas took detailed images with his camera of the figures of
Mary and Lydia, which he repeated, inverted, and manipulated across the numerous prints of
Mary at the Louvre. For instance, the figure of Mary in The Etruscan Gallery is inverted in
The Paintings Gallery, while the body of Lydia is reused and superimposed onto Mary’s form
in the latter (Figs. 4.1 and 4.6). Yet, this mechanical work of photography during the creative
process remains only implicit in Degas’ prints, which foreground instead the manual work of
the artist as printmaker. As with the illustrations in Bayet’s Précis, photography in Degas’
work existed behind the scenes of other printed media.
By the 1908 edition of Bayet’s Précis, however, the illustration technology had
changed again. More than half of the 230 images in this edition were clearly printed as
halftones from photographic negatives. The other 102 images were reprinted with the same
photomechanically reproduced drawings of the original edition. Thus, in 1908, fully
photographic illustrations only just began to dominate the art history survey, though these
photographs remained largely balanced by drawn images.
669
As Gerry Beegan argues in his
study of the rise of photomechanical reproduction at the turn of the century, photography-
based technologies served to copy and print a variety of different illustration media, and it was
well into the 1900s “before photography established an absolute reproductive hegemony.”
670

668
Reed and Shapiro, xxxvi.

669
For other early twentieth century surveys in which a balance of photographic and drawn images
appeared, see Salomon Reinach’s Apollo (1904) and Helen Gardner’s Art Through the Ages (1926).
And of course the use of drawings still persists in even the most recent surveys to illustrate
reconstructions of non-extant monuments, such as the Assyrian palace of Sargon II.

670
Beegan, 63.

284
Far from the dramatic rupture that many scholars have claimed, the introduction of
“photographic” illustration occurred over decades and in a variety of forms.
671

In the context of this ongoing shift from drawn images to photographs, the lack of a
parallel shift in the art history canon of monuments is remarkable. Beyond the additions and
changes mentioned above, the basic survey canon remained surprisingly undisturbed. Dozens
of the most recognizable art objects illustrated by drawings in Bayet’s original edition
reappeared in Bayet’s 1908 edition in the form of photographs (Figs. 4.7 and 4.8).
672
To be
sure, the publisher chose photographs that matched the original illustrations, maintaining the
standard set of “masterpieces” across the change from hand-drawn to fully photographic
illustrations. Bayet’s 1908 edition did introduce some photographic images of works rarely
illustrated in surveys as wood engravings, especially paintings, a medium that had long been
difficult to reproduce with photography. The most recognizable examples include
Renaissance paintings such as Botticelli’s Primavera and Raphael’s Sistine Madonna, as well
as the newly incorporated contemporary works of Manet’s Le Bon Bock, Degas’s Dancers,
Rodin’s Burgers of Calais, and Whistler’s Portrait of the Artist’s Mother. Thus, the bedrock
of the survey canon stood firm, while its elastic boundaries continued to expand,
encompassing both new art objects and new technologies of illustration.

671
The most famous argument for such a rupture was William Ivins, Prints and Visual Communication
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1953), but even as early as 1886 Bouchot, the author of the
Enseignement volume on the history of the book, claimed that photographic methods had “completely
revolutionized the conditions of book illustration by the numerous means of reproduction” they offered.
Bouchot, Le Livre, 236.

672
These include, for instance, Assyrian relief sculptures from the Louvre, the Parthenon, examples of
the Elgin Marbles, a caryatid from the Erechtheum, the Nike of Samothrace, the Doryphorus, the
Apoxyomenos, the Laocoon, the Colosseum, Hagia Sophia, Nicola Pisano’s Pisa Baptistery Pulpit,
Giotto’s Arena Chapel frescos, the Palazzo del Vecchio, the Jacob and Esau panel from Ghiberti’s
Baptistery Doors, Luca della Robbia’s Singers, the Doge’s Palace in Venice, Michelangelo’s Moses,
Raphael’s Disputa in the Vatican, Roger van der Weyden’s Seven Sacrements, Dürer’s Melancholia,
Memling’s Madonna and Child, Pilon’s Three Graces, Rembrandt’s Saskia, Poussin’s Et in Arcadia
Ego, and a seascape by Claude Lorrain.
285
The intimate relationship between text and image in art history surveys also remained
continuous across the shift from wood-engraved to photographic illustrations. As discussed in
previous chapters, wood engravings had enabled a new balanced double language of words
and pictures on the printed page. In Bayet’s Précis, we see how this same double language
continued with the introduction of photomechanical and photographic illustration media. The
pages illustrating Dontello’s David and Velazquez’s Drinkers, for instance, utilized the same
layouts in its several editions, where either a vertical or horizontal image is framed by its
related text (Figs. 4.7 and 4.8; 4.9 and 4.10). Even such seemingly innovative and visually
arresting layouts employed with photographic illustrations in the later edition, as in the stair-
step design of the page illustrating the Laocoon, clearly built on precedents that appeared in
the earlier edition (Figs. 4.11 and 4.12).
Halftone technology, the medium employed in Bayet’s 1908 edition, has been
specifically credited with revolutionizing the published illustration—Neil Harris has called
this change “the halftone effect.”
673
Yet, an analysis of Bayet’s survey across its various
editions reveals the need to reevaluate this so-called revolution. While the work of the image
as a reproduction undoubtedly changed with the introduction of the halftone, the work of the
image as an illustration stayed surprisingly constant. Halftones of course enabled the direct
mechanical printing from the photograph, removing the previously unavoidable manual steps
of drawing and printmaking. This brought the reproductive halftone objectively closer to its

673
Neil Harris, “Iconography and Intellectual History: The Halftone Effect,” in New Directions in
American Intellectual History, eds. John Higham and Paul Conkin (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1979), 196-211. Halftones were produced by photographing the original through a
fine screen onto a metal plate coated with light sensitive material, thereby transferring the image
photographically into a matrix of discrete dots. This matrix was then chemically etched into the plate,
the dots creating the illusion of “halftones” or a range of light and dark tonalities. The plate could then
be printed simultaneously with text on a printing press, so long as smooth, coated papers were used.
This technique became economically viable by the 1890s, when halftones were incorporated into the
illustrated press.

286
original object.
674
The image of David in Figure 4.8—photographed from the original in
Florence and then re-photographed through a halftone screen to create the printing plate—
reproduces Donatello’s sculpture more tonally and mimetically than the image of David in
Figure 4.7. In contrast, an anonymous artist drew this earlier image from an unidentified
source, which could just as likely be another drawn or printed copy of the sculpture as a
photograph or the original work itself. This drawing was then photographically transferred to
the printing plate. The uncertainty of its source and the added intermediary steps of
interpretive human translation make this image less trustworthy as a reproduction.
However, as an illustration—an image providing a visual example in the context of a
written text—the Davids function almost identically. They each create a visual reference for
Donatello’s sculpture, conveying pictorial information that adds up to David in the context of
the book. But perhaps not exactly the same David. As illustrations, the earlier drawn images
at times surpassed the effectiveness of the later photographs. For instance, in the images of
Velazquez’s Drinkers, the details of the foliage and the kneeling foreground figure, clearly
discerned on the left of the drawn illustration (Fig. 4.9), are entirely lost in the later
photographic image (Fig. 4.10). The halftone technology failed to capture these details, and
they appear only as flat areas of shadow. The closeness to Velazquez’s original that was
gained in the central figures with the halftone was in turn traded for these limitations. The
drawn image, therefore, provides a more overall complete illustration. Similarly, the drawn
image of the Colosseum in Figure 4.13 renders such pictorial elements as a cloud-filled sky

674
There has been a good amount of scholarship on the increased objectivity of photographs, especially
in terms of art reproduction. The most nuanced studies, which challenge a simplistic notion of
“objectivity,” include Estelle Jussim, Visual Communications and the Graphic Arts: Photographic
Technologies in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Bowker, 1974); Trevor Fawcett, “Graphic Versus
Photographic in Nineteenth-Century Reproduction,” Art History 9, no. 2 (1986): 185-212; and Lorraine
Daston and Peter Galison, “The Image of Objectivity,” Representations 40 (1992): 81-128. It needs to
be emphasized too that halftone illustrations were often retouched and manipulated during the printing
process, involving the very “handiwork” that the new technology claimed to avoid and thus further
complicating the shifts between hand-drawn and photographic processes. On this, see Beegan, 9.
287
and the subtle plays of light and shade across the building’s design, elements entirely absent
from the photographic image in Figure 4.14. These graphic effects in the drawn image evoke
the transitory elements of the Roman monument—both its continuous decay as an ancient ruin
and its location within a dynamic temporal and meteorological environment—that the
photograph denies in its instantaneous capturing of a moment. What is varied and animated in
the drawing becomes but a lifeless specimen in the photograph. Rather than simply asserting
that either drawn or photographic illustrations are “better” in any given instance, however, I
wish to emphasize the illustrative work that images can perform across different media, as
well as the importance of acknowledging such work in addition to the reproductive function of
images.
In recognizing the pictorial compositions of these images and their role as
illustrations, we must also recognize their producers. On dozens of the images in the 1886
edition, an illustrator’s signature appears within the image (Fig. 4.3).
675
Several of these
names, including Charles Kreutzberger and Michelet, were known as specialists in designing
images for photomechanical reproduction.
676
In the 1908 edition, in contrast, more than
fifteen photography firms are cited beneath the image, including the well-known Florence-
based company of Alinari responsible for the David, the Laocoon, and the Colosseum (Figs.
4.8, 4.11, and 4.14).
677
Indeed, the shift from hand-drawn signatures within the illustration’s

675
These signatures included the names of Michelet and Kreutzberger, as well as Rougeron Vignerot, P.
Laurent, L. Libonis, Agualin, Walloz, Faucher Goudin, Goutzwiller, and Flameng.

676
Kreutzberger (b. 1829) was supposedly an expert at a photomechanical technique called the Comte
process in which etched relief plates were made photographically from drawings to be used in
typographic printing. See Jules Adeline, Les Arts de reproduction vulgarisé (Paris: Ancienne Maison
Quantin, Librairies-Imprimeries Réunies, 1894), 140. Michelet, for whom a first name is not known,
was also a specialist in photomechanical illustration. See Remi Blachon, La Gravure sur bois au XIX
siècle: l’âge du bois debout (Paris: Les Éditions de l’Amateur, 2001), 237.

677
Alinari also provided views of the Apoxyomenos, the Cathedral at Orvieto, a panel from Pisano’s
Pisa Baptistery Pulpit, Giotto’s Arena Chapel fresco Raising of Lazarus, the Palazzo Vecchio, the
Cathedral at Florence Cath, the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi, the Jacob and Esau panel from Ghiberti’s
288
frame to printed labels underneath this frame emphasizes the change in the producers of these
images. What had been a localized sphere of production in the 1880s, where Quantin hired
Paris-based illustrators, became an international affair in the twentieth century. By 1908, a
range of French and foreign companies provided the photographs for illustrations. For
example, the French firms Giraudon and Neurdein frères were cited for photography of art
found in France, from objects at the Louvre to the chateaux of the Loire Valley.
678
Similarly,
the British firms of Eyre and Spottiswoode, as well as Mansell, were cited for works of art
located in Britain, including the Elgin Marbles at the British Museum and the paintings of
Turner and Edward Burne-Jones. The same was true for the firm of Rhomaïdes in Athens,
which provided images of the Lion’s Gate in Mycenae and other works in Greece, and for the
various Italian companies, such as Alinari and Brogli in Florence or James Anderson in Rome,
which provided images of famous objects in Italy from Giotto’s Arena Chapel frescos to
Botticelli’s Primavera.
679
Moreover, where Quantin had commissioned many of the images
for the earlier edition from artists specifically for the production of the book, the photographs
for the later edition most likely came from a set of stock images. The production of stock
collections of canonical works of art by photography companies was not new; yet such
collections came to dominate survey illustration only in the early 1900s. And Bayet’s Précis

Baptistery Doors, Donatello’s St. George, Botticelli’s Primavera, the Doge’s Palace in Venice, and
Michelangelo’s Moses. For literature on these photography firms, see my introduction.

678
Well-known images provided by Giraudon included Giorgione’s Fête champêtre, Pilon’s Three
Graces, Ruben’s Descent from the Cross and Helena Fourment with her Children, Poussin’s Et in
Arcadia Ego, Watteau’s Pilgrimage to Cythera, Delacroix’s Barque of Dante, Carpeaux’s Dance from
the Paris Opéra, and Whistler’s Portrait of the Artist’s Mother. Those by Neurdein frère include
David’s Oath of the Horatii and Rape of the Sabines, Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa, Ingres’s
Apotheosis of Homer.

679
Exceptions to this pattern include Alinari’s image of Chardin’s Blessing from the Louvre and
Giraudon’s image of the Parthenon. Other cited firms included the Stereoscopic and Photographic
Company in London; Bonfils in Egypt; Bruckmann and Hanfstaengl in Munich; Braun, Clément et Cie
in Dornach; Typogravure Georges Petit; Lecadre, Manzi, Joyant, et Cie; and J. E. Bulloz.

289
provides an unusually rich example in which to trace this evolution of illustrations and their
producers in the field of art history.
Although it remained in print for three decades, Bayet’s Précis received mixed
reviews. For example, in his 1900 study on art history education, Perrot criticized its overly
summary quality, arguing that the reader searched “in vain” for information demanded in such
a “manual.” Yet, he admitted as well that Bayet’s work was the only such survey to be written
by an author professionally “familiar with art.”
680
Despite its equivocal reception, Bayet’s
survey undoubtedly provided art history instruction to new audiences in late nineteenth-
century France. Its numerous editions witnessed a continued demand for the Précis as an
introductory handbook of art history. The publication also defined a key moment in the
evolution of the illustrated art history survey as a genre. On the one hand, the book’s several
editions can illuminate the transitional period between hand-drawn and photographic
illustrations of art history. On the other, the Précis registers the incorporation of
contemporary art, and indeed the basic tenets of modernism, into the art history survey. While
its boundaries had already been stretched to include different periods of the past—from
ancient Assyrian, Pre-Columbian, Indian, and Etruscan, to Medieval, Byzantine, Islamic, and
Japanese—art history extended yet again to encompass even the most recent ruptures with
artistic tradition.

Art History and Educational Reform

From the beginning, the Enseignement series maintained close relations with the
republican Administration of Education and Fine Arts. Not only was the series editor Jules
Comte a government official, the volumes each claimed to be “under the patronage of the Fine

680
Perrot, 87-88.

290
Arts Administration.”
681
Thus, the government both encouraged and officially authorized
Quantin’s series. Due in no small part to this administrative sanction, Quantin received
subscriptions for the series from various local and national institutions of education, including
the Ministry of Public Instruction and the City of Paris, as well as from public and private
schools for both sexes. The Ministry and the City of Paris also recommended the books as
prizes for students in courses of literature, history, and drawing.
682
Official recognition for the
series came as well in the form of two prestigious awards: the gold medal of the Prix Montyon
from the Académie Française in 1883 and the Prix Bordin from the Académie des Beaux-Arts
in 1887. Therefore, at the moment when art history entered French school curricula, the
series closely aligned with the government in its interests of national education. This
association served a dual purpose. On the one hand, with a government seal of approval, the
series undoubtedly sold more books, bringing a higher profit to Quantin’s firm. On the other
hand, this relationship made art history knowledge available for a wide audience, a goal
shared by the publisher and the administration.
During the early 1880s, when the Enseignement series issued its first volumes, the
French education system underwent important changes at every level. Although the Third
Republic began in 1870, following the defeat at Sedan and the fall of the Second Empire, it
was not until 1879 that liberal republicans controlled both the senate and the presidency. This
control enabled new legislation to be passed, especially in the area of education.
683
Primary

681
The prospectus claims that “l’Administration des Beaux-Arts a bien voulu encourager nos efforts, et
nous sommes officiellement autorisé à publier cette Bibliothèque sous le patronage de l’administration
des beaux-arts.” [italics in original].

682
As Albertini points out, the practice of handing out prize books to students was for the most part
limited to urban schools. See 75.

683
According to Weisz, education was central to the new republican program for several reasons: it was
a topic of general assent among the various factions and it was also a particular concern for the many
education professionals and academics who had recently come to power. See Weisz, 96.
291
school became free, secular, and obligatory for both male and female children.
684
In
secondary education, reforms introduced programs of “modern” studies—including living
languages, history, geography, and science—alongside the traditional classics curriculum
centered around Greek and Latin.
685
In addition, schools and programs of secondary
education for female students were established.
686
This level of schooling remained
segregated by sex, but the Ferry government made public secondary schools newly available
for French girls. Finally, in higher education, buildings were renovated, updated equipment
was provided, new professorial chairs were instituted, and, finally, in 1896, the various
faculties across France were reorganized to create fifteen universities.
687

Within these institutional reforms, art history played a small but significant and
unprecedented role; it became a subject taught in secondary schools. On 28 July 1882, a
decree was passed defining the programs of secondary education for girls.
688
This decree
followed upon the so-called Camille Sée Law of 1880 that established public schooling at the
secondary level for female students.
689
The proposed 1882 curriculum detailed a “Program for

684
The laws passed on 16 June 1881 abolished school fees; 28 Mar. 1882 made primary school
obligatory for all students between 7 and 13 years of age and secularized the curriculum of primary
school; and 30 Oct. 1886 forbade clergy to be teachers or inspectors. See Prost, 192-93 and Albertini,
69-70.

685
Weisz, 127.

686
The pertinent laws were passed on 21 December 1880, 28 July 1881, and 14 January 1882.

687
According to Weisz, the “modern” university in France emerged during the Third Republic. See
Weisz, 3 as well as W. D. Halls, Education, Culture, and Politics in Modern France (New York:
Pergamon Press, 1976), 9.

688
“Arrété fixant les programmes de l’enseignement secondaire des jeunes filles,” 28 July 1882, as
reproduced in Octave Gréard, L’Enseignement secondaire des filles, 3rd ed. (Paris: Delelain Frères,
1883), appendix I, lxv.

689
The Camille Sée Law was passed 21 Dec. 1880, instituting government funded schools for young
women. For the text of this law, see Gréard, appendix I, ii. On the history of women’s education
leading up to this date, see Gréard, especially 2-11 and Françoise Mayeur, L’Enseignement secondaire
292
the History of Art” for students in the third year, when they were fourteen or fifteen years old.
The topics to be covered included French art from the thirteenth century to the present, as well
as the “grand divisions” of art history, from Egyptian to modern.
690
This program closely
followed the order, organization, and content of published art history surveys. The genre of
the survey, first defined in the general European book market, became now standardized as a
school curriculum. Moreover, the description of the program emphasized that the approach to
art history would be “practical” and therefore “accompanied by visits to museums and
monuments.” Thus, rather than learning the skills of connoisseurship or archival research,
young French girls would learn art history through exemplary monuments, following the
precedents of published surveys. In addition to this specific art history course in the third
year, the programs of history for girls’ instruction also included art within the study of various
periods. For instance, the ancient histories of Egypt, Assyria, Persia, Greece, and Rome each
incorporated discussion of the principal art monuments, just as the history lessons on the
Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and later modern periods in Europe dealt specifically with the
arts.
691

The purpose of such new programs for female students was not primarily to prepare
them for careers outside the home or for higher education at the university level, unlike male
students of secondary schooling. Rather, they instructed bourgeois and upper-class women in
the kinds of cultured subjects they could teach their children and discuss with their husbands,

des jeunes filles sous la Troisième République (Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences
Politiques, 1977), especially 1-3.

690
In order, these periods were as follows: Egyptian, Assyrian, Greek, Hellenic, Etruscan, and Roman
art; Early Christian and Byzantine art; Arabic art in Syria, Spain, and Egypt; Romanesque and Gothic
art in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and England; civil and military architecture in the Middle Ages;
the Renaissance in Italy and France; the eighteenth century in France and England; and, finally, the
nineteenth century.

691
See programs as reproduced in Gréard, Appendix I.

293
making them more effective mothers and wives, and thus republican citizens. Far from an
afterthought, the education of women during this period gained particular importance for
administrators, as women were the “first instructors” of French children and therefore key to
the nation’s future.
692
Indeed, the new programs of public education for young women
brought their instruction under the control of the French state rather than the church, the
traditional source for their education. As Ferry famously stated in an 1870 speech, “women
must belong to science and democracy, or they will remain in the hands of the church.”
693
In
particular, training French women in art history, it was believed, would resonate within their
families to produce citizens with knowledge about world history and an appreciation of
beauty.
In contrast to a focus on the classics of Latin and Greek in secondary schools for boys,
female students learned the “modern humanities” of living languages, history, geography, and
art history.
694
Denied instruction in logic, philosophy, and experimental science as subjects of
the most intellectual rigor, French girls remained victims of continued prejudice and
inequality. Yet, they began in this period to receive a more progressive and anti-traditional
education with emphasis on history and culture. It is no surprise then that the first art history
instruction in French schools emerged in programs for female students. This curriculum also
prepared young women for employment in the few jobs open to them at the time. Modern

692
The recognition of this role of women in the family can be traced at least back to the period of the
Revolution, when Condorcet argued for educating women because they oversaw their children’s
instruction. Moreover, the catholic church, long dominant in providing schools for female students,
justified their education according to the same reasoning. But not until the Third Republic were such
theories put into government-funded action. See Françoise Mayeur, L’Education des filles en France au
XIXe siècle (Paris: Hachette, 1979), 30-33.

693
“Discours de la salle Molière de Jules Ferry (1870),” as cited in Albertini, 57 and Mayeur,
L’Enseignement secondaire, 17-18.

694
Mayeur, as in ibid., 211. In the nineteenth century, traditional “humanities” were the classics of
Greek and Latin.

294
languages proved useful for governesses who privately taught wealthy children, especially
those who traveled to foreign countries in such jobs (for more on these female professions and
their relation to art history, see my discussion in Chapter 5).
695
Studies of the humanities also
prepared women to become instructors in girls’ schools, positions that were increasingly
available for women during the Third Republic.
696
The École Normale de Sèvres, for
example, was founded in 1881 specifically to train women as instructors in schools for girls.
Of course art education for women did not begin with the Third Republic. The daughters of
the elite had long been taught the “polite arts” (arts d’agrément) of dance, music, sewing,
drawing, and painting either in private schools or in their homes.
697
And these subjects
continued to appear in new curricula outlined in the 1880s. But for the first time, they were
joined by art history as a subject unto itself.
Female students were not alone in receiving some art history education during their
secondary schooling. In “L’Enseignement des Beaux-Arts et l’Université,” an 1882 article in
XIXe siècle, Pierre Paget described a recent movement to include art history within lycée
courses of history and philosophy for young boys.
698
Even without classes dedicated solely to
the subject, art history found its way into the national curriculum for male students.
According to Paget, learning about Phidias and the Parthenon should not be separated from the
study of Greek language and literature, nor should French art be absent from courses on

695
Ibid., 225.

696
These secondary school programs and the developing corps of female teachers laid the foundations
for women’s higher education and positions within the civil service and university systems. Marie
Curie, for instance, was the first female professor at the Sorbonne in 1906, and Jeanne Duportal was the
first woman to teach art history at the Sorbonne in 1916. See Mayeur, L’Enseignement secondaire, 240
and Therrien, 311.

697
Mayeur, L’Éducation des filles, 62.

698
Paget’s review in XIXe siècle.

295
French history. An illustrated brochure for the Enseignement series made similar claims,
arguing that a student should learn about “Phidias, Michelangelo, Raphael, Velazquez, and
Rembrandt” as much as “Homer, Sophocles, Racine, Cervantes, and Shakespeare.”
699
Paget
then went on to argue that the lack of introductory books defined the biggest limitation to
incorporating art history into these courses. Such books, he claimed, would significantly
complete students’ education, as they could provide both teachers and students with basic
knowledge about the subject. Finally, Paget credited Quantin’s series with fulfilling this need.
By providing a “vast encyclopedia of all that concerns the history and techniques of art” in an
affordable format, the Bibliothèque de l’Enseignement des Beaux-Arts offered the information
necessary to bring art history into French schools.
On 15 June 1891, the government passed further legislation regarding the addition of
art history to the “modern studies” program of secondary schools. The final or “first” year of
courses included three hours per week shared between the history of civilization and the
history of art.
700
The teaching of art history was outlined in detail, suggesting an approach that
was “the most simple and the most accessible” for students, including a “general
consideration” of representative monuments from each period and style, rather than any
specialized connoisseurial training. As part of the history of civilization, students ideally
learned “to understand and appreciate the masterpieces” of art. Just as they had for the
program of secondary girls’ schools, the periods and styles outlined in this “modern studies”
program closely followed the content and approach of published surveys.
701
The 1893 edition

699
Illustrated brochure, as in ALQ, vol. 2, 301.

700
For this program, see “Extrait du programme de l’enseignement secondaire moderne,” Bulletin
administratif 49 (1891): 636, and as reproduced in Perrot, Appendix I, 131-38.

701
Beginning with Egyptian, Assyrian, and Persian, it continued to Greek, Etruscan, and Roman, then
the Middle Ages, including Early Christian, Byzantine, Islamic, Romanesque and Gothic, then the
296
of Bayet’s Précis claimed to respond directly to these officially outlined programs for art
history. As Bayet noted in his preface, “The instruction of the history of art, long banned
from our lycées and our collèges, has finally obtained a place in the programs of modern
studies and of the education of young girls.”
702
He also argued that the subject was no less
necessary for students of “classical studies” and called on teachers to introduce it into their
courses of both modern and classical teaching.
703
To assist in this endeavor, Bayet provided
his survey, which he addressed specifically to secondary school students.
The new programs of art history for public lycées and collèges were viewed in
contrast to professional art education at the various French Fine Arts Schools. Frédéric
Montargis writing in Le Rappel, for instance, assured readers that the incorporation of art
history would not make French schools into “branches of the Conservatoire and the École des
Beaux-Arts,” where students learned “the mechanics” of art.
704
Rather, he wrote, “art is more
than that.” Like Havard in his 1879 Letter, the author argued that the fine arts should not only
be accessible to those training to become professional artists, but that they espoused a greater
significance that could be “accessible to everyone.” Studying art could help students to
develop intellectually and gain an understanding of “life itself.” Teaching art history in

Renaissance, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and finally the “époque contemporaine” in France,
including the periods of the Revolution and Empire.

702
Bayet, “Préface,” in Précis (1893): “L’enseignement de l’histoire de lart, longtemps proscrit de nos
lycées et de nos collèges, a enfin obtenu place dans les programmes de l’enseignement moderne et de
l’enseignement des jeunes filles.” It is worth noting too that Bayet served as a member of the
Preparatory Commission for revision of secondary education for girls, the changes for which were
finalized in 1897. Perhaps because of Bayet’s involvement, art history maintained a place in the new
curriculum. See Mayeur, L’Enseignement secondaire, 212 and 217.

703
Writing in 1900, Georges Perrot repeated this call for the addition of art history to classical studies.
See 12. See also “Voeu présenté au Conseil supérieur dans sa séance du 14 janvier 1899,” in Perrot,
Appendix III, 146-48. On the “vigorous resistance” of classical studies in French secondary schools,
and the heated quarrels of the “classics” versus the “moderns” that lasted well into the twentieth
century, see Albertini 89-90.

704
Frédéric Montargis, Le Rappel, 23 April 1882, as in ALQ, vol. 2, 306.

297
schools, therefore, would create “a public to admire the masters, if not produce successors to
them.” Others agreed that art history should be included in the histories of humanity and
civilization.
705
For instance, G. Fonsegrive in La Gironde declared that “the history of art
[formed] an important part” of “general history.” According to Fonsegrive, “the manner in
which a people conceive of and express beauty forms an interesting part of the character of
that people.”
706
Therefore, a consensus of voices during this period believed that all cultivated
minds in France, both male and female, should be familiar with the greatest works of art.
707

The illustrated book constituted one of the most important tools for imparting this art
history education to secondary school students. Perrot, for instance, mentioned the necessity
of education “by the eyes,” of creating “spectators” of art history, and the significant role of
books that “illustrate history by the image.”
708
The demand for affordable introductory art
history books thus grew significantly and publishers responded in turn, producing a boom in
the production of illustrated art history surveys. Bayet’s Précis was not alone on the market;
between 1875 and 1904, at least ten similar illustrated surveys appeared in France.
709

705
Indépendance belge, 6 Nov. 1883 and Intransigeant, 1 Dec. 1885, as in ALQ, vol. 2, 315-16.

706
Fonsegrive, in La Gironde: “Quant à l’histoire générale, histoire de l’art en forme d’abord une partie
important. Il est évident que la manière dont un peuple conçoit le beau et l’exprime forme une partie, et
non la moins intéressante, du caractère de ce peuple.”

707
Perrot, 124.

708
Ibid., 19 and 28-9.

709
René Ménard, Histoire des beaux-arts: illustré de 414 gravures, représentant les chefs-d’oeuvres de
l’art à toutes les époques (Paris: Librairie de l’Imprimerie Générale and Librairie de l’Echo de la
Sorbonne, 1875); Wilhelm Lübke, Précis de l’histoire des beaux-arts (Paris: Renouard, 1876); Felix
Clément, Histoire abregée des beaux-arts chez tous les peuples et à toutes les époques (Paris: Firmin-
Didot, 1879); Lübke, Essai d’histoire de l’art, trans. C. Köella (Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1880); A.
Destremau, Manuel de l’histoire de l’art (Paris: Renouard, H. Loones successeur, 1882); Lübke, Précis
de l’histoire de l’art, trans. Emile Molle (Paris: Marpon et Flammarion, 1885); Edmond Guillaume,
Histoire de l’art et de l’ornement (Paris: Delagrave,1886); William Reymond, Histoire de l’art:
illustrations d’après les peintures et monuments antiques et modernes (Paris: Delagrave, 1886); Roger
Peyre, Histoire générale des beaux-arts (Paris: Delagrave, 1894); and Salomon Reinach, Apollo:
Histoire générale des arts plastiques (Paris: Hachette, 1904). Other surveys without illustrations
298
Although such dramatic growth in textbook publishing following education legislation was
nothing new, the inclusion of art history surveys in this trend was unprecedented.
710
And
indeed, all of these books fit the genre parameters of the illustrated general survey. They were
organized according to an historical progression, beginning with prehistoric and ancient eras
and continuing to the present. They included illustrations of the most exemplary monuments
of art history, largely adhering to the canon established in Bayet’s and earlier surveys.
Finally, they presented the subject of art history as part of the history of humanity. And the
authors of a number of these books declared their response to the new curricular changes,
emphasizing the measurable impact of these laws on both publishers and educators.
711

But of course books were not isolated tools of visual pedagogy. Perrot argued that in
fact such books often proved impractical in the classroom, as when only the professor had a
copy and the students were required to pass the volume from hand to hand to engage with its
images. Therefore, he suggested the simultaneous use of other copies of the monuments of art
history, including photographic prints and slides. The turn of the twentieth century saw the
widespread introduction of photographic slide lectures in the teaching of art history. In most
scholarship on this development, the German university provides the context for this

included René Ménard, Histoire des beaux-arts, 3 vols. (Paris: Delagrave, 1882) and François
Bournand, Précis de l’histoire de l’art (Paris: Delalain, 1883). According to Perrot, though German art
historians had also published surveys rich in information and abundant in illustrations, only the work of
Lübke had been translated into French. See Perrot, 88-89. Of these, Reinach’s Apollo was by far the
most successful, being printed in its 9th edition in 1919. According to Germain Bazin, Apollo provided
art history introduction for a generation of readers at the beginning of the twentieth century.

710
On rise in school textbooks associated with education legislation, see Alexis Weedon, Victorian
Publishing: The Economics of Book Production for a Mass Market 1836-1916 (Burlington, VT:
Ashgate, 2003), 114.

711
See, for instance, the title page of Peyre’s Histoire générale des beaux-arts, which explicitly states
the book’s use for a course of “modern secondary education” which “conformed to the official
programs of 1891.”

299
change.
712
But as Lyne Thierren argues, French professors of art history also implemented
slides in their lectures during this period.
713
Moreover, Perrot’s study of secondary education
demonstrated that slides were employed beyond institutions of higher education, reaching
lower levels as well.
In addition to photographic slides, illustrated books worked in conjunction with
museums as yet another form of visual art history education. Havard’s letter, for instance,
called for the incorporation of museum visits into art education in addition to published
“Libraries.” And in the majority of the books in the Enseignement series, the authors
encouraged their readers to consult works of art in person as part of their training in art
history. But according to former director of Fine Arts Gustave Larroumet writing in 1895,
museums alone provided an insufficient means of instruction for their visitors. Despite their
growing number, free access, and expanding collections, and despite their declared purposes
of educating the general public, Larroumet argued, French museums remained “incoherent” in
their installations and lacked basic written labels that would indicate artists, subject, and date
of the works.
714
The Louvre in particular represented for Larroumet more a “giant collector’s
cabinet” than a place for learning.

712
See, for example, Heinrich Dilly, “Lichtbild Projektion – Prosthese der Kunstbetrachtung,” in
Kunstwissenschaft und Kunstvermittlung, ed. Irene Below (Giessen: Anabas, 1975), 153-72; Wolfgang
Freitag, “Early Uses of Photography in the History of Art,” Art Journal 39, no. 2 (1979-80): 117-23;
and Robert S. Nelson, “The Slide Lecture, or the Work of Art ‘History’ in the Age of Mechanical
Reproduction,” Critical Inquiry 26, no. 3 (2000): 414-34, as well as further literature cited in my
introduction.

713
For example, Reinach included slide projections in his general art history courses at the École du
Louvre.

714
Larroumet was Fine Arts Director from 1888 to 1891. His 1895 study on art in the French state
mentions the museums collections of the Louvre (est. 1793), the Luxembourg (1802), Versailles (1837),
Cluny (1843), the Museum of National Antiquities at Saint-Germain en Laye (1867), the Museum of
Comparative Sculpture in the Trocadéro (1879), as well as the Bibliothèque Nationale, the École des
Beaux-Arts collections of copies and casts, and the many provincial museums throughout France.

300
In light of this statement, Lydia Cassatt’s consultation of a guidebook in Degas’s
Mary Cassatt at the Louvre becomes more understandable (Fig. 101). No plaques or labels
are visible on the glass case of the sarcophagus and thus Lydia must seek information
elsewhere. Yet, it is unlikely that her small book was an officially published museum guide.
As Larroumet lamented, the available museum catalogues were “voluminous and costly” and
thus “unclear and unmanageable.” For him, the lack of useful catalogues defined a true
“crisis” in late nineteenth-century France.
715
Therefore, Lydia’s book, if indeed she was using
it to educate herself about the Etruscan object, was most likely a privately published guide or
art history handbook, possibly even one from the Enseignement series.
In 1882, the Louvre museum had founded the École du Louvre, an educational
institution associated with the famous collection. Although the new school provided some
lecture courses for the general public held in the museum’s galleries, the École’s primary
purpose was the training of future museum professionals, both as curators to maintain
collections and excavators to enhance these collections through archaeological research.
716
In
1903, Salomon Reinach, author of his own art history survey Apollo from 1904, began
teaching a general course of art history at the École du Louvre, which was well attended by

715
An anonymous article in the Courrier de l’art from 1882 similarly observed that “everyone who
visits” the Louvre “has been struck by the inconvenience of the official catalogue.” It continued: “il
faut sans cesse feuilleter ce lourd et encombrant volume, sauter à chaque instant du commencement à la
fin et perdre ainsi un temps considerable.” Despite an attempt by the Ministry of Fine Arts to provide
simple museum catalogues for the Universal Exhibition in 1889, Larroumet claimed that the available
catalogues were still “completely useless” to the public and had hardly improved in the last fourteen
years. See Courrier de l’art, 21 Sept. 1882, 447 and Larroumet, 243-44.

716
Larroumet, 223-40. On the École’s intentions of public education as well as the primary goal of
producing professional archaeologists that could compete with Berlin and London on the acquisition of
materials for national museums, see E. Ledrain’s numerous articles in the Courrier de l’art between 28
Sept. and 7 Dec. 1882. According to Ledrain, École du Louvre students who served France as
excavators even received an abstention from military service, given the dangers of archaeological
exploration and its “noble” national purpose.

301
the public, including women.
717
Up to that time, the Louvre courses remained highly
specialized. When Paul Pierret described his course on Egyptian archaeology at the École, he
stated that he would welcome non-specialists, but with the explicit warning that his course was
not designed for “the use of gens du monde.” “Science will be exposed in all its aridity,” he
specified, while “the picturesque side of the monuments” that normally appealed to beginners
would be only of “secondary” concern.
718
Thus, even with the foundation of a school of art
history and archaeology at the Louvre, the extent of the museum’s educational outreach to the
French public remained limited.
In the final decades of the nineteenth century, general education in art history became
increasingly accessible to the French public. The government had officially prescribed the
teaching of art history in secondary school programs, inciting a clear growth in the number of
students with basic knowledge of the canonical monuments and historical periods of the field.
Publishers quickly responded to this new demand for introductory art history. By issuing
affordable illustrated surveys, they made available the standard knowledge necessary for such
new programs. To be sure, the actual numbers of school students affected by these curricular
changes were rather small. Not only were the students with secondary education a low
percentage of the French population, remaining in the tens of thousands compared to the
millions of primary schools students, but the government programs were also more often

717
On Reinach’s lectures on general art history at the École du Louvre, see Reinach, Apollo and
Therrien, 210. Therrien notes that hundreds attended these lectures, which were held in the galleries
beneath the Nike of Samothrace, making the audience for Reinach’s survey courses larger than other
more specified courses held at the École.

718
Paul Pierret, “Cours d’archéologie egyptienne, leçon d’ouverture faite le 5 Dec. 1882,” Discours
d’ouverture de MM. les professeurs de l’école du Louvre (Paris: E. Leroux, 1883), 40-41, and as quoted
in Therrien, 182.

302
suggested than mandatory, and education inspectors rarely enforced adherence to them.
719

Moreover, few dedicated teachers of art history were available at this level, and history
professors most often taught the subject as a supplement to their history courses. But the
impact of published art history surveys was by no means limited to their use in schools. With
their portable formats, low prices, and printed illustrations these books also brought art history
knowledge to readers beyond the confines of the classroom, offering information for museum-
goers like Lydia Cassatt and other members of the literate public.

Popularizing Art History

Although the authors and publishers of these new French surveys claimed to bring art
history to an audience of “all classes” and “all budgets,” these statements need to be evaluated
within the context of fin de siècle France. Just how “popular” was this new audience for art
history? Both the curricular laws that incorporated the subject into school programs and the
books designed in the context of these laws specifically targeted secondary school students.
And, according to education historians, secondary school in France at this time was still
reserved for a small minority of the elite.
720
Unlike primary schools, which became free as of
1881, secondary schools, both public and private, required a payment of tuition. This amount
totaled between 60 and 120F annually for day students and between 600 and 1000F for live-in
boarders.
721
Furthermore, primary and secondary schools constituted entirely separate

719
On the numbers of students in secondary schools, see Prost, 328 and Mayeur, L’Education des filles,
167.

720
See, for instance, Prost, 34; Albertini, 6; and Mayeur, L’Education des filles en France au XIXe
siècle (Paris: Hachette, 1979), 8.

721
On these figures, see Weisz 24-25; Prost, 32-34; and Albertini, 12. According to Albertini, the
thousand francs annual tuition was the entire yearly income for many skilled workers. In contrast, the
salary range for professors, a solidly bourgeois profession, was between 1100F for non-degree-holding
303
channels of education, and not continuous stages of a single system. The laws that made
primary schools free and mandatory in republican France were directed at the majority of
French citizens who could not afford further education, a public quite different from those
who could pay for secondary schooling. Likewise, the drawing education that became part of
the primary school curriculum sought to instruct the future “workers,” not the future leaders,
of France.
Secondary schools, in contrast, were meant to educate middle and upper class children
and, for male students, to be the preparatory levels for entrance into higher education.
722
The
term université in France embraced both secondary and university-level education. French
schools of higher education—such as the various university facultés, which prepared young
men for liberal or teaching professions, and the Grandes Écoles, which opened doors to
positions of civil service as engineers and researchers—produced the most educated and elite
work force in the nation. Since obtaining a baccalaureate diploma upon graduation from the
various lycées or collèges meant automatic access to the facultés and often access to the
Grandes Écoles, these secondary schools were indeed a training ground for the elite of
France.
723
The baccalaureate degree became the “chief symbol of bourgeois status.”
724

Secondary schools for girls likewise educated the daughters of the bourgeoisie and the

instructor at a regional collège to 15,000F for a professor at a Paris university. See Albertini, 42. It was
only in 1930 that public secondary education became free of charge.

722
Prost, 13; Weisz, 4; Halls, 5. Children entered secondary school, either the lycées in large urban
centers or regional collèges around 7 or 8 years of age. See Albertini, 12-13.

723
The public, state-supported lycée system was created by Napoleon in 1802, which replaced the
Collèges Royaux of the Ancien Regime, and were initially meant to educate future military officers and
government administrators. See Prost, 24 and Halls, 5. The collèges were municipal, often private,
secondary schools.

724
Weisz, 38-9. The baccalaureate was also instituted by Napoleon in 1808. Halls, 5.
304
aristocracy, even though women were long denied the opportunity to receive the
baccalaureate.
Mid-level schools also claimed responsibility for what was called “general education.”
However, as Antoine Prost and other education historians have pointed out, the definition of
“general” education in this period was in fact quite specific. It described above all the
development of cultivated knowledge, including the traditional studies of Latin and Greek,
and, more recently, the “modern” studies of history, geography, science, and art history.
Certainly, general education in this context defined an education of culture and privilege. The
established middle and upper classes looked to secondary education to “justify existing
privileges,” while newer members of the middle class, with their status founded on commerce
and industry, wanted to “distinguish” themselves “from the lower commercial and industrial
occupations” through the cultural legitimization of secondary schooling.
725
According to
Perrot, art history was a subject only appropriate for this level:
It is only to students of the superior classes of our high schools that these lessons
must be addressed. Offered to younger children, they would perhaps be amusing;
but their minds would not be mature enough to comprehend everything and to
retain a lot of the material.
726

Therefore, the introduction of art history into the secondary school curriculum in many ways
asserted the field’s status as elite and removed from a more popular public. For many scholars
of nineteenth-century France, the term “popular culture” has unequivocally signified the
culture of the working class majority, while “elite culture” in turn describes the entirely

725
Weisz, 110-11. On the growing importance of such social “distinction” in the context of the
increasingly democratic Third Republic, see Mainardi, 139.

726
Perrot, 112: “C’est aux seuls élèves des classes supérieures de nos lycées que devront s’adresser ces
leçons. Offertes à de plus jeunes enfants, elles les amuseraient peut-être; mais leur esprit ne serait pas
assez mûr pour en tout comprendre et pour en beaucoup retenir.”

305
separate bourgeois and upper class minority.
727
For these scholars, the French education
system produced either ouvriers or savants.
728

However, from the perspectives of both book history and art history, the new general
surveys were just as unquestionably non-elite and thus popular. Meant for neither ouvriers
nor savants, the books demonstrate that an expansive and fluid middle ground existed between
these two categories. Nowhere is this middle ground more evident than in the fin-de-siècle
book market. At that time, publishers, including Quantin, explicitly differentiated their mass-
market books from their luxury volumes. For them mass-market or “popular” books did not
mean books for the working classes. Rather, these terms denoted affordable products printed
in large numbers on cheaper paper, employing inexpensive illustration techniques with few
decorative illustrations and targeting wide audiences of basically educated readers. In
contrast, luxury books were printed in limited editions on finer paper, incorporated a variety of
artistic illustrations including decorative flourishes, attended carefully to the typography as its
own decorative form, and were designed for small numbers of wealthy collectors. These
collectors identified themselves as an exclusive elite in contradistinction to the rest of the
book-buying public.
729

The firm of Quantin was well known and widely respected for its luxury volumes. An
article in the London Times, praised him along with Hachette as worthy successors to the art

727
See, for instance, Marc Bertrand’s review essay “Voix d’en bas et des marges,” in Popular
Traditions and Learned Culture in France, ed. Bertrand (Saratoga, CA: Anma Libri, 1985): 319-31.

728
Prost, 13.

729
On the self-perception of these book collectors as an “aristocracy of taste,” see Willa Silverman, The
New Bibliopolis, 40. On French collectors of the decorative arts more generally as a “bourgeois
aristocracy of the spirit,” see Debora Silverman, Art Nouveau, especially 32 and 119. Larroumet also
defines the French decorative arts as distinctly tied to the historic nobility and the new aristocracy of
money. See Larroumet, 162-65.

306
book publishers of Renouard and Didot.
730
The anonymous author specified, however, that
such luxury volumes remained “the books for the few,” for the “true bibliophile,” and were
“not to read, but to possess, to look at, and to show to envious friends”—in other words,
works of art themselves.
731
Yet, Quantin also aspired to offer books meant to be read and used
by a wider audience. In the Bulletin de la Maison Quantin, a brochure put out by the firm, the
publisher stated that he also offered books in “less decorative” and “less luxurious” formats,
thereby escaping the world of “the bibliophile” in order to reach the “grand public.”
732

The Enseignement volumes in particular were at the center of this shift in Quantin’s
market. A reviewer of the series in the London Times described the difference between luxury
art books and the affordable volumes:
Of learned and costly works on art [the French] have plenty, and almost every day
new and gorgeous éditions de luxe are added to the long roll of artistic publications
issued by enterprising Paris houses, but these, beside being beyond the reach of
mortals not blessed with a very long purse, do not answer the requirements of popular
education, the great aim of modern times.
733

In contrast, according to the British reviewer, the Enseignement series accomplished this
“great aim” by providing a collection of functional, informational books. The illustrations, for
instance, added few aesthetic elements to the book and were even accused of being “a bit
grey” in their printing.
734
Yet, reviewers recognized their successful role in “supporting the
text” to convey information rather than mere decoration.
735
And, as stated in Michel’s review

730
Didot, for instance, published a number of the Voyages pittoresque volumes, while Renouard
publishered volumes of Charles Blanc’s Histoire des peintres de toutes les écoles. On these luxury
publications, see my third chapter. For a summary history of the Didot firm, see Bouchot, Le Livre, 222.

731
Times (London), 26 Sept. 1882, as in ALQ, vol. 4, 728.

732
Bulletin de la Maison Quantin, no. 1 (Feb.-Mar. 1886), as in ALQ, vol. 4, loosely inserted.

733
Times (London), 5 June 1882, as in ALQ, vol. 2, 306.

734
Michel’s review in Le Parlement.

735
Ibid.
307
in Le Parlement, the price of the books in the series was “taken to the final limits of bon
marché [affordability].”
736
Like the famous department store by that name, a bon marché
book appealed to a wide audience with basic spending power and the desire to improve their
lives through the purchase of modern goods.
737

Reviewers also regularly described the series as “popular,” and in French, “vulgarisé.”
For instance, the Atlantic Monthly identified the books as appropriate for “the popular market”
and for “popular instruction,” whereas reviews in the Journal des Débats, Le Siècle, Le XIX
siècle, Le Pays, and La Loi all referred to the vulgarisation achieved with the volumes.
738

Comparing the “popular” Enseignement volumes to the luxury art books of Quantin, the
differences in these two categories become even clearer. Georges Lafenestre, the author of
one of the volumes of the Enseignement series, also wrote La Vie et l’oeuvre de Titian (1886),
a work in Quantin’s series of “Monographies des Grandes Maîtres de l’Art.” This volume was
printed in the large folio format (47cm) in a limited edition of 800 copies (compared to the
10,000 copies printed of the Enseignement books). It included both in-text images and fifty
separate plates of both etchings and heliogravures, and sold for 100F and up.
739
Lafenestre’s
La Peinture italienne in the Enseignement series, on the other hand, was printed as a
handbook volume (21cm) in an edition more than ten times as large with only in-text
illustrations; it sold for 3,50F. A similar juxtaposition of Louis Gonse’s two publications on

736
Ibid.

737
Aristide Boucicaut opened the Bon Marché department store in Paris in 1852, and of course this
store provided the model for Zola’s 1883 Au Bonheur des dames. See Michael B. Miller, The Bon
Marché: Bourgeois Culture and the Department Store, 1869-1920 (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1981).

738
“A Student’s Library of Art,” 120 and 118; Berger’s review in Journal des Débats; Hippolyte
Stupuy, “Variétés,” Le Siècle, 9 Sept. 1882; anonymous review in Le XIX siècle, 25 Dec. 1883;
anonymous review in Le Pays, 30 Dec. 1884; anonymous review in La Loi, 28 Mar. 1886, as in ALQ,
vol. 2, 302-24 and vol. 4, 737.

739
Bulletin de la Maison Quantin, 1 (Feb.-Mar. 1886), as in ALQ, vol. 4.

308
Japanese art with Quantin yields similar results. Quantin published Gonse’s L’Art japonais
(1883) in a limited edition of 1400 copies with 1000 in-text images and 64 plates in various
media, including etching, heliogravure, and color lithography; it sold for between 200 and
400F.
740
In comparison, Gonse’s L’Art japonais (1886) from the Enseignement series was,
like Lafenestre’s Peinture italienne, a small, illustrated volume that sold for a few francs.
In their functional and accessible formats, the Bibliothèque de l’Enseignement des
Beaux-Arts provided new access to art history, arguably making it a field of popular
knowledge. Though the history of art had traditionally been the exclusive sphere of wealthy
collectors, educated scholars, and professional artists, the field expanded its social boundaries
during the nineteenth century to include a much wider public. Never the domain of the under-
educated masses, art’s history was no longer simply or unilaterally elite. The popular art
histories in the Enseignement series can remind us how fluid the categories of elite and
popular remained, how interrelated they were, and how they must continuously be defined and
contextualized.
Returning one final time to Mary Cassatt at the Louvre: The Etruscan Gallery (Fig.
4.1), we now see a delicate balance of high and low being struck in Degas’ etching. Both the
artist and the two women appearing in his print figured among the social elites of fin de siècle
Paris: well-born, well-educated, and well-traveled. Mary, for instance, had received art
history instruction as part of her training at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. In
Philadelphia, and then later in Paris, she had studied the works of “the masters,” copying
classical sculptures and modern paintings alike. From her education as a professional artist,
many works of art in the Louvre would have already been highly familiar to her—but perhaps
not the Etruscan Man and Wife Sarcophagus. While Etruscan art was not taught as a style for

740
Ibid., 2 (May-June 1886).
309
emulation in the nineteenth-century art academy, it had nonetheless found a secure place in
surveys of art history. Thus, even the artist Cassatt might turn to an inexpensive and portable
reference book to learn about such an object. Moreover, though the wealthy sisters might
have been able to afford the most detailed multi-volume studies on Etruscan art, they still had
use for an inexpensive handbook to take with them into the Louvre galleries. What Degas’s
print series encapsulates so vividly is how art history could be simultaneously elite and
popular, high and low, exclusive and inclusive. In this, it was quite fittingly a subject of
nineteenth-century modern life.
310

Fig. 4.1. Edgar Degas, Mary Cassatt at the Louvre: The Etruscan Gallery, 1879-80, etching,
softground etching, drypoint, and aquatint

Fig. 4.2. Digital photograph of the Man and Wife Sarcophagus, Etruscan, 6th century BCE.
Louvre Museum
311

Fig. 4.3. Illustration of the Man and Wife Sarcophagus from Charles Bayet’s Précis d’histoire
de l’art (Paris, 1886), signed Ch. Kreutzberger

Fig. 4.4. Cover of Bayet’s Précis d’histoire de l’art with cloth binding

Fig. 4.5. Illustration of a woodblock print by Hokusai from Bayet’s Précis
312

Fig. 4.6. Edgar Degas, Mary Cassatt at the Louvre: The Paintings Gallary, 1879-80, etching
313

Fig. 4.7. Page with drawn illustration of Donatello’s David from Bayet’s Précis (1886)

Fig. 4.8. Page with photographic illustration of David from Bayet’s Précis (1908)
314

Fig. 4.9. Page with drawn illustration of Velazquez’s Drinkers from Bayet’s Précis (1886)

Fig. 4.10. Page with photographic illustration of Drinkers from Bayet’s Précis (1908)
315

Fig. 4.11. Page with photographic illustration of the Laocoon, from Bayet’s Précis (1908)

Fig. 4.12. Page with drawn illustration of the Roman sculpture Agrippina, from Bayet’s Précis
(1886)
316

Fig. 4.13. Page with drawn illustration of the Colosseum, from Bayet’s Précis (1886)

Fig. 4.14. Page with photographic illustration of the Colosseum, from Bayet’s Précis (1908)

317
Chapter 5: The Mothers of Art History? Women and the Production of Popular Art
History

In her anthology on the institutions of art history, Elizabeth Mansfield refers to art
history as “a motherless discipline.”
741
The history of art history indeed continues to be
written as a progression of contributions by male scholars. From Vasari, Winckelmann, Kant,
and Hegel, to Wölfflin, Riegl, Panofsky and Warburg, art history has had plenty of “founding
fathers.”
742
Recent historiographies have begun to consider a number of other nineteenth-
century voices—Franz Kugler, Wilhelm Lübke, and Carl Schnaase in Germany; Hippolyte
Taine, Charles Blanc, Séroux d’Agincourt, Jules Quicherat, and Louis Courajod in France;

741
Elizabeth Mansfield, ed., Art History and Its Institutions: Foundations of a Discipline (New York:
Routledge, 2002), 1. Other scholars have recognized this issue as well. Robert Nelson lists the various
“fathers of art history” as Hegel, Vasari, Winckelmann, and von Rumohr, but then states that the “real
issue is who (or what?) is the mother of art history?” See Nelson, “The Map of Art History” Art
Bulletin 79, no. 1 (1997): 35. The notion of the “mother” has long been contested within feminist
studies, where it has been either critiqued as essentializing or embraced as a psychoanalytic category of
rich theoretical possibilities. See, for instance, Griselda Pollock, Differencing the Canon: Feminist
Desire and the Writing of Art’s Histories (New York: Routledge, 1999). I invoke “mothers” here in
response to Mansfield’s comment, in full recognition of its problematic connotations.

742
The literature on these figures is vast. See, for example, Alex Potts, Flesh and the Ideal:
Winckelmann and the Origins of Art History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994); Karen Lang,
Chaos and Cosmos: On the Image in Aesthetics and Art History (London: Cornell University Press,
2006); Ernst Gombrich, Aby Warburg: An Intellectual Biography (London: The Warburg Institute,
1970); Joan G. Hart, Heinrich Wölfflin: An Intellectual Biography (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1981); Margaret Olin, Forms of Representation in Alois Riegl’s Theory of Art (University Park,
PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992); and Margaret Iversen, Alois Riegl: Art History and
Theory (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993). Other long-acknowledged “fathers” from the nineteenth-
century include Passavant, Karl Von Rumohr, Johann Fiorillo, Burckhardt, Gustav Waagen, Anton
Springer, Herman Grimm, Giovanni Morelli, Joseph Crowe, Giovanni Cavalcaselle, and Bernard
Berenson. Studies on these scholars are also plentiful. For collective works on their contributions, see
Julius von Schlosser, Die Kunstliteratur: ein Handbuch zur Quellenkunde der neueren Kunstgeschichte
(Vienna: A. Schroll, 1924); Heinrich Dilly Kunstgeschichte als Institution: Studien zur Geschichte einer
Disziplin (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1979); Michael Podro, The Critical Historians of Art (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1982); Udo Kultermann, The History of Art History (New York: Abaris
Books, 1993); and Venon Hyde Minor, Art History’s History (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall,
2001).

318
Giovanni Morelli in Italy; and Charles Eliot Norton in America.
743
However, even these latest
additions to art history’s early scholarly canon are all male.
My research on the overlooked importance of non-academic forms of art history in the
1800s has revealed a corresponding blindness to the many nineteenth-century women who
shaped the developing field in crucial ways. In Britain in particular, numerous women gained
recognition as art critics, art historians, art educators, and translators of foreign art history
scholarship. Anna Jameson, for instance, began publishing articles on Italian art in the Penny
Magazine in 1843; Eliza Foster provided the first translation of Vasari’s Lives of the Artists
into English in 1850, a publication issued as a set of affordable handbooks in H. G. Bohn’s
Standard Library series; and, in 1874, Nancy Bell published The Elementary History of Art,
the first general survey of art history written by a woman, which predated the better-known
work of Helen Gardner by more than fifty years.
744
This chapter will examine the
contributions of such female art historians, focusing especially on Bell’s Elementary History
of Art, which saw numerous editions and circulated widely in both Britain and the U.S. A
rethinking of the history of art history that incorporates these “foundational females” will

743
On Germany, see Mitchell Schwarzer, “Origins of the Art History Survey Text,” Art Journal 54, no.
3 (1995): 24-9 and Dan Karlholm, Art of Illusion: The Representation of Art History in Germany and
Beyond (Berlin: Peter Lang, 2006). On France, see Roland Recht et al., Histoire de l’histoire de l’art en
France au XIX siècle (Paris: Documentation Française, 2008); Philip Hotchkiss Walsh, “Viollet-le-Duc
and Taine at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts: On the First Professorship of Art History in France,” in Art
History and Its Institutions, ed. Mansfield, 85-99; Mary G. Morton, “Naturalism and Nostalgia:
Hippolyte Taine’s Lectures on Art History at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, 1865-1869,” Ph.D. diss.,
Brown University, 1998. On Italy, see Giacomo Agosti et al., Giovanni Morelli e la cultura dei
conoscitori (Bergamo: Pierluigi Lubrina Editore, 1993). On America, see C. Hugh Smyth and P. M.
Lukehart, eds., The Early Years of Art History in the United States (Princeton: Department of Art and
Archaeology, 1993) and Linda Dowling, Charles Eliot Norton: The Art of Reform in Nineteenth-
Century America (Lebanon, NH: University of New Hampshire Press, 2007).

744
Themina Kader claims that Gardner’s book was the first “succinct, richly illustrated art history
textbook to emerge,” indeed, the first single-volume “survey of the world’s art.” Not only was
Gardner’s publication not the first illustrated art history survey, as such books had been published since
Knight’s Pictorial Gallery of Arts in 1847, it was also not the first such survey to be written by a
woman. See Kader, “The Bible of Art History: Gardner’s Art Through the Ages,” Studies in Art
Education 41, no. 2 (2000): 169 and 176.

319
demonstrate that the contributions of women must be acknowledged not despite, but rather
because of, their widespread popularity.
745

Since the 1970s and the rise of feminist art history, the “hagiography of masculine
genius” in the field has been severely critiqued.
746
Linda Nochlin’s foundational essay “Why
Are There No Great Women Artists?” examined the institutional discrimination of women
artists throughout history.
747
Following in Nochlin’s wake, a dense collection of studies by
such influential scholars as Griselda Pollock, Norma Broude, Thalia Gouma-Peterson, and
Lucy Lippard similarly lambasted the discipline for its patriarchal biases. Yet, more than forty
years later, the historiography of the field still suffers from many of the same biases and
endures to this day as just such a “hagiography” of male genius. Although historians of the
discipline, such as Udo Kultermann and Vernon Hyde Minor, do mention a number of late-
twentieth-century women in their canon of art historians (including many of the feminist
scholars mentioned above), they are silent on the possibility of earlier female voices.
748

A few attempts to illuminate, if not remedy, this lack of early female contributors
have been made. In an important statement, albeit buried in a footnote of her 1988 article
“Feminism, Art History, and Sexual Difference,” Lisa Tickner argues rather rebelliously that

745
Only one study in the last thirty years offers an in-depth discussion of nineteenth-century female art
historians: Claire Richter Sherman, ed., Women as Interpreters of the Visual Arts, 1820-1979 (London:
Greenwood Press, 1981). This study provides an overview of a number of women in Europe and
America who produced art historical work in the nineteenth century. In this, it has been fundamental
for my work. Sherman’s book offers an introductory retrieval of these women as part of a broader
feminist revision of art history. My work builds on this effort, while it focuses on the specific context
of women’s contributions to the popularization of art history in nineteenth-century Britain, particularly
through general-market publishing.

746
This citation is taken from Deborah Cherry and Griselda Pollock, “Patriarchal Power and the Pre-
Raphaelites,” Art History 7, no. 4 (1984): 493.

747
Linda Nochlin, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists,” Art News 69, no. 9 (1971): 22-
45.

748
Kultermann, The History of Art History, and Minor, Art History’s History.

320
both “feminism as an autonomous political movement and art history as a modern professional
discipline” began in the work of one nineteenth-century British woman: Anna Jameson.
749

Jameson indeed involved herself in activities that can be considered proto-feminist, including
the publication of numerous studies on the social conditions and employment of women
beginning in the 1830s, lecturing on similar issues after 1855, and leading groups of younger
female activists in the final days of her life.
750
A number of studies discuss and debate her
status as an early feminist.
751

The second part of Tickner’s claim, however, has sparked little scholarly debate and
has instead been largely ignored. To argue that art history as a discipline began in the 1800s
not with the men of academia, but with the women of the popular British book market,
remains a radical statement. While I do not wish to argue along with Tickner that the
“discipline” of art history began with Jameson, a concept that can be reasonably limited to
academia, I am suggesting that the broader field of art history does indeed have a number of
recognizable “mothers.” Women such as Nancy Bell and her thirty-some British sisters were

749
Lisa Tickner, “Feminism, Art History, and Sexual Difference,” Genders 3 (1988): 118, note 10.

750
For Jameson’s writings that considered the social situations of women in the nineteenth century, see
Characteristics of Women (1832); Visits and Sketches at Home and Abroad (1834); and Winter Studies
and Summer Rambles in Canada (1836); Memoirs and Essays on Art, Literature, and Social Morals
(1846). For her activities in support of women’s issues, see Clara Thomas, Love and Work Enough:
The Life of Anna Jameson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1967), 207-8. To summarize,
Jameson believed in the equality of men and women as created by God and “one in species,” and as
“equally rational beings” with the same moral responsibilities. Jameson never became a radical feminist
that denounced marriage; for her, marriage was an equal partnership in which men and women
performed separate duties. The woman was responsible for domestic management and maternity.
Though separate, the roles of women were nonetheless equally significant to those of men, and Jameson
continually championed the social betterment of women, especially in promoting universal education.
Jameson articulated her views in letters to Ottilie von Goethe. See G. H. Needler, ed., Letters of Anna
Jameson to Ottilie von Goethe (London: Oxford University Press, 1939), 234 and Thomas, 208-9.
Italics in original.

751
See, for instance, Kimberly Van Esveld Adams, Our Lady of Victorian Feminism: The Madonna in
the Work of Anna Jameson, Margaret Fuller, and George Eliot (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2001)
and Judith Johnston, “‘Throwing Down the Partition Walls’: Feminist Dialectics and Professional Work
for Women,” in Anna Jameson: Victorian, Feminist, Woman of Letters (Aldershot: Scholar Press,
1997), 208-35.
321
prolific scholars of art history; together they published hundreds of works. Yet, because of a
disciplinary bias against popular forms of art history, their contributions remain a significant
blindspot in the historiography of art history. Recognition of women’s art history
scholarship, moreover, can provide perspective on the historical connections between gender,
popular publishing, public education, and the history of art in the 1800s.

Women and Publishing
For most of nineteenth century, women in Britain were denied access to both
university degrees and institutional positions, as they were in other European nations.
752

Throughout the 1800s, however, a large number of British women found jobs and even
professional careers in the field of publishing. Given the boom in book production during this
period, publishers employed an increasing number of women in the material production of
books. Women worked as bookbinders, for instance, a process that involved sewing and
therefore drew on the needlework skills long part of women’s education across a range of
social classes. Illustrations from Charles Knight’s Pictorial Gallery of Arts depict women at
work in these book-related professions (Fig. 5.1). Even the most basically educated women
learned domestic duties, including dressmaking. As an anonymous author in the Penny
Magazine wrote in 1842, “It is a fortunate circumstance, considering the very limited number
of employments for females in this country, that there are several departments of bookbinding
within the scope of their ability.” The magazine gave the example of one firm that employed
more than 200 women during its busy season, paying a wage of between ten and eighteen

752
The first degrees offered to British women were by the University of London in 1878. In France, no
women had access to a degree, either a baccalaureate or university diploma, until after this date. The
Ecole des Beaux-Arts opened its doors to women for full degrees in 1898. See Mayeur, L’Education
des filles en France au XIXe siècle (Paris: Hachette 1979), 74. By the 1890s, women were more
regularly granted degrees and given access to institutional positions. In Germany, the first women were
admitted to universities in the 1890s. See Sherman, 21.

322
shillings per week.
753
This wage was securely a working class salary, being lower than a
highly skilled worker, such as a type compositor earning around 48s per week, and higher than
a maid, who made less than 5s per week.
754
This trend of employing women continued
throughout the century; by the 1870s, more than forty percent of the job ads posted in the book
trade journal Publishers’ Circular pertained to women.
755

British publishers also employed numerous women in the production of illustrations,
including both wood engravings and color lithographs. Charles Knight’s numerous illustrated
publications drew upon the designs and cutting skills of a number of female wood engravers,
such as Harriet Ludlow Clarke and Mary Ann Williams (Fig. 5.2) (on these artists, see
Appendix 1). For instance, a wood engraving after Raphael’s Marriage of the Virgin from
Knight’s Pictorial Gallery of Arts prominently displays Clarke’s signature in the lower right.
In his history of the London publishing firm George Bell and Sons, Edward Bell credited Miss
Mary Byfield as the wood engraver with “talent and taste,” who had designed the company’s
insignia.
756
Bell’s firm had also published Felix Summerly’s (pseudonym of Henry Cole)
Handbook to the Hampton Court with, as the title page declared, “embellishments engraved
on wood by ladies.”
757
The field of wood engraving for women grew large enough that
courses on the medium were established in the Female School of Art at South Kensington in
the 1850s, superintended by the wood engraver John Thompson between 1852 and 1859 (on

753
“A Day at a Bookbinder,” Penny Magazine, monthly supplement, Sept. 1842, 377-84.

754
On these wages, see Percy Muir, Victorian Illustrated Books (London: B. T. Batsford, 1971), 2 and
Alexis Weedon, Victorian Publishing: The Economics of Book Production for a Mass Market, 1836-
1916 (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003), 114.

755
Publishers’ Circular, 2 Mar. 1874, 155.

756
Edward Bell, “George Bell Publisher: His Business,” typescript copy in George Bell Archives at the
University of Reading, MS. 1640, item no. 190, p. 50.

757
Ibid., 21-22.

323
Thompson, see Appendix 1).
758
Similar classes also emerged for female
chromolithographers.
759
Moreover, many of the best-known British female artists were
illustrators, including Kate Greenaway and Beatrix Potter.
760

In addition to the manual processes of bookbinding and illustration, an increasing
number of women in Britain contributed to the intellectual side of publishing. Along with
teaching and art production, writing remained one of the few professional fields to which
nineteenth-century women had access.
761
The trade journal Publishers’ Circular in 1876
observed a clear boom in writing by women: “As for lady authors, their name is legion and
their industry excessive.”
762
The ledger books of London publishers as Smith, Elder, and Co.
witness the truth in such a statement; they mention at least eighty different female authors.
763

758
On women wood engravers, see W. J. Linton, Wood Engraving: A Manual of Instruction (London:
George Bell, 1884), 44; and Gerry Beegan, The Mass Image: A Social History of Photomechanical
Reproduction in Victorian London (London: Macmillan, 2008), 225-6 note 15.

759
Rowan Watson, “Publishing for the Leisure Industry: Illuminating Manuals and the Reception of a
Medieval Art in Victorian Britain,” in The Revival of Medieval Illuminations, ed. Thomas Coomans and
Jan de Maeyer (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2007), 90.

760
Anna Jameson also provided her own illustrations as etchings in several of her books, including
Sacred and Legendary Art.

761
The literature on women artists in the nineteenth century has grown dramatically in the last few
decades. See, for example, Whitney Chadwick, Women, Art, and Society (London: Thames and
Hudson, 1990); Anne Higonnet, Berthe Morisot (New York: Harper and Row, 1990); Tamar Garb,
Sisters of the Brush: Women’s Artistic Culture in Late Nineteenth-Century Paris (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1994); Gen Doy, Women and Visual Culture in Nineteenth-Century France 1800-
1852 (London: Leicester University Press, 1998); Deborah Cherry, Beyond the Frame: Feminism and
Visual Culture, Britain 1850-1900 (London: Routledge, 2000); Linda L. Clark, “Women and the Arts:
Creating, Performance, Fame,” in Women and Achievement in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2008), 82-124. However, few British female artists from the 1800s have
become as well known as their French counterparts. Among the most successful female artists in
Britain were Henrietta Ward and Elizabeth Thompson. See David Robertson, Sir Charles Eastlake: Sir
Charles Eastlake and the Victorian Art World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978). On
nineteenth-century women as teachers, see James C. Albisetti, “The Feminization of Teaching in the
Nineteenth Century: A Comparative Perspective,” History of Education 22 (1993): 253-63.

762
Publishers’ Circular, 18 Jan. 1876, 2.

763
See Smith, Elder ledger books, John Murray Archives (JMA), National Library of Scotland, MSS.
43194 and 43195. These ledger books date from 1853 to 1899.
324
More than the manual work discussed above, authorship was indeed “a socially accepted
occupation” for women of the educated classes.
764
A profession that could be practiced from
the home, it also posed less of a challenge to the traditional roles of women as wives and
mothers. Though women in this period had little formal political power and lacked the right
to vote, they were by no means solely confined to a private realm of domesticity. Publication
of their writings enabled women to seek recognition in the public sphere. Of course, female
novelists have been the best-known producers of women’s writing.
765
But the work of female
authors in Britain reached far beyond the genre of the novel; women produced a wide range of
books, including studies of art history.
766

Women and the History of Art

Several elements of the study of art history made this field particularly accessible to
women. Programs of female education, either in schools or in the home, incorporated lessons

764
Sherman, 17.

765
The literature on female novelists in the nineteenth century is vast. See, for example, Elaine
Showalter, A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists from Brontë to Lessing (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1977; expanded edition 1999); Gaye Tuchman, Edging Women Out:
Victorian Novelists, Publishers, and Social Change (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989); Alison
Booth, Greatness Engendered: George Eliot and Virginia Woolf (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1992); Dorothy Mermin, Godiva’s Ride: Women of Letters in England, 1830-1880 (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1993); Joanne Shattock, The Oxford Guide to British Women Writers (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1993); Linda L. Clark, “Women and Literature: Authorship, Publication,
Audience,” in Women and Achievement in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2008), 40-81.

766
Genres in which women writers commonly published include studies of history, science, geography,
and religion; biographies; children’s books; household manuals and etiquette guides; educational
treatises; and histories of music. Harriet Martineau, for instance, published histories of England and
India, as well as books on political economy. Other noteworthy examples of non-fiction best-sellers by
women include Lady Callcott’s Little Arthur’s History of England and Mrs. Markham’s various
histories of England, France, Germany, Greece, and Rome. Both Callcott’s and Markham’s works were
children’s books published for decades by John Murray.

325
that were especially useful for art history scholarship.
767
First, along with reading and writing,
women from the middle and upper classes were instructed in the subjects of drawing, painting,
and other artistic pursuits. These skills or “accomplishments” formed part of the traditional
“polite arts” that had been taught to elite women for centuries.
768
In the 1800s, instruction in
the visual arts reached beyond the most elite classes, and these subjects made up part of the
curricula of day schools catering to women who could not afford private education in the
home or in boarding schools. A growing number of women therefore became knowledgeable
about the materials and techniques of art-making, information they could apply in the study of
art history.
Women’s education in this period also routinely included the study of living foreign
languages (rather than the Greek and Latin taught principally to male students). Language
skills gained importance for women who traveled with their own families, and in preparation
for work as teachers and governesses. As historian of women’s education P. J. Miller argues,
working as a teacher or governess was the principal alternative for educated women who
failed to secure, or, alternatively, chose not to secure their livelihood through marriage.
769

Anna Jameson, for example, worked as a governess prior to her marriage in 1825, as did Lady

767
The options for women’s education during most of the nineteenth century included home schooling
by parents and hired tutors or governesses; expensive boarding schools ranging from £40 to £1000 per
year; cheaper day schools; and an even cheaper dame school. See P. J. Miller, “Women’s Education,
‘Self-Improvement,’ and Social Mobility—A Late Eighteenth-Century Debate,” British Journal of
Educational Studies 20, no. 3 (1972): 306.

768
These “polite arts” were also known as “accomplishments” in English and arts d’agrément in
French. See Clark, “Women and the Arts,” 82 and Ann Bermingham, Learning to Draw: Studies in the
Cultural History of a Polite and Useful Art (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000).

769
Miller, 306-7.

326
Morgan (née Sydney Owenson).
770
The position of governess in particular represented “the
prerogative of gentlewomen who had fallen upon hard times.”
771

Given their training in languages, one of the most common means for British women
to earn a living in publishing was as translators. Women provided English translations of
some of the most important books of the period, from the positivist studies of Auguste Comte,
to the fairy tales of the Grimm brothers, the historical scholarship of Leopold von Ranke, and
the poetry of Schiller and Goethe.
772
Moreover, learning languages enabled British women to
read and engage with art historical scholarship published in other countries, giving them
access to the most current knowledge in the field. Jameson, for instance, cited the scholarship
of Vasari, Lanzi, Cicognara, von Rumohr, Kugler, and Séroux d’Agincourt in her Penny
Magazine articles on Italian art, revealing her study of works in Italian, German, and
French.
773
In her translation of Vasari’s Lives, Foster likewise footnoted Pliny, Winckelmann,
and Waagen, in addition to the names mentioned by Jameson.
774
In addition to Italian,

770
On the biography of Anna Jameson, née Murphy (1794-1860), see Thomas; Gerardine Macpherson,
Memoirs of the Life of Anna Jameson (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1878); Adele Holcomb, “Anna
Jameson (1794-1860): Sacred Art and Social Vision,” in Women as Interpreters of the Visual Arts,
1820-1979, ed. Sherman, 93-122; Adams; and Johnston. On Lady Morgan, see Sherman, 11.

771
Miller, 307.

772
See, for example, Auguste Comte, Positive Philosophy, trans. Harriet Martineau (London: Chapman,
1853); Leopold von Ranke, History of the Popes, trans. Eliza Foster (London: H. G. Bohn, 1847-48)
and Ranke, The Ecclesiastical and Political History of the Popes in Rome, trans. Sarah Austin (London:
John Murray, 1840); and Johann von Goethe, Faust, trans. Anna Swanwick (London: George Bell,
1879).

773
Anna Jameson, “Essays on the Lives of the Remarkable Painters,” Penny Magazine, 1843-45. This
series of articles was later republished in book format as Memoirs of Early Italian Painters (London:
Charles Knight, 1845) and then again in 1859 by both John Murray in London and Ticknor and Fields
in Boston. According to Howard Mumford Jones, this publication was also widely circulated in
America through numerous reprints in the U.S. See Jones, O Strange New World (New York: Viking,
1964), 106.

774
Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Artists, trans. Eliza Foster, 5 vols., Bohn’s Standard Library (London: H.
G. Bohn, 1850-52).

327
German, and French, Foster was also fluent in Spanish, as demonstrated in her translation of J.
A. Condé’s History of the Arabs in Spain.
Not only could they read and interpret this continental scholarship, but British women
also brought these studies within the reach of other English speakers, providing translations of
many significant works of art history. For example, Blanche Smith Clough, Ellen
Frothingham, Margaret Hutton, Elizabeth Eastlake, and Fanny Elizabeth Bunnètt translated
the widely respected German-language works of Jacob Burckhardt, G. E. Lessing, Johann
Passavant, Gustav Waagen, Franz Kugler, Wilhelm Lübke, Alfred Woltmann, Julius Meyer,
and Herman Grimm.
775
Anna Jameson, Nancy Bell, Mrs. Bury Palliser, and Louisa J. Davis
additionally translated the French-language studies of Alexandre Rio, Charles Blanc, Louis
Viardot, Albert Jacquemart, Jules Labarthe, and Eugène Müntz.
776
Many of these women
often worked directly with foreign authors on their translations. The preface of Bunnètt’s

775
Jacob Burckhardt, The Cicerone: An Art Guide to Painting in Italy, For the Use of Travelers and
Students, trans. Blanche Smith Clough (London: John Murray, 1873); Gotthold Ephraim Lessing,
Laocoon: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry, with Remarks Illustrative of Various Points in
the History of Ancient Art, trans. Ellen Frothingham (London: Sampson Low, 1874); Johann Passavant,
Tour of a German Artist in England, trans. Elizabeth Rigby (later Eastlake) (London: Saunders and
Otley, 1836); Gustav Waagen, Treasures of Art in Great Britain, trans. Lady Elizabeth Eastlake
(London: John Murray, 1854); Franz Kugler, A Hand-book of the History of Painting: From the Age of
Constantine the Great to the Present time, trans. Margaret Hutton, ed. Sir Charles Eastlake (London:
John Murray, 1842); Wilhelm Lübke, History of Art, trans. Fanny Elizabeth Bunnètt (London: Smith,
Elder and Co., 1868) and History of Sculpture from the Earliest Ages to the Present Time, trans.
Bunnètt (London: Smith, Elder, and Co., 1872); Alfred Woltmann, Holbein and his Time, trans. Bunnètt
(London: Richard Bentley, 1872); Julius Meyer, Antonio Allegri da Correggio, trans. Mary Margaret
Heaton (London and New York: Macmillan, 1876); Herman Grimm, Life of Michael Angelo, trans.
Fanny Elizabeth Bunnètt (London: Smith, Elder, and Co., and Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1865).
See also Baron Alfred von Wolzogen, Raphael Santi: His Life and His Works, trans. Bunnètt (London:
Smith, Elder, and Co., 1866).

776
Alexadre Rio, The Poetry of Christian Art, trans. by Miss Wells (London: Thomas Bosworth, 1854);
Charles Blanc, History of the Painters of All Nations, translated and adapted by Anna Jameson, J. B.
Waring, and Matthew Digby Wyatt (London: Cassell, 1852); Louis Viardot, Wonders of Sculpture,
trans. N. D’Anvers (Nancy Bell) (London: Sampson Low, 1872 and New York: Scribner, 1873); Albert
Jacquemart, History of the Ceramic Art: Descriptive and Analytical Study of the Potteries of all Times
and All Nations, Mrs. Bury Palliser (London: Sampson Low, 1874); Jules Labarthe, Hand-book of
Medieval Art, trans. Mrs. Bury Palliser (London: John Murray, 1854); Eugène Müntz, A Short History
of Tapestry, trans. Louisa J. Davis (London and New York: Cassell, 1885). See also Eugène Plot,
Thorvaldsen, His Life and Works, trans. Frances Cashel Hoey (London R. Bentley, 1874).

328
translation of Grimm’s Life of Michael Angelo, for instance, explained that the German author
had “allowed” her “to undertake the translation of his work,” and then mentioned an exchange
of letters regarding this permission. In other cases, these women became lifetime friends of
the scholars they translated, as in the relationship of Elizabeth Eastlake and Gustav Waagen.
777

Translation of course served as an important means of popularizing the study of art
history, making knowledge in the field more widely available for English-speaking audiences
in both Britain and America. Foster’s translation of Vasari brought a work that had previously
been accessible only to an elite group of connoisseurs, collectors, and scholars within the
reach of a much broader public. Foster’s Vasari appeared in Bohn’s “Standard Library” series
of inexpensive volumes at 3s 6d each. As Patricia Rubin observes in her study of the
translation, Foster’s work was “warmly welcomed,” while its inclusion in Bohn’s Library—a
series praised by Ralph Waldo Emerson for rivaling the railroad in its importance for modern
life—enabled an “extremely moderate cost” that positioned the work squarely within the
popular book market.
778
Similarly, a review of Ellen Frothingham’s translation of Lessing in
the Saturday Review observed how Frothingham’s work gave the important German study “a
new lease of life in the English language.”
779
The reviewer valued Lessing’s book as the
epitome of “art-criticism” and as “the first example of intellect, armed with sufficient
knowledge, applying itself vigourously to the solution of artistic problems.” With the

777
On Eastlake’s relationship to Waagen, see Robertson, Sir Charles Eastlake, as well as letters of
Elizabeth Eastlake to John Murray, in the JMA. Eastlake was also connected to other established art
historians, from Crowe and Cavalcaselle to Morelli.

778
This citation was taken from a draft version of Rubin’s chapter, which she very kindly shared with
me. Rubin has completed the difficult work of retrieval for Foster’s biography, especially the definitive
identification of her first name as Eliza. See Patricia Rubin, “‘Not...what I would fain offer, but...what I
am able to present’: Mrs. Jonathan Foster’s translation of Vasari’s Lives,” in Le ‘Vite’ di Vasari: Genesi
– Topoi – Ricezione, ed. A. Nova (Florence: Kunsthistorisches Institut, in press).

779
This review was quoted in the Publishers’ Circular, 2 Oct. 1874, 696.

329
“thoroughly good quality of Miss Frothingham’s translation, which is as readable as a well-
written original English book,” the British public gained a new access to this significant work.
Not all translations provided by British women appeared as affordable handbooks like
Foster’s Vasari and Frothingham’s Lessing, which similarly formed part of Bohn’s Standard
Library and sold at the extremely low price of 1s. Because it was unillustrated, Frothingham’s
work could reach such a level of affordability. On the other end of the spectrum, however,
were books such as Bunnètt’s translation of Lübke’s History of Art and History of Sculpture,
which were issued as multi-volume works with hundreds of wood-engraved illustrations for
the hefty cost of 42s. But even such expensive studies remained general-market publications,
reaching out to new students of art history rather than to the established scholars of the field.
Translation provided a significant income for women. Smith, Elder, and Co. paid
Bunnètt £50 (1000s) for her translation of Lübke’s History of Art in 1868.
780
Compared to the
500 shillings that a female bookbinder might hope to make per year with steady work, the
earnings for translation were clearly higher and revealed the value placed on this work that
only an educated woman could attempt. Though paid a flat salary, rather than sharing any part
in the profits from sales with publishers, female translators often received significant sums for
their work, which at times even surpassed the honoraria paid to a book’s original author.
Bunnètt’s payment at £50 doubled that offered to Wilhelm Lübke by Smith, Elder for
translation of his History of Art.
781
Rubin estimates that Eliza Foster received as much as
£250 from Bohn for her translation of Vasari, a salary equivalent to the annual income of a
clerk in the Civil Service.
782

780
See the album of publication arrangements for Smith, Elder, and Co: JMA, MS. 43194, p. 99.

781
Ibid.

782
Rubin.

330
In addition to having skills in both art making and foreign languages, British women
also possessed a growing access to travel beyond Britain, a fact that further encouraged the
study of art history. Indeed, new and industrialized modes of transportation, such as the
steamship and railroad, enabled greater numbers of upper and middle class women to visit
foreign countries and view works of art in person. Elizabeth Eastlake, for example, traveled to
Germany and Russia with her family in the 1830s, and then later throughout Europe with her
husband Sir Charles Eastlake, President of the Royal Academy (1850-65) and Director of the
National Gallery (1855-65). These trips included visits to art collections in Germany and
Italy, as well as the Hermitage in St. Petersburg.
783
Kate Thompson, likewise, joined her
father Sir Henry Thompson on his annual tour of the continent and was encouraged by him to
visit the famous art galleries and take detailed notes about the art she saw.
784
Thompson and
her father visited at least eight countries, including Italy, Spain, France, Belgium, Germany,
Austria, Holland, and Russia. Many educated women also served as governesses for wealthy
families, a position that provided travel opportunities as well, as these women would
accompany their employers on trips abroad. Between 1821 and 1825, Jameson traveled to
Italy as a governess, where she visited famous works of art, from St. Peters, the Colosseum,
and the Column of Trajan, to the paintings at the Borghese and Barbarini galleries.
785
After
her marriage to Robert Jameson in 1825, she continued to travel to the continent, often with
family and friends, rather than her husband, who was serving colonial posts in the West Indies

783
On Lady Eastlake, see Robertson, Sir Charles Eastlake; Marion Lochhead, Elizabeth Rigby, Lady
Eastlake (London: John Murray, 1961); and Francis Haskell, Rediscoveries in Art: Some Aspects of
Taste, Fashion, and Collecting in England and France (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1976).

784
Kate Thompson, A Handbook to the Picture Galleries of Europe (London: Macmillan, 1877).

785
On these visits, see Beatrice (Mrs. Steuart) Erskine, ed., Anna Jameson: Letters and Friendships,
1812-1860 (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1915), 45.

331
and Canada. She spent the most time in Germany, where she visited galleries in Dresden,
Munich, and other cities.
786

The growth of women’s travel in the nineteenth century corresponded with a boom in
travel writing as a publishing genre accessible to women.
787
Authors such as Mariana Starke,
Joanna and Susan Horner, Mrs. Hamilton Gray, and Kate Thompson provided widely read
accounts of their trips to the European continent and beyond.
788
Much of this travel writing by
women included detailed accounts of visits to famous works of art. Starke provided
descriptions of art to be seen on the Italian peninsula, while Mrs. Gray’s accounts of her 1839
visit to collections of Etruscan art in Italy appeared in such popular publications as the Penny
Magazine and Knight’s later Pictorial Gallery of Arts (on these publications, see Chapter 1).
Moreover, both Jameson and Nancy Bell, who would later write art history books, also
published widely read travel accounts and guidebooks. Jameson described her journeys to
Italy and Germany that included visits to the major art galleries and museums, while Bell’s Art
Guide to Europe provided an illustrated account of her own visits abroad.
789
Beyond simply

786
On these travels, see Thomas, especially 45, 75, 92. After 1838, Jameson and her husband agreed to
live apart permanently, and he would afford her an annual stipend of £300. Robert Jameson retired
from his post in 1849, allegedly from alcoholism, and died in 1854, leaving Anna without a means of
income. In 1851, she began receiving a stipend of £100 through the Queen’s pension, an honor her
well-connected friends helped to secure for her. See Thomas, 190.

787
See Elizabeth Eastlake, “Lady Travellers,” Quarterly Review 76 (1845): 98-99; Shirley Foster and
Sara Mills, eds., An Anthology of Women’s Travel Writings (Manchester: Manchester University Press,
2002); and Judith Johnston, “‘Only a Traveller’s Tale:’ Gendered Discourse in Professional Travel
Writing,” in Anna Jameson, 100-23.

788
See Mariana Starke, Travels in Italy (London: Phillips, 1802) and Travels in Europe (London: John
Murray, 1837); Susan and Joanna Horner, Walks in Florence (London: Strahan, 1873); Thompson, A
Handbook to the Picture Galleries of Europe. On Mrs. Hamilton Gray, see “Etruscan Antiquities at the
British Museum,” Penny Magazine, 21 Jan. 1843, 20-21 and Charles Knight, ed., Pictorial Gallery of
Arts, vol. 2 (London: Charles Cox, 1847), 199-202. On Starke, see Sherman, 10. Travel writing by
women was by no means unique to Britain; French women such as Mme P. and Mme X. wrote articles
for the travel journal Le Tour du monde.

789
Jameson, Diary of an Ennuyée (London: H. Colburn, 1826), Visits and Sketches at Home and
Abroad (London: Saunders and Otley, 1834), Memoirs and Essays on Art, Literature, and Social
332
cataloguing the works of art to be seen in travel, however, many female authors included art
historical information in their travel guides as well. The subtitle of Thompson’s 1877
Handbook to the Picture Galleries of Europe, for instance, declared that the book provided “a
brief sketch of the history of the various schools of painting from the thirteenth century to the
eighteenth inclusive.”
One of the principal claims that women authors made to establish their authority as art
historians related to their extensive travels. Eliza Foster wrote in the preface to her translation
of Vasari’s Lives that she had “selected carefully, according to the best of her judgment” what
additions to make to Vasari’s study “as frequent visits to the galleries of Europe have enabled
her to offer.”
790
Foster’s travels took her to Berlin, Paris, Munich, Vienna, Prague, Venice,
Milan, Bologna, Florence, Sienna, and Rome, among many other European cities.
791
Mary
Margaret Heaton, likewise, stated in her Concise History of Painting that she had selected “to
the best of her judgment her own additions after frequent visits to the galleries of Europe.”
792

The nearly exact repetition of this language by Foster and Heaton demonstrates its
significance for establishing the reliability of women as art history scholars based on their
direct observation of works of art. Thompson even assured her readers that she would discuss
no work of art she had not directly seen.
Several recent scholars have observed the importance of travel for German academic
art historians in the nineteenth century. Supported by the government funds that also paid the
salaries of their university and museum appointments, these men—including Lübke,

Morals (London: R. Bentley, 1846); Nancy Bell, The Art Guide to Europe (London: George Philip and
Son, 1894).

790
See Foster’s “Preface” to Vasari, Lives, v-vi.

791
On Foster’s wide travels, see Rubin.

792
Mary Margaret Heaton, Concise History of Painting (London: Bell and Daldy, 1873).
333
Burckhardt, and Waagen—traveled widely to study art and primary documents first-hand. It
was this research-based study, scholars argue, that gave art history a new scientific validity as
a discipline.
793
Though not funded through public expense, British women had much of the
same access to foreign works of art and relevant documentation through their travels. Many
were well connected to scholars and archivists beyond Britain, a fact that permitted similar
primary research to that of German academics. Not aspiring to the scientific rigor that would
rival their university colleagues, British women nonetheless grounded their scholarship in
historical sources in a way that was indeed progressive for art history. Given their access to
art education, language training, and foreign travel, British women began to claim a new
professional status as historians of art. Though none received official degrees in the field, won
positions in the growing number of public art institutions, or gained funding through
government expense, these women sought and achieved an increasing presence in the field of
art history in Britain.

Why Britain?

The growing presence of women writers in the 1800s was by no means unique to
Britain.
794
However, art historical writing by women, though not unknown in other European
contexts, emerged there on a much more limited scale than that of their British neighbors. In
Germany, for example, Johanna Schopenhauer published a study on Jan van Eyck in Frankfurt
am Main in 1822, Adeline Seebeck provided a translation of Vasari’s Lives into German
between 1832 and 1849, and Magdalene von Broeker wrote an art history survey,

793
See Karlholm, “The Journey of Art History,” in Art and Illusion, 141-90 and Gabrielle Bickendorf,
“The Berlin School and the Republic of Letters,” in Histoire de l’histoire de l’art en France au XIXe
siècle, ed. Roland Recht et al., (Paris: Documentation Française, 2008), 38-41.

794
See Clark, Women and Achievement, for a comparative study of women writers in various European
countries.
334
Kunstgeschichte im Grundriss in 1895.
795
In France, the educational publisher Charles
Delagrave included two studies by women in his series of art history books: Angélique
Arnaud’s 1882 biography of Andrea del Sarto and Marie de Besneray’s 1884 work on the
painting of Poussin, Ruysdael, and Claude Lorrain.
796
Similarly Delphine de Cool’s history of
ceramics and enamel work was issued in the series Bibliothèque Popularie des Ecoles du
Dessin in 1891.
797
And of course the widely read writings of Germaine de Staël in the first
decades of the nineteenth century included discussions of art in Italy and Germany.
798

However, the number of female art historians publishing in continental Europe remained small
compared to the veritable explosion of such work in Britain.
This difference can be in part explained by Britain’s comparative lack of
institutionalized programs of art history in the museum, the art academy, or the university. As
argued in earlier chapters, private endeavors in Britain—including both general-market
publications and profit-oriented exhibitions—rather than publicly funded institutions tended to
dominate the efforts in art history education. Such a situation enabled women to enter the
field as authors and public educators alongside men. Jameson, for example, was included,
along with such well-known male figures as Matthew Digby Wyatt, Owen Jones, and Austen
Henry Layard, as the author of a handbook to the profit-oriented exhibition of the Sydenham

795
On these women, see Johanna Schopenhauer, Johann van Eyck und seine Nachfolger (1822);
Sherman, 9; and Rubin.

796
Angélique Arnaud, François del Sarte: ses découvertes en esthétique, sa science, sa méthode
précédé de détails sur sa vie, sa famille, ses relations, son caractère (Paris: Charles Delagrave, 1882)
and Marie de Besneray, Les Grandes époques de la peinture: Poussin, Ruysdaël, Claude Lorrain (Paris:
Charles Delagrave, 1884); Delphine de Cool (Mme Arthur Arnould), La Céramique et les émaux (Paris:
J. Rouam, 1891).

797
Hachette’s Bibliothèque des Merveilles, discussed in Chapter 3, does include a few female authors
among it books, such as Mme L. Meunier’s work on rivers in 1887, but none of these books by women
concern art history subjects.

798
Germaine de Staël, Corinne (1807) and De l’Allemagne (1810). Jameson repeatedly mentions de
Staël as a model for her work. On de Staël’s relationship to female art historians like Jameson, see
Thomas, 28 and Sherman, 8.
335
Crystal Palace, revealing her respected role as an art history writer and educator. Publishers
such as John Murray also commissioned her to provide significant gallery guides for the
public and private collections of Britain. Thus, as much as German art history professor and
museum director Gustav Waagen, whom Jameson referred to as a “bigwig,” and who
published similar guidebooks in the 1850s, Jameson was responsible for promoting British
collections as significant resources for the study of art history.
799

In contrast, public institutions dominated art historical scholarship in other European
countries, largely shutting out the contributions of women. In German-speaking regions, the
situation in Berlin was typical: the University of Berlin began training art historians in the
1840s, while this academic program was also closely aligned with the National Museum of
Berlin.
800
Similar situations existed in the cities of Bonn, Leipzig, Frankfurt, Gottingen,
Vienna, Zurich, and Basel, where public art museums, art academies, and newly founded
academic departments of art history worked in conjunction to promote art history scholarship.
More than educating a broad public in art history, these institutions were interested in training
professional scholars and museum personnel, and in defining art history as a scientific
discipline. Even when private publishers like Ebner und Seubert of Stuttgart issued
introductory handbooks of art history, and thereby sought to reach out to a wider German-
speaking public, they turned to scholars with institutional accreditation, such as Kugler,
Lübke, and Burckhardt.
The situation in France was somewhat similar, with public institutions largely shaping
the field of art history, though academic programs in France were slower to develop than their
German counterparts. The first art history professors in institutions of higher education were

799
Anna Jameson, Handbook to the Public Galleries of Art in or Near London (London: John Murray,
1840) and Companion to the Private Galleries of Art in London (London: Saunders and Otley, 1844).
On Jameson’s reference to Waagen as a “bigwig,” see Macpherson, 172 and Thomas, 164.

800
On the institutional development of art history in Berlin, see Karlholm and Bickendorf, 35-46.
336
Hippolyte Taine hired in 1863 at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and Charles Blanc at the Collège
de France hired in 1878.
801
However, art history scholarship had long thrived as a field among
museum professionals, arts administrators, and arts educators in the employ of the French
state.
802
Whether in academic or civic institutions, these positions were limited to male
scholars. An example to illustrate this point can be seen in series of art history handbooks, the
Bibliothèque de l’Enseignement des Beaux-Arts, published between the 1880s and the early
twentieth century. The vast majority of the authors of the series handbooks were men with
institutional credentials; no female authors were included (on this series, see Chapter 4). Male
private collectors, from Séroux d’Agincourt to Alexandre du Sommerard to the Brothers
Goncourt, have also strongly influenced the history of art in France.
In Britain, art history scholarship remained more loosely tied to public institutions and
therefore less exclusively dominated by men. On the one hand, even the most successful male
art historians, from Ruskin to Digby Wyatt, made their reputations long before they were
awarded university positions as Slade Professors of Art History at Oxford and Cambridge.
803

These positions, furthermore, represented not professorships for the training of art history
professionals, as in German universities, but rather lectureships for the general education of
university students. Until the twentieth century, university degrees in art history were not
offered in Britain.
804
Even the most respected museum professionals, who were all male,

801
See Therrien and Walsh. Neither of these positions trained future art historians. Taine educated
future artists and Blanc lectured to students at the Collège de France and the general public.

802
An important example is Dominique Vivant-Denon, who was appointed as Director of the Louvre
under Napoleon in 1803.

803
Ruskin received his position at Oxford in 1870 and Digby Wyatt, at Cambridge in 1869. The first
female Slade Professor was Anita Brookner at Cambridge in 1967.

804
Helen Rees Leahy, “For Connoisseurs: The Burlington Magazine, 1903-11,” in Art History and Its
Institutions, ed. Mansfield, 233.

337
could claim no academic training in the history of art. This discrepancy between British art
historians and those of the continent can be clearly seen in advertisements for art history books
in the Publishers’ Circular, where the German authors all appear with the titles of “Dr.” and
“Professor,” while the British scholars are cited as “Mr.” and “Mrs.”
805
Male scholars in
Britain could also claim affiliations in various professional societies, such as James Fergusson,
who was a Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects (FRIBA). Women, in contrast,
could not become members of these societies.
On the other hand, women’s contributions found a significant place in many privately
organized endeavors of art history education. Not only was Jameson recognized as an
educator in the context of the Sydenham Crystal Palace, but countless other women gained
similar reputations in the private book market: Eliza Foster and Ellen Frothingham worked
with publisher H.G. Bohn on their translations of art history scholarship; Elizabeth Eastlake,
Mary Philadelphia Merrifield, and Margaret Hutton collaborated with the firm of John Murray
on various art history publications; Fanny Elizabeth Bunnètt translated important works of
German art history for Ruskin’s publisher Smith, Elder, and Company; and Nancy Bell
worked for decades with the firm of Sampson Low on her numerous educational studies of art
history.
In comparison to continental art history, the situation in America resembled that of
Britain, and, one might argue, was deeply influenced by the British model. By the final
decades of the century, numerous American women had begun translating, writing, and
publishing art history books. Examples include Kate Newell Doggett, who translated Charles
Blanc’s widely read Grammaire des arts du dessin in 1871; Julia de Forest, who provided a

805
Publishers’ Circular, 17 Mar. 1879, 226-7. The advertisement for Sampson Low’s “Illustrated
Biographies of the Great Artists” names “Dr. Woltmann” and “Dr. Meyer” along with “Mr. J. A.
Crowe” and “Mr. W. H. J. Weale.”

338
Short History of Art in 1881; the art critic Margaret Fuller, who wrote for the New York
Tribune; and Clara Erskine Clement Waters, who published A History of Art for Beginners
and Students in 1887.
806
Such a correspondence between the American and British contexts is
not surprising. The publishing industries of these two nations had indeed formed intimate
connections in the 1800s. Books published first in Britain were often immediately republished
in America, including Anna Jameson’s Memoirs of Early Italian Artists and Nancy Bell’s
Elementary History of Art, in part because of the shared language and in part because of the
lack of international copyright in America that removed the need to purchase rights from
British publishers and authors.
807
As a result, the circulation of British books in America was
pervasive. Numerous art history publications by British women, therefore, emerged on the
market in America, assuring American women and their publishers of a demand for such work
in the U.S.
808

806
Charles Blanc, The Grammar of Painting and Engraving, trans. Kate Newell Doggett (New York:
Hurd and Houghton, 1873); Julia B. De Forest, A Short History of Art (New York: Dodd, Mead, and
Co., 1881); Clara Erskine Clement Waters, A History of Art for Beginners and Students (New York: F.
A. Stokes, 1887). Between 1880 and 1900, Waters published at least eight books on art history.
Margaret Fuller has been the most studied of these American women, albeit primarily as an art critic
more than an historian of art. See Sherman, 123-46 and Adams.

807
On the slow development of international copyright in America, see James J. Barnes, Authors,
Publishers, and Politicians: The Quest for an Anglo-American Copyright Agreement (1815-1854)
(Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1974).

808
Moreover, America was particularly progressive in founding co-ed and women’s colleges, such as
Oberlin in 1840, Vassar in 1865, Wellesley in 1875, and Smith that same year. These and other new
colleges for women provided training in the field of art history, and, while their professors remained
predominantly male, American females began to gain institutional recognition in this field. Elizabeth
R. P. Coffin wrote the first graduate thesis in art history at Vassar in 1876. See Sherman, 17-19. Helen
Gardner also wrote a master’s thesis on art history in 1917 at the University of Chicago. See Kader,
165. In revising this dissertation for publication, I intend to investigate more closely the American
context of popular art history and the contributions by women.

339
British Female Art Historians

The scope of women’s art history publishing in Britain grew widespread,
encompassing a large variety of genres. Among the earliest form of writing to include the
women authors were artists’ biographies. In the 1820s, Maria Graham (later Lady Callcott)
published a memoir of Nicolas Poussin, while Lady Morgan (Sydney Owenson) issued a
biography of Salvator Rosa, and Jameson contributed the introduction to a translation of
Waagen’s biography of Rubens.
809
Later studies by Anna Eliza Bray and Elizabeth Eastlake
provided important accounts of British artists, including painter Thomas Stothard and sculptor
John Gibson.
810
In an especially revealing case, one woman—Mary Margaret Heaton—
published at least five biographical studies in her lifetime, including an account of Albrecht
Dürer’s life and work, which included a translation of the artist’s writings, as well as studies
of Leonardo da Vinci and David Wilkie, an edition of Allen Cunningham’s Lives of the British
Artists, and entries in a well-known dictionary of artists.
811
Outpacing even Heaton, Nancy
Bell issued six studies of individual artists—including works on such canonical figures as

809
Maria Graham, later Lady Callcott, Memoir of the Life of Nicholas Poussin (London: Longman,
1820); Lady Morgan, The Life and Times of Salvator Rosa (London: Henry Colburn, 1824); Gustav
Waagen, Peter Paul Rubens: His Life and Genius, trans. Robert Noel, introduction by Anna Jameson
(London: Saunders and Otley, 1840). Lady Callcott, who first married Capt. Thomas Graham of the
Royal Navy, published travel journals of her residence in India, and also spent time in South America.
After the death of her first husband, she returned to England and married Augustus Wall Callcott, the
Royal Academy artist. Therefore, her situation was rather typical for a female art historian in Britain:
she was widely traveled and had family connections to the art world. See Robertson, 16; Rosamund
Brunel Gotch, Maria, Lady Callcott (London: John Murray, 1937); and Sherman, 10-11. On Lady
Morgan, see Sherman, 11.

810
Anna Eliza Bray, Life of Thomas Stothard, R. A. (London: John Murray, 1851) and Elizabeth
Eastlake, Life of John Gibson (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1870).

811
Mary Margaret Heaton (Mrs. Charles Heaton, née Keymer) (1836-1883), Great Works of Sir David
Wilkie (London: George Bell, 1868); History of the Life of Albrecht Durer (London: Macmillan, 1870);
Life of Leonardo da Vinci (London: Macmillan, 1872); Cunningham’s Lives of the Most Eminent
British Painters, Bohn’s Standard Library (London: George Bell, 1879), and entries for Bryan’s
Biographical and Critical Dictionary of Painters and Engravers, 3rd ed. (1884-1889). See also Heaton
and Charles Christopher Black, Leonardo da Vinci and his Works (London: Macmillan, 1874). On
Heaton, see Sherman 13-14.

340
Raphael, Tintoretto, Mantegna, Veronese, Gainsborough, and Whistler—and several
collective accounts of the various “masters.”
812

A second category of art history publications by women included practical treatises on
historical techniques of art. Mary Philadelphia Merrifield edited an English translation of
Cennino Cennini’s Treatise on Painting in 1844, which discussed the medium of fresco and
played an important role in the revived interest in fresco by British painters at mid-century.
813

Merrifield issued several other studies of painting media, including The Art of Fresco Painting
as Practiced by the Old Italian and Spanish Masters in 1846, On the Arts of Painting in Oil,
Miniature, Mosaic, and Glass in 1849, and Handbook of Light and Shade, with Especial
Reference to Model Drawing in 1855.
814

A third category of art histories by British women represented more focused studies of
specific periods, styles, monuments, or iconographic subjects. In 1835, Lady Callcott
privately published her description of Giotto’s paintings in the Arena Chapel in Padua.
815

While Heaton authored a book on Flemish art in 1869, Lucy Baxter (as Leader Scott)
produced a volume on Renaissance art in Italy. The most internationally renowned British
author of studies on French art was Lady Emilia Dilke (previously Mrs. Mark Pattison), whose

812
Nancy Bell, Thomas Gainsborough (London: George Bell, 1897); Paolo Veronese (London: George
Newnes, 1904); James McNeill Whistler (London: George Bell, 1904); Tintoretto (London: George
Newnes, 1905); and Mantegna (London: Jack, 1911); Masterpieces of the Great Artists AD 1400-1700
(London: George Bell, 1895); and Representative Painters of the XIXth Century (London: Sampson
Low, 1899). These books were also published in the U.S.

813
Cennino Cennini, Treatise on Painting, ed. Mary Philadelphia Merrfield (London: Lumley, 1844).
On the revival of fresco in Britain, see Robertson, 69-71.

814
Mary Philadelphia Merrifield, On the Arts of Painting in Oil, Miniature, Mosaic, and Glass
(London: John Murray, 1849); The Art of Fresco Painting as Practiced by the Old Italian and Spanish
Masters (London: C. Gilpin, 1846); Handbook of Light and Shade, with Especial Reference to Model
Drawing (London: George Rowney, 1854). On Merrifield, see Sherman, 13.

815
Lady Callcott, Description of the Chapel of the Annunziata dell’Arena, or Giotto’s Chapel in Padua
(London: T. Brettell, 1835). On this publication, see Haskell, Rediscoveries, 92-3.

341
publications included works on Renaissance and eighteenth-century art in France.
816
Lady
Dilke’s scholarship also gained respect in France, where her work appeared in a series of
books on international art edited by Eugène Müntz, librarian at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.
817

Finally, Jameson published her multi-volume series of iconographic studies of religious art,
Sacred and Legendary Art (1848-1864). Elizabeth Eastlake completed the last volume of this
series, A History of our Lord, after Jameson’s death in 1860.
818

While women issued numerous book-length art history publications, they also
contributed a good deal of art criticism and art history in some of the most widely read British
journals. The first to earn a reputation as an art historian through her articles was Jameson,
with her ongoing study of Italian painters in the Penny Magazine in the 1840s. Not only was
this work later published in book format in several editions, but it also saw translation into
French by the renowned firm of Hachette in 1862.
819
Following in the footsteps of Jameson,
Foster wrote art criticism and travel accounts for the Art-Journal, Eastlake contributed
numerous art-related articles to the Quarterly Review and the Edinburgh Review, while
Merrifield wrote articles for the Art-Journal and the Edinburgh Review, and Dilke was a

816
Mary Margaret Heaton, Masterpieces of Flemish Art (London: Bell and Daldy, 1869); Leader Scott
(Lucy Baxter), The Renaissance of Art in Italy (London: Sampson Low, 1883); Emilia Pattison, née
Emila Francis Strong, later Lady Dilke, The Renaissance of Art in France (London: C. Kegan Paul,
1879) and French Painters of the Eighteenth Century (London: George Bell, 1899).

817
Emilia Dilke (as Mme Mark Pattison), Claude Lorrain: sa vie et ses oeuvres, Bibliothèque
Internationale de l’Art (Paris: Librarie de l’Art, J. Rouam, 1884). On Dilke, see David Carrier, “Deep
Innovation and Mere Eccentricity: Six Case Studies of Innovation in Art History,” in Art History and Its
Institutions, ed. Mansfield, 124-25. Carrier calls her an “eccentric,” who has little influence on current
practices of art history. See also Colin Eisler, “Lady Dilke (1840-1904): The Six Lives of an Art
Historian,” in Women as Interpreters of the Visual Arts, ed. Sherman, 147-80.

818
The publication includes five volumes: Poetry of Sacred and Legendary Art, 2 vols. (London:
Longmans, 1846-48); Legends of the Monastic Orders (1850); and Legends of the Madonna (1852); and
the History of our Lord, as Exemplified in Works of Art (1864).

819
Anna Jameson, Memoirs of the Early Italian Painters and La Peinture et les peintres italiens, trans.
Fernand Labour (Paris: Hachette, 1862).

342
frequent contributor to the Gazette des Beaux-Arts in France. Bell, likewise, wrote art-related
articles and book reviews for such journals as the Magazine of Art, The Studio, The
Connoisseur, and the Magazine of Christian Art in Philadelphia.
820

Unlike so many of their now-forgotten female colleagues, the writings of Jameson and
Eastlake have been recognized in recent scholarship. Yet, this scholarly interest has rarely
been by art historians, with the important exceptions of Francis Haskell and Adele
Holcome.
821
More often, it has been scholars studying art criticism as a literary genre who
have worked on these two women. For instance, when she deals with art criticism in her study
of print culture, Laurel Brake identifies both women along with the more famous names of
Ruskin, William Michael Rossetti, and Walter Pater.
822
Beyond this limited recognition as art
critics, the work of women as art historians, which was widely acknowledged in their own
lifetimes, remains unknown and underappreciated in art history today.

Recognition Received

Such art historical work by British woman was indeed recognized in the nineteenth
century. These women emerged as active and valued members of a scholarly community.
Their work saw the continuous support of publishers in London, appeared in the most widely
read periodicals, drew positive reviews from critics, and was read by many of the male
“authorities” of the field. In addition to her published books, Heaton was on staff for nine

820
On these contributions, see letters of Nancy Bell in the George Bell Archives, University of Reading,
MS. 1640.

821
Haskell calls Eastlake “one of the most articulate, representative, and influential figures of Victorian
England,” largely because of her art criticism, and claims that Jameson was second only to Ruskin in
furthering an interest in early Italian artists. See Haskell, Rediscoveries, 19 and 169.

822
Laurel Brake, Print in Transition 1850-1910 (New York: Palgrave, 2001), 198. See also John
Steegman, Consort of Taste, 1830-1870 (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1950). On British women as
art critics, see Meaghan Clarke, Critical Voices: Women and Art Criticism in Britain 1880-1905
(Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2005).

343
years as a writer of art criticism and other genres at The Academy. Heaton’s obituary in this
magazine noted that the author had a “wide reputation for literary skill and intellectual
power,” and claimed the friendship of such influential figures of London art culture as artist
William Bell Scott, photographer and scholar Joseph Cundall, and art critic Cosmo
Monkhouse.
823

Reviewers often categorized the art histories of women in gendered terms; they were
seen as “women’s work.” For instance, a review of Heaton’s biography of Dürer in the
Athenaeum dismissed the original portions of Heaton’s work as “the least valuable,” while
praising the book as “more serviceable than any single publication on the subject in German or
English.” Also lauded was the format of the book, including its useful indexes and “fine
autotype reproductions of famous engravings by Dürer.”
824
Indeed, Heaton’s publication was
seen as useful and “serviceable” but not innovative or creative. In a review of her Concise
History of Painting, Heaton was called an “intelligent compiler, standing so to speak on the
shoulders of many specialists, to cast a clear survey over the whole;” she was, however, not a
“specialist” herself.
825

This statement illuminates how women, like Heaton, Bell, and many others, were
uniquely positioned to provide “surveys” of art history that put “groups in their proper
places,” giving “a comprehensive idea of the characters and chief personages of schools, as
well as of their succession in time and distribution in place.” Rather than offering the most
advanced original research, women made a significant impact on introductory studies of the

823
Cosmo Monkhouse, “Obituary: Mrs. Charles Heaton,” The Academy, 9 June 1883, 403. See also
letters from Mary Margaret Heaton to George Bell and Sons Publishers in the George Bell Archive at
the University of Reading Special Collections, MS. 1640, such as Letter 301/87.

824
This review was quoted in an advertisement in the Academy 3 (1869): extra-text ads, n.p.

825
“A Concise History of Painting,” Fortnightly Review 13, no. 74 (1873): 278-9.

344
field. As Heaton’s reviewer observed, the survey “is a thing of the very highest value to the
beginner.” Heaton received recognition for her “intelligent and conscientious” research, for
being “an appreciative student of the monuments of art in a wide sense” and “an accurate
reader of the best modern literature on art.” She provided a “well managed” arrangement of
the information that “industriously and extensively” studied the proper authorities.
826

This review of Heaton’s work is particularly revealing about the reception of the work
of female art historians in Britain. On the one hand, they were widely appreciated for their
diligent research and intelligent presentation of the material. On the other, they were often
denied access to originality and to becoming “authorities” themselves. Women remained
students rather than masters, having “justness and culture” if not “genius.”
827
Moreover,
women like Heaton, Kate Thompson, and many others often outwardly expressed humility in
their scholarly aspirations. Thompson stated in her Guide to the Picture Galleries of Europe
that she was “not qualified” to contribute to the field of “art criticism,” and therefore did not
aspire to do so. She would merely provide an “occasional opinion” about the works of art she
discussed, claiming a position as a reporter more than an interpreter or specialized
connoisseur. Nor would she attempt to offer attributions of the works, a role that “was not in
[her] province.”
What was in a woman’s “province,” however, was providing information in a lively
and interesting form. Thompson’s guidebook, which also included information on the
historical development of painting and brief biographies of artists, received praise as “very far
from being dry reading.” Indeed, Thompson’s descriptions “awaken[ed] the imagination” of
her readers, and “transport[ed]” them in space and time to experience works of art along with

826
Ibid.

827
Ibid.

345
the author.
828
Heaton’s Concise History of Painting saw similar praise as “the most readable
and comprehensive of all short histories of painting.”
829
Though women were often held back
from reaching the pinnacle of a scholarly reputation and becoming recognized “specialists” in
the field of art history, their work was nonetheless valued for its appeal and attractiveness for
new students, as opposed to the dry and arcane studies of specialists.
One published series that clearly illustrates the importance and status of women art
historians in this period in Britain was Sampson Low’s “Illustrated Biographies of the Great
Artists.” Beginning in 1879, this series of thirty-two volumes included no less than seven
books written by women: Nancy Bell, Catherine Mary Phillimore, Leader Scott, Juila
Cartwright (Mrs. Henry Ady), Ellen E. Minor.
830
Heaton was also listed as the author of
several proposed volumes that were apparently never published.
831
These women contributed
studies on some of the most respected artists of the time: Raphael, Fra Angelico, Masaccio,
Mantegna, Ghiberti, Donatello, and Murillo. Again, not intended to be innovative original
scholarship—the majority of their books drew heavily on the German scholarship of
university professors Passavant, Woltmann, Meyer, and Springer, and expressly declared their
debt to such widely recognized academic art history—the biographies in the series claimed to
be introductory accounts useful for readers’ self-instruction.
832
Indeed, each volume was

828
Review of Kate Thompson’s Handbook to the Public Picture Galleries of Europe, The Times, 9
Sept. 1880, 8.

829
See Cosmo Monkhouse’s preface to Heaton, A Concise History of Painting (London: George Bell
and Sons, 1888).

830
N. D’Anvers, Raphael; Catherine Mary Phillimore, Fra Angelico and Masaccio; Leader Scott, Fra
Bartolommeo and Andrea del Sarto, and Ghiberti and Donatello, and Della Robbia and Cellini; Julia
Cartwright, Mantegna and Francia; Ellen E. Minor, Murillo.

831
These included a volume on Michelangelo, a volume on Van Eyck and the Flemish School, and a
volume on Correggio. See Publishers’ Circular, 1 Apr. 1879, Supplement 1-16 and 6 Dec. 1879, 1083.

832
On this debt, see advertisement in the Publishers’ Circular, 17 Mar. 1879, 226-7.

346
issued at the low price of between two and four shillings, and included numerous wood-
engraved illustrations after the artists’ most famous works. As advertisements in the
Publishers Circular declared,
The intention of this Series is to produce, in an easily accessible form and at a price
within the reach of every one, the results of the recent investigations which have been
made by many well-known critics, especially those of Germany and the
Netherlands.... It is proposed to issue this new Series in the form of handbooks which
may be ready in the study, the class-room, or the fields. Each work will be a
monograph of a Great Artist, or a brief history of a Group of Artists of one school;
and will contain portraits of the Masters, and as many examples of their art as can be
readily procured. Cheapness of price being especially aimed at, the introduction of
expensive new engravings will be unadvisable.
833

Though by the late 1870s, photomechanical reproductions had become available, they were
still quite expensive to produce. To maintain the low cost that formed a significant feature of
the series, the publishers opted to employ wood engravings, reusing many blocks that had
appeared in other Sampson Low publications. Here again, we see the intersections between
women’s scholarship and popular education that came to define the field of art history in
nineteenth-century Britain.
The inclusion of women in a widely accessible series of art history books was not
limited to Sampson Low’s “Illustrated Biographies.” Other collections, such as the slightly
later “Bell’s Miniature Series of Painters” published by the firm George Bell and Sons, which
Edward Bell called a “remarkable success,” named four women among the authors of their
twenty-some volumes: Leader Scott, Nancy Bell, Albinia Wherry, and Hope Rea.
834
These
tiny, pocket-sized volumes were sold with illustrations for the very low price of 1 shilling

833
Ibid.

834
Edward Bell, “George Bell Publisher,” 154.

347
each. “If art is to be made popular,” wrote the Pall Mall Gazette, “this assuredly is the way to
do it.”
835
And the work of women formed a large contribution to this effort in popularization.
Not only were British women included as authors in successful series of art history
books, but established scholars of the field also read and referenced their work. For instance,
Clarence Cook, in his translation of Lübke’s Outlines of the History of Art published in New
York in 1877, cited a number of works by British women as further reading for his American
audience. In addition to the work of such better-known male scholars as Crowe and
Cavalcasselle, Fergusson, Schliemann, Michelet and Viollet-le-Duc, Cook referenced Foster’s
translation of Vasari, Bunnètt’s earlier translation of Lübke’s work, Eastlake’s translation of
Kugler’s handbook of painting, several publications by Jameson and Heaton, and the travel
guides of Susan and Joanna Horner.
836
More than simply mentioning the books of these
women, Cook often praised them highly, calling Foster’s translation “the best English of
Vasari,” and labeling Heaton’s biography of Dürer a “good account.” Even when respected
male scholars, such as Ruskin, derided the work of these women—he famously stated that
Jameson knew “about as much about art as the cat” and that she “was absolutely without
knowledge or instinct of painting (and had no sharpness of insight for anything else)”—his
comments nonetheless reveal that women art historians could no longer be ignored.
837
In
other words, even Ruskin read their work and felt the need to dismiss it, perhaps because of

835
This statement from a review in the Pall Mall Gazette was quoted in the post-text advertisement of
Nancy Bell’s volume on Whistler published in Bell’s Miniature Series in 1904.

836
Wilhelm Lübke, Outlines of the History of Art, trans. Clarence Cook (New York: Dodd, Mead, and
Co., 1877). Specifically, Cook’s citations mentioned Eliza Foster, Lives of the Artists; Kugler, History
of Painting in Italy, trans. Elizabeth Eastlake (London: John Murray, 1876); Anna Jameson, Memoirs of
Early Italian Painters and Sacred and Legendary Art; Horner, Walks in Florence; Heaton, Life of
Albrecht Durer and Life of Leonardo da Vinci.

837
See John Ruskin, The Works of John Ruskin (London: G. Allen, 1903-12), vol. 35, 373-4, and as
cited in Haskell, 169 and Thomas, 214.

348
the growing influence of such scholarship that rivaled the sales of his own publications. To be
sure, women art historians had become a force to be reckoned with.

Nancy Bell’s Elementary History of Art

As discussed above, women emerged as uniquely positioned to provide general
surveys of art history. Previous chapters in this dissertation have examined the development
of the survey genre through a number of publications, from Charles Knight’s Pictorial Gallery
of Arts in 1847 to Charles Bayet’s Précis de l’histoire d’art in 1886. However, the surveys
discussed thus far have all been authored by men. In the second half of the century, a number
of British women issued surveys, including Bunnètt’s translations of Lübke’s History of Art
and History of Sculpture, Heaton’s Concise History of Painting (1873), and Bell’s Elementary
History of Art (1874).
838
These surveys by women were all illustrated: Bell’s book and
Bunnètt’s translations both had more than one hundred wood-engraved images integrated into
the text, while Heaton’s work included twelve autotype photographs bound into the volume
with the text pages. Bell’s and Bunnètt’s surveys shared a number of illustrations of canonical
art monuments, many of which were exact copies of images that first appeared in Lübke’s
1860 Grundriss der Kunstgeschichte (Figs. 5.3 and 5.4). While these repetitions demonstrate
the ongoing centrality of wood engravings to art history publishing, Heaton’s autotypes also
show how photomechanical techniques began to join wood engravings as viable illustration
media (Fig. 5.5).

838
Lübke, History of Art and History of Sculpture, trans. Bunnètt; Heaton, Concise History of Painting
and Nancy Bell (as N. D’Anvers), Elementary History of Art (London: Asher and Co, 1874), hereafter
EHA. Heaton’s survey was later revised by Cosmo Monkhouse and reissued without illustrations by
George Bell and Sons in 1888. Another unillustrated general survey was issued by Lady Marion
Campbell Jervis. See Lady Jervis, Painting and Celebrated Painters, Ancient and Modern, including
historical and critical notices of the schools of Italy, Spain, France, Germany, and the Netherlands
(London: Hurst and Blackett, 1854).

349
Though all of these publications received favorable reviews in the press, and saw a
relatively wide circulation, the survey that reached the broadest audience was Bell’s
Elementary History. Between 1874 and 1906, the book saw six editions simultaneously
published in New York as well as London, signifying both an American and a British public
for the work. While keeping in play the broader context of women’s art history writing in
Britain, the remainder of my chapter will focus on Nancy Bell and her Elementary History of
Art as the first illustrated general survey authored by a woman. Bell, born Nancy Meugens in
1844, began her literary career as a translator, providing English versions of such popular
novels as Jules Verne’s Fur Country (1873) and Around the World in Eighty Days (1876).
839

In 1873, Bell also translated the widely disseminated survey of sculpture by Louis Viardot,
which was published in Hachette’s Bibliothèque des Merveilles (on this series and Viardot’s
survey, see Chapter 3).
840

Only a year after providing these translations, Bell, barely thirty years old, issued her
Elementary History of Art with the London publisher Asher and Company. This firm had a
reputation for its educational books, especially dictionaries and language guides, and Bell’s
survey was listed among other pedagogically oriented works.
841
As in her previous
translations, Bell used the pseudonym “N. D’Anvers,” effectively hiding from the public her

839
Jules Verne, The Fur Country, trans. Nancy Bell (as N. D’Anvers) (London: Sampson Low, 1873
and Boston: James Osgood, 1873) and Around the World in Eighty Days, trans. Bell (London: Sampson
Low, 1873). Bell also translated Verne’s The Great Navigators of the XIXth Century (London:
Sampson Low, 1880) and The Blockade Runners (London: Sampson Low, 1874). It is worth noting
that Sampson Low issued Fur Country only one month after the French edition by Hetzel.

840
Louis Viardot, Wonders of Sculpture, trans. N. D’Anvers (London: Sampson Low, 1872).

841
On the publications of Asher and Company, see advertisements in the Publishers’ Circular from the
1870s. In 1877, for example, the trade journal recommended the firm as a respectable educational
publisher. Asher issued, in addition to Bell’s survey, manuals of German and Hebrew grammar,
history, and mythology, as well as readers in German, French, Italian, and Spanish. The prices for these
instructional works were low, at between two and twelve shillings. During the nineteenth century, the
firm of Asher had branches in London, Berlin, and St. Petersburg; it exchanged hands between several
owners while maintaining the name of Asher into the twentieth century.

350
identity as a woman. The choice of this pseudonym drew on the fact that her father was born
in Antwerp, or in French Anvers.
The use of such gender-neutral pseudonyms was relatively common among female
authors in this period. As Linda Clark observes in her study on the history of women’s
achievements, the practice was newly adopted in the nineteenth century.
842
While earlier
female writers had used female pseudonyms to avoid bringing notoriety upon themselves and
their families—essentially to hide their identity altogether—the use of a gender neutral or
male nom de plume served a different purpose: hiding an author’s identity as a female. This
practice developed in response to a changing literary marketplace increasingly based on
publicity and the promise of high sales.
843
Women aspired to the same serious reception by
critics and publishers that male authors received, as well as to equal payment and public
success for their publications. Noteworthy examples of such gender-neutral pseudonyms used
by women include George Sand in France (Aurore Dupin Dudevant) and Currer Bell in
Britain (Charlotte Brontë).
844

Nancy Bell, moreover, was not unique among female art historians to take up this
practice. Fanny Elizabeth Bunnètt translated Wilhelm Lübke’s art history books under the
name “F. E. Bunnètt,” while Lucy Baxter used the name “Leader Scott.” This tactic seemed
to yield positive results: in several laudatory reviews of the first edition of Bell’s survey, the
author’s identity was presumed to be male. For instance, a review in The Observer wrote:
Useful enough to find a place in the library of the student, the volume is at the same
time so pleasantly written and so free from prejudice that it will form a suitable gift-

842
Clark, 52.

843
Ibid.

844
Others include Holme Lee (Harriet Parr); Vernon Lee (Violet Page); Alcon Bell (Anne Brontë); and
Ellis Bell (Emily Brontë), as well as the numerous other cases recorded in the Smith, Elder ledger
books. See JMA, MS 43194 and 43195.

351
book for the young …We have said enough to show that Mr. D’Anvers had a wide
field to cover, and he must have the credit of occupying it well; each important phase
in the history of Art is noticed, every prominent artist is mentioned, and the nature of
the work described…Those who are in search of information upon the history and
principles of the fine arts cannot possibly do better than begin by master the contents
of this volume.
845

Only in Bell’s fourth edition of her Elementary History published in 1894, long after the
success of the publication had already been established, did Bell openly claim her identity as a
woman, using the name Mrs. Arthur Bell. She had married the painter Arthur George Bell in
1882, who was the son of publisher George Bell.
846
Perhaps it was Nancy Bell’s publishing
connections that first brought her into contact with Arthur.
847
Among female art historians,
the use of a husband’s name remained a common choice, and one that signified respectability
for a woman in the Victorian era. Examples include Mrs. Jonathan (Eliza) Foster, Mrs. Mark
(Emilia) Pattison, and Mrs. Bury Palliser, whose first name remains unknown. Mary Margaret
Heaton published both as M. M. Heaton and as “Mrs. Charles Heaton.”
Like so many of her female colleagues, including those who wrote for Sampson
Low’s “Illustrated Biographies of the Great Artists” series, Bell did not design her Elementary
History of Art to be a work of original scholarship. Indeed, Bell openly expressed her debt to
a “small ‘Guide to the History of Art’ which has long been in use in German schools.”
848

Although never specifically named, this German book can be definitively identified as
Lübke’s Grundriss. Not only do the organization and contents of Bell’s book closely match

845
See this review as quoted the post-text material of Bell’s 1906 edition. Other reviews in The Art, the
Daily Mail, and the London Quarterly Review likewise described Bell as a male author. See, for
example, London Quarterly Review, 43, no. 86 (1875): 510-12. Reviews likewise credited “Mr. Leader
Scott” for Lucy Baxter’s Renaissance of Art in Italy. See Publishers’ Circular, 6 Dec. 1882, 1219.

846
On Arthur Bell, see Edward Bell, “George Bell Publisher,” 90. He worked mainly as a watercolorist
and illustrator.

847
Because very little information is known about Bell’s biography, however, such a suggestion must
remain a speculation.

848
“Introduction,” EHA (1874), n.p.

352
Lübke’s survey, but 79 of the 120 images printed in Bell’s Elementary History of Art are exact
copies of the images in the German book (Figs. 5.6 and 5.7). It is likely that an arrangement
was made in which the publisher obtained electrotypes of the original wood engravings from
Lübke’s Stuttgart publisher Ebner und Seubert, especially given the fact that Asher had a
branch in Germany. Similar arrangements had been made between Ebner und Seubert and
Smith, Elder, and Co. in London for the use of Lübke’s original illustrations in Bunnètt’s
translations of his work published in 1868 and 1872.
849
As discussed in earlier chapters of this
dissertation, the exchange of wood-engraved illustrations between foreign publishers was
indeed a common practice in the nineteenth century. Lübke’s illustrations in particular were
continuously reused: Julia de Forest cites the German scholar’s survey of art history in her
own Short History of Art published in New York in 1881, and, like Bell, reused a significant
number of Lübke’s wood engravings.
850

Rather than a work of erudite scholarship with scientific aspirations, Bell’s survey
provided a widely accessible educational book to introduce new students to art history. It was
first announced in the Publishers’ Circular in 1874 within a section of listings for educational
books. Moreover, Bell’s book was organized as a general survey of art history. Like Knight’s
Pictorial Gallery of Arts, it included sections on architecture, sculpture, and painting, in that
order.
851
It provided images of exemplary works of art from each historical period and
geographical location. It was also, following precedents set by earlier surveys, equally global

849
On these exchanges, see Smith, Elder albums of publication arrangements, JMA, MS. 43194, 99 and
120 and Smith, Elder copyright agreements, JMA, MS. 43139.

850
The Smith, Elder, and Co. Register of Permissions for Foreign Works also indicates that the firm
sold Scribner’s the rights to use nine electros from Lübke’s History of Sculpture for Clara Waters’
Stories of Art and Artists in 1886. It is interesting that Smith, Elder felt free to sell electros that had
already been purchased from Ebner und Seubert, given that the contract for this original purpose was
explicit in denying the London publisher the freedom. See JMA, MS 43267.

851
On this history of this order, see discussion in Chapter 1.
353
in its scope, covering ancient India, Egypt, Assyria, and Pre-Columbian America, in addition
to Europe. Like James Fergusson, Bell commences her history of art with Asia. “It is to Asia,
the cradle of the human race,” Bell argues, “that we must turn to find the earliest germs of art,
and to trace their development,” a phrase that she accompanies with a detailed wood
engraving the Hindu Cave Temple at Elephanta in India showing the distinct bulbous columns
and the three-headed sculpture of Shiva (Fig. 5.8).
852
Such an introduction sets the stage for
Bell’s overview of world art history. Her next section significantly separates “Western” art
from these Asian contexts: “it is on the banks of the Nile that we meet with the earliest traces
of art in the West.”
853
This separation suggests that the Western and non-Western categories
of art history, which are now so prominent in the teaching and practice of art history, can be
traced to roots in the nineteenth century.
The use of “elementary” in the book’s title was also significant, and early publication
announcements identified its intended purpose as “for schools and self-instruction.”
854
While
“self-instruction” had been the focus of art history surveys at least since Knight’s Pictorial
Gallery in the 1840s, this additional mention of schools is noteworthy. As in France, the final
decades of the nineteenth century in Britain saw the passage of important education legislation
(on this development in France, see Chapter 4). After 1870, a public system of education was
implemented under the Foster Education Act of Parliament. For the first time, primary
schooling became obligatory for English students. Scotland passed a similar law in 1872.
Only in the next few decades would public schools in Britain become free for all students,

852
Bell, EHA (1874), 5.

853
Ibid., 10.

854
Publishers’ Circular, 17 Jan. 1874, 36.

354
however. According to Miller, this public school system in Britain betrayed a “painfully slow
development.”
855

Although these government-funded schools still rarely included art history in their
curricula, the growing interest in public education led to a corresponding boom in educational
publishing, including affordable art history books. The Publishers’ Circular expressly
congratulated “the country and Mr. Foster” on the “passage of a Bill which will give an
education...to every child in England.”
856
The anonymous author of this article went on to
observe that the current push for popular education had a particular investment in illustrated
publications and visual learning. Not only did the law widen “the bases of education,” it also
gave “a great impulse to the trade in elementary works” that will improve with the inclusion of
illustrations as “an aid to memory.” In these books, the author continued, “the mind is aided
by the eye.”
The rise of public education and illustrated publishing directly affected the study of art
history. The preface to Bell’s book, which was written by architecture professor and Fellow
of the Royal Institute of British Architects T. Roger Smith, spoke to this effect. Smith
described how “classical languages [were] no longer the only instruments of culture, and
literary attainments have not ceased to be considered—as they for long were—the sold objects
of a cultivated man’s ambition.”
857
Now, Smith observed, the fields of science and art were
increasingly retaining the attention of students. Along with the “brilliant discoveries” of
natural philosophers, Smith cited the advanced appreciation of art brought about by a number
of developments. First, he named the peace and prosperity of Britain that had encouraged art

855
Miller, 314.

856
Publishers’ Circular, 1 Aug. 1870, 441-42.

857
T. Roger Smith, “Preface,” EHA, ix.

355
collecting among private individuals with “leisure and means.” Second, he cited “the
marvellous spread of illustrated publications” that circulated information about art to the
public. Third, he named “the increased facilities for travelling” in order to see the “buildings
and pictures” beyond Britain.
858
Smith concluded, significantly, that this growing interest in
art was not limited to the wealthiest social groups, but rather reached “all ranks of the
community.” The “present movement” toward the study of art, he argued, “was essentially a
popular one.”
859

Smith defined this “popular movement” not only as reaching beyond the rich, but as
one not restricted “to the foremost men of the day, with all their acuteness and knowledge
stimulated to the full.” Instead, he argued, “it has rather taken its rise among those who are
but ill-informed on artistic subjects, and therefore stand peculiarly in need of guidance and
instruction,” including, significantly, female students.
860
He then cited Bell’s survey as an
ideal work “to give sound information in a popular form.” Such a “popular form” arose in
part through the affordability of the book.
861
Its price of 12s 6d for the original edition
signified the book’s intention as an inexpensive handbook. Much less than Fergusson’s
Illustrated Handbook of Architecture, which sold for 36s, or Heaton’s biography of Dürer
with its lithographs, autotypes, and woodcuts, which sold for 31s 6d, Bell’s survey was closer
in price to Knight’s Pictorial Gallery of Arts. In later editions, this price dropped even
further, as it was offered for 10s 6d, and the sections on architecture, sculpture, and painting
each sold separately for 3s 6d, putting the price now within the range of Hachette’s pocket art

858
Ibid.,x.

859
Ibid.

860
Ibid.

861
Ibid., x-ix.

356
histories sold in the train stations in France. These prices also corresponded with popular
illustrated novels advertised as being at a “low price,” such as Jules Verne’s illustrated works,
which sold for 10s 6d.
862
While novels had long been issued at the “three-decker” price of 31s
6d for the three volumes, this format gave way in the final years of the century to the single-
volume novel selling for around 6s. Thus, the reduction in price of art histories from
Fergusson’s handbook to Bell’s Elementary History coincides with a general shift in book
costs.
863

However, with affordability, Bell also sought to provide a popularly accessible survey
through her presentation of the material. What could be learned directly from books about art,
Smith argued, was not “an intimate knowledge and keen appreciation of art.” In other words,
the skills of judgment and connoisseurship that enabled a student “to perceive the beauty of
works of art” were not translatable through books, nor was a “keen perception of the
theoretical principles of art, or of the critical rules by which the productions of artists should
be judged.”
864
In contrast, what books could indeed teach even those who could not “draw a
line” was a history of art. Smith clearly described the value of Bell’s book in these terms:
It is the object of this little volume to convey an outline of so much of this
knowledge as can be comprised under the form of a History. Perhaps the best starting-
point for the study of all, or any of the fine arts, is their history....And it is while
endeavoring to understand the course which was run by any one art, or any one school
of artists, that we can best acquire a knowledge of the principles as well as the practice
of the art or school in question.
865

Far from an arcane collection of theoretical discourses to be studied by the most educated
scholars of the day, the history of art in nineteenth-century Britain became instead a “starting

862
Publishers’ Circular, 17 Jan. 1874, 47.

863
On this shift, see Edward Bell, “George Bell Publisher,” 145.

864
Smith, xii.

865
Ibid., xi-xii.

357
point” for learning about art more generally, and indeed, a means to become a cultured
modern citizen. As cited in my introduction, Smith’s preface to Bell’s Elementary History of
Art argued that the “History of Art” had “a great claim to be studied” when “some knowledge
of painting and architecture, of statues and of music, is becoming indispensable to those who
desire to share in the culture of the day.”
866
Smith concluded that the history of art “lies at the
root” of the more advanced skills of critical judgment and the appreciation of beauty in works
of art. Learning art’s history represented, according to Smith, “the best way of cultivating an
appreciation of works of art, and of training the judgment to form sound opinions of their
merits and defects.”
867
And the history of art began with “an intimate acquaintance with such
of the best examples of each art as may be accessible,” which Bell’s combination of clearly
written text and examples images provided.
868

Advertisements and reviews of Bell’s first edition emphasized the importance of such
an historical approach to introductory studies of art. The Publishers Circular in 1874
highlighted the importance of illustrated publications in helping “to plant a love of Art in the
public mind,” and how the “want of a simple text-book of this sort” had been “long felt.”
869

Positive reviews in the Western Mail, the Liverpool Albion, the Scotsman, the Art-Journal, the
Academy, the Standard, Art, the Daily News, the Observer, and the London Quarterly Review,
moreover, recommended Bell’s book for “all who wish to improve their knowledge of Art and

866
Ibid., xii.

867
Ibid., xii-xiii.

868
Ibid., xiii.

869
Publishers’ Circular, 16 Sept. 1874, 624.

358
their taste for the beautiful.”
870
Therefore, the Elementary History of Art offered what its title
promised: an introduction to art through its history.
This historical approach, especially in art histories written by women, included the use
of descriptive language that enabled the monuments of art history to resonate for nineteenth-
century readers. Female art historians often received credit for providing interesting accounts
in contrast to dry, erudite scholarship. This can be seen in Bell’s Elementary History of Art,
where readers learn about “the towering pyramidal enclosure-walls” of Egyptian palaces,
“with their mighty crowning cornices” that “give an imposing appearance to the entrance to
the holy place,” as well as the “high degree of vitality and energy thrown into” the Elgin
marbles.
871
Together with its compactness and brevity, therefore, Bell wrote her survey
expressly to appeal to its readers’ imaginations. In other words, she sought to make art history
a vibrant and interesting field of study, especially for a non-specialist audience.

An Enduring Influence

Because of the lack of archives on the publisher Asher and Co., we know little about
the economics of Bell’s first edition. Without access to ledger books, it is difficult to discern
the edition size and extent of the volume’s actual sales. However, evidence of the success of
these sales can be seen in the fact that the book was republished by the better-known
publishers of Sampson Low in London and Charles Scribner and Sons in New York. From
1875, Scribner’s American edition was an exact copy of Asher’s 1874 edition that circulated
in the U.S. Asher continued to advertise the book in the London book trade magazines until
1880, revealing the firm’s ongoing investment in marketing Bell’s survey. Two years later, a

870
A number of these reviews were excerpted in the Publishers’ Circular, 18 Jan. 1875, 42 and others
reproduced in the 1906 edition of the EHA as a post-text section entitled “Opinions of the Press on the
First Edition.”

871
Bell, EHA (1874), 12 and 194.
359
book by N. D’Anvers with the same title Elementary History of Art appeared among the listed
publications of Sampson Low, a longstanding London firm that also owned the Publishers’
Circular.
872
Both Scribner and Sampson Low continued to revise and re-issue Bell’s
publication until 1906, elucidating an enduring demand for the book by a trans-Atlantic
audience. Like the works of her precursor and fellow British female art historian Anna
Jameson, Bell’s publications similarly contributed to the popular study of art history in
America.
873
The third edition in 1889 also received institutional recognition in Britain.
According to the title page, the British Civil Service Commission adopted Bell’s survey as an
official “text-book” given to candidates taking Civil Service Exams. Such a statement reflects
the belief that government workers were expected to know about art and its history, and Bell’s
book provided a useful summary to prepare them to demonstrate this knowledge in their
exams. Likewise, by this third edition, the Department of Science and Art placed the book on
its List of Prizes granted to students. Though art history never officially entered the curricula
of public schools, the addition of Bell’s book to such a list showed a new encouragement for
self-instruction in the subject.
874

872
The firm of Sampson Low was founded in 1819. In 1837, the firm launched the Publishers’
Circular, which became its sole propriety in 1867. Sampson Low was also the London representative
for the American firms of Harper’s and Scribner’s, facilitating the publication of many British books in
America. In the 1850s, Low became partners with Edward Marston; in 1871, Samuel Searle joined.
Low retired in 1875 and was replaced by W. J. Rivington, who was from a family of London
publishers. Low died in 1886. Through Marston, the firm was also closely tied to the house of Hachette
in Paris. During the Paris Commune, for example, Marston organized a fund-raiser for Paris publishers
who had suffered economic hardship; Hachette’s firm was Marston’s Paris contact for this philanthropic
gesture. On the firm’s history, see Ernest Chesneau, “Les Grands éditeurs anglais,” Le Livre (1885):
182-87.

873
On Jameson’s influence on a growing interest in art history in America, see Jones, 106.

874
An exception to this general rule was noted by G. G. Zerffi, who claimed to have lectured on the
“historical development of art” at the National Art Training School at South Kensington since 1868.
See Zerffi, A Manual of the Historical Development of Art (London: Hardwicke and Bogue, 1876).

360
One significant legacy of Bell’s book was its distinctly visual approach to art history.
The epigraph to her book read, “By study alone we learn how to see.” This statement quotes
Matthew Digby Wyatt’s Slade Lectures of Art History; teaching art history by means of visual
pedagogy represented one of Wyatt’s main goals. He argued that an important reason to learn
about the history of art is, “briefly, that by study alone we learn how to see.” With the
“increased powers of vision,” he continued, “come increased intellectual activity, and aptitude
for the retention of lessons imprinted without an effort upon the vigorous imagination of
youth.”
875
Visual learning was indeed central to Bell’s survey. Building on the precedents of
past surveys, it incorporated an ever-growing collection of images into the text. The 1874 first
edition included 120 wood engravings. Under Sampson Low, the illustrations were expanded
to include around eighty new images, many of which reused what the publisher had on hand.
As discussed in Chapter 3, Low had negotiated with the Paris firm of Hachette to purchase
electrotypes of the Bibliothèque des Merveilles images for their English translations. These
included a large number of art history images. In the editions of Bell’s Elementary History of
Art published in the early 1880s by Sampson Low, dozens of these original Merveilles images
appeared. As can be seen in the illustrations of the Chateau of Chenonceaux, Bell’s version
shared the same picturesque details of the framing trees, the two figures in intimate
conversation in the foreground, and the slightly off-center view of the chateau that appeared in
Lefèvre’s Merveilles de l’architecture (Figs. 5.9 and 5.10). These illustrations served to
enliven the set of original wood engravings taken from Lübke’s Grundriss with more visually
stimulating, detailed, and expanded views. For example, the Column of Trajan was
represented not only in the detail of a relief, as it had been in Lübke’s survey and Bell’s first
edition, but now also in a view of the entire column contextualized within a Roman cityscape

875
Matthew Digby Wyatt, Fine Art: A Sketch of its History, Theory, Practice, and Application to
Industry, being a course of lectures delivered at Cambridge in 1870 (London: Macmillan, 1870), 15.
361
(Figs. 5.11 and 5.12). Other new views included Florence with its cathedral from a distance,
St. Peters in Rome, and Leonardo’s Last Supper, previously shown only in a detail of Christ at
the center. By the third edition in 1889, when photomechanical reproduction had become
more readily available, Bell and her publishers still opted to use wood engravings because of
the cost. As Bell observed in the preface to the painting section of this edition:
Inexpensive forms of engraving have, owing to the low price of the work, been alone
possible; but a mere inclination of a painting can go a long way towards training the
eye and mind to discriminate between the particularities of the various schools.
876

Printed images continued to effectively serve the function of illustrating the history of art.
The importance of such wood-engraved illustrations in art history surveys, however,
was not uncontested. G. G. Zerffi, a professor at the National Training School of South
Kensington, published an unillustrated manual of art history two years after Bell’s first
edition. Zerffi argues in his preface against the inclusion of illustrations:
Bad or even good wood-cuts are by no means essential in art-books, for we possess in
the British, Christy’s, and South Kensington Museums such valuable art collections,
that we may write books without illustration if we can induce readers and students to
verify what we say by a diligent study of these specimens...Art-books with bad or
indifferent illustrations or even with good illustration, are not so much needed as art-
books with unbiased theories, esthetical principles, and philosophical ideas, which
may awaken the power of reasoning in both readers and students. It is only too often
the case that, in seeing bad illustrations, the student imagines he knows everything
about the work spoken of and produced in outlines. He must, however, go and see for
himself.
877

For Zerffi, poorly representative illustrations, such as the “wood-cuts” in Bell’s and other
surveys, distracted the reader from experiencing the original work of art and undermined the
intellectual aesthetic engagement that can occur in the presence of an original.

876
EHA (1889), preface to the painting section, vi.

877
Zerffi, xvi-ii.
362
The end of the nineteenth century also saw the rise of a more formalist approach to art
history in Britain, culminating in the work of Roger Fry and Clive Bell in the early 1900s.
878

This shift necessitated a study of the stylistic elements of a work of art, ideally through direct
contact with the work itself, but also through the mimetic reproductions that photography
could provide. Bell’s survey, on the other hand, made little attempt to promote formalist
connoisseurship, and her illustrations did not serve to convey the stylistic qualities of
individual works. Subject matter, an aspect deemed insignificant by formalists like Fry and
(Clive) Bell, was the very aspect best translated in wood-engraved illustrations. (Nancy)
Bell’s images could point to the existence of a work as exemplary of an art historical period,
but failed to convey the visual data necessary for close formal analysis. Today, Bell’s survey,
with its linear, black and white illustrations, indeed appears exceedingly old-fashioned.
Copies of Elementary History are currently being de-accessioned from American libraries due
to their lack of use. Clearly, Bell’s book can no longer serve students of art history in our era
dominated by easily accessible full-color digital reproductions. Yet, its value as an important
publication of art history—in particular its historical approach that appealed not to the most
educated scholars and connoisseurs, but rather to a much larger public of beginning students,
and its employment of descriptive, carefully designed illustrations—must be recognized.
Like Zerffi, Bell also encouraged readers to view works of art in person. Her text was
peppered with suggestions for visiting the local museums of Britain, including the British
Museum, the National Gallery, and the South Kensington Museum. She also repeatedly
pointed her readers to the Sydenham Crystal Palace with its important cast collections of
architecture and sculpture from far beyond Britain. Indeed, suggested visits to the Sydenham
Fine Arts Courts become a major theme throughout her work; she mentioned the Crystal

878
For a brief summary of the formalist methods of Bell and Fry, see Kultermann, 180-82.
363
Palace collections more than sixty times. Though she also advised visits to continental
museums such as the Louvre, the Uffizi, the Vatican, the Munich Glyptothek and Pinacothek,
the Berlin Museum, and the Prado for first-hand experience with original works, Bell
recognized the convenience of the local Sydenham collections for her readers, where they
would find copies of the same canonical objects. Like the directors and designers of the Fine
Arts Courts, as discussed at length in my second chapter, Bell promoted the important didactic
function of plaster casts for illustrating of the history of art. Moreover, her work also
witnessed the growing importance of the South Kensington Museum cast collection, opened
permanently in the 1870s, which included copies of canonical works from the Gates of the
Great Stupa at Sanchi, to Pisano’s Baptistery Pulpit in Pisa, to Peter Vischer’s Shrine of Saint
Sebaldus in Nuremberg, to Michelanglo’s David, all of which Bell mentioned to her readers.

Nancy Bell as an Art Historian

Bell’s work as an art historian was widely acclaimed and amounted to more than a
dozen book-length publications, including general surveys, artists’ biographies, and period
studies. Her works spanned a broad range of prices and formats, from the cheap handbook
with wood-engraved illustrations, to the more luxurious collectors’ editions that included
decorated bindings, printing in red and black ink, and illustrations in a variety of media,
including photogravure.
879
She was undoubtedly a significant contributor to art history
publishing in nineteenth-century Britain.

879
Her cheapest volume was her biography of Whistler in Bell’s Miniature Series of Painters, which
sold at 1s. Her most luxurious volumes were also published by Bell, such as her biography of
Gainsborough from 1897, which was issued as a quarto volume with photomechanical reproductions of
the artist’s works, as well as a decorative binding, and fine, heavy paper with deckeled edge. Although
I have not found the price listing for this volume, it was clearly published as a more expensive
collector’s item.

364
Yet, her role as an art historian has been entirely overlooked by recent scholars.
Perhaps this is because she was not a professional scholar in the strictest sense of the word.
As a woman, she did not have access to university study or a degree in the field. She would
be better categorized as a professional educator. Like Anna Jameson, Bell published more
widely than art history, and her works crossed a number of fields. In 1882, she issued a series
of illustrated elementary natural history and geography books, “The Science Ladders,”
promoted for use in schools and “private teaching.”
880
Titles from the series included
Vegetable Life, Forms of Land and Water, and Lowest forms of Water Animals. Her other
works included illustrated children’s books and accounts of travel in Africa.
881
Bell’s
contributions to general pedagogy through illustrated books reveal that art history, as much as
an independent discipline developing in academia, remained intimately connected with other
forms of popular education at the time.
As the few surviving letters by Bell reveal, she was a confident and tireless scholar.
882

She prided herself on her hard work and determination, and was not afraid to make
suggestions to publishers for future books. She also described herself as well-connected to
“influential friends” and was ever willing to exploit these relationships for the benefit of
herself and her publishers.
883
Bell’s letters demonstrate that she was not a mere amateur,
producing publications for sheer enjoyment; rather, she continuously expressed the importance

880
See advertisement in Publishers’ Circular, 16 Jan. 1882, 44.

881
N. D’Anvers, Robert’s Holidays (London: Marcus Ward, 1875); Little Minnie’s Troubles: An
Everyday Chronicle (London: H. S. King, 1876); Dobbie and Dobbie’s Master: A Peep into the Life of
a Very Little Man (London: Marcus Ward, 1877); Pixie’s Adventure: The Tale of a Terrier (London: C.
Kegan Paul, 1878); Parted: A Tale of Clouds and Sunshine (London: C. Kegan Paul, 1879); Heroes of
North African Discovery and Heroes of South African Discovery (London: Marcus Ward, 1877 and
1878).

882
These letters are in the George Bell Archives at the University of Reading Special Collections.

883
See, for instance, Nancy Bell to Edward Bell, 28 May 1894, George Bell Archives, item no. 296/15.

365
of her earnings as a major portion of her household income. As an artist, her husband often
did not have a steady salary, and her own profits went to help support her family, including
her two children.
In one instance, Bell’s active role in negotiating the terms of her own publications led
to a falling out with an already famous artist: J. M. Whistler. In the early years of the
twentieth century, Bell began working with the publishers George Bell and Sons (the firm to
which she was connected by marriage) on an illustrated biography of Whistler. In 1902, she
wrote to Charles Lang Freer, American collector and founder of the Freer Gallery of Art,
hoping to obtain from him photographs of the Whistler paintings in his personal collection.
884

Her letters to Freer attempt to assert her authority as an established author in Britain. Not only
did she presume that her numerous books would be known to Freer, but she also claimed that
her future work on Whistler would “be the most important work on [the artist] which has yet
been published.” In response, Freer advised her to write directly to Whistler to obtain such
permission to reproduce his works. “I have made it an invariable rule to refer all such requests
to the artists who painted the pictures,” Freer wrote. “It seems to me that they alone should
have the right during their lives to select the publications in which they wish their work
represented.”
885
Freer then forwarded Bell’s letters to Whistler, stating that he “[knew]
nothing of the lady.”
886
Whistler’s response included a rather cranky draft letter and a more
abrupt final version, both of which expressed his dissatisfaction with Bell’s behavior and his
refusal to grant her permission to write his biography and to reproduce his works. He accused

884
See Nancy Bell to Charles Lang Freer, 18 Sept. and 23 Sept. 1902, Whistler Correspondence
(hereafter WC), nos. 000271 and 000272, www.whistler.arts.gla.ac.uk/letters.

885
Freer to Bell, 14 Oct. 1902, WC no. 01535.

886
Freer to Whistler, 15. Oct. 1902, WC no. 01536.

366
her of entering “through the back door” in a “furtive and underhanded” manner, and protested
her “intrusion and traffic in [his] personal concerns.”
887

Whistler scholars have argued that it was the artist’s disdain for the kind of “popular”
work Bell produced that led him to recoil from her advances.
888
Indeed, he was notorious for
railing against the popularization of art. He mocked the notion that “the galleries are to be
thrown open on Sundays, and the public, dragged from their beer to the British Museum, are
to delight in the Elgin Marbles, and appreciate what the early Italians have done to elevate
their thirsty souls.”
889
However, considering the evidence surrounding the exchange between
Freer and other collectors, Bell, her publishers, and the artist, it appears that Whistler had less
of a problem with Bell as a popular female author than with her failure to deal directly with
him. This exchange is revealing on several accounts. First, it demonstrates how complicated
international artist copyright remained at the end of the nineteenth century. While the
Americans Freer and Whistler felt that the living artist should ultimately control the
reproduction of his or her works, Bell and her British publishers believed in a sort of public
domain for the works of “worthies.” In response to Whistler’s denial of Bell’s request, a
representative of George Bell and Sons wrote to the artist, arguing that their approach was in
no way “furtive,” given that the work had been “announced to many thousands of people in
[their] prospectuses and advertisements.”
890
Moreover, the firm’s representative argued that

887
Whistler to Bell, 2 draft copies, WC no. 00274 and no. 10314, and sent letter dated 30 Oct. 1902,
WC no. 00275.

888
For this interpretation, see the footnotes to the letters in this Bell-Whistler exchange provided by the
Whistler Correspondence project.

889
See J. M. Whistler, The Gentle Art of Making Enemies, an account of the artist’s trial with Ruskin
published in 1892, as cited in Linda Dowling, The Vulgarization of Art: The Victorians and Aesthetic
Democracy (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1996), 45.

890
George Bell and Sons to Whistler, 1 Nov. 1902, Whistler Correspondence, no. 00288.

367
they found no more need to “trouble” Whistler “in the matter any more than we should have
written to Lord Salisbury or the Czar of Russia” to include them in a “series of small
biographies.” The response continues: “One of the debts which those who attain eminence
have to pay is that they are considered fitting subjects for discussion by the smaller people.”
Finally, the letter’s author names other living artists, such as Frederick Leighton and Edward
Burne-Jones, who had not objected to having their biographies included in the series.
Furthermore, the illustrations in the book were to be wood engravings, which, as discussed in
previous chapters, rarely required the holding of copyright by publishers because of their
abstraction from the originals. Therefore, Whistler’s legal rights were neither trampled nor
ignored in the publication of the book.
Second, and most importantly in the context of this chapter, the exchange surrounding
Whistler’s biography illuminates the central role of a female author in such negotiations. Bell
approached Freer as an established art historian, who believed she had every authority to
produce a biography on Whistler. This authority tied in large part to her marriage to an artist.
She admitted as much in a letter to Whistler, while her publisher claimed that they entrusted
the biography to both “Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Bell.”
891
Nevertheless, it was always Bell, and
not her husband, who composed and signed the correspondence about the work. By the early
years of 1903, Whistler, upon learning that the manuscript of Bell’s work was finished and
ready for printing, appeared finally willing to give his consent. Before this could happen,
though, the artist passed away in July of that year. Bell’s book on Whistler appeared on the
market in 1904, and though it was far from the definitive study on the painter that Bell
originally claimed, its publication signifies her persistence and diligence as a female scholar in
a male-dominated field.

891
See Bell to Whistler, 7 Nov. 1902, Whistler Correspondence, no. 00276, and George Bell and Sons
to Whistler, 1 Nov. 1902, no. 00288.
368
Today, the names of N. D’Anvers and Nancy Bell have been entirely written out of art
history. Her books are valued neither as collectors items—their humble and functional
illustrations preclude such a status—nor as cutting-edge scholarship. Yet, retrieving Bell’s
contributions can serve a number of purposes, in addition to acknowledging the career of a
prolific author. A re-examination of Bell’s Elementary History of Art brings together a
number of themes of this dissertation: the rise of general education through illustrated
publications; the popularization of art history though cheap and accessible books; and the
central significance of women art historians in bringing about this popularization. Bell’s role
is representative of a whole collective of female scholars whose work shaped art history in
recognizable ways.

Women and the Popular Origins of Art History

I began my research for this dissertation with a set of questions about the
popularization of art history through affordable illustrated books and public exhibitions. It
was only in the process of completing this research that I discovered the surprising density of
women’s art history scholarship in the nineteenth century, and its significant contributions to
the dissemination of art history as a developing field. Whether “mothers” is the best term for
describing these dozens of women is debatable, but I hope my use of the term can serve to
challenge the disciplinary biases toward male scholars and their academic scholarship. I have
sought here to demonstrate just how interconnected the issues of gender, popular publishing,
visual pedagogy, and the history of art history were in the nineteenth century.
The work of British women art historians was not only surprisingly pervasive in this
period, it also played a crucial role in introducing a broad English-speaking public to the
history of art. At a time when the notion of an “art historian” remained rather amorphous, and
when even the most respected German scholars with their university professorships were
369
called “art critics” more often than historians of art, women scholars indeed have as much
claim to the title as their male counterparts. Their scholarship engaged first-hand with works
of art and primary documents, their prolific publications demonstrated a professional
commitment to the field, and they were in continuous dialogue with other scholars both male
and female. Yet, because their work can be classified as introductory, elementary, and, above
all, popular, its significance has been ignored.
Even today, an interesting relationship between popular, non-academic publishing and
the role of women art historians continues to exist. The most comprehensive and gender-
balanced source on the significant scholars of art history is not a book issued by a reputable
scholarly press but rather an online dictionary: www.dictionaryofarthistorians.org. This
website includes entries for nineteenth-century women from Jameson, Eastlake, and Dilke, to
Heaton, Cartwright, Graham, and Merrifield. Such a connection between the internet as a
popular resource and the acknowledgement of women art historians can illustrate how setting
aside a narrow focus on the institutions of academia can provide a wider spectrum of art
history’s history. Moreover, the online “dictionary of art historians” also points to the internet
itself as part of a long legacy of the popularization of art history. In its globally accessible and
highly affordable text-image format, it continues efforts begun in the nineteenth century to
disseminate art history knowledge, efforts that were initiated in no small part by women.
370

Fig. 5.1. Wood engraving of a woman sewing book pages together from Charles Knight’s
Pictorial Gallery of Arts, vol. 1 (1845)

Fig. 5.2. Wood engraving designed by Harriet Ludlow Clarke, from Knight’s Pictorial
Gallery of Arts, vol. 2, of a detail from Raphael’s Marriage of the Virgin, signed H. L. Clarke
371

Fig. 5.3. Page with wood engraving of the Assyrian Winged Bulls, from Fanny Elizabeth
Bunnètt’s translation of Wilhelm Lübke’s History of Art (London, 1868)

Fig. 5.4. Page from Nancy Bell’s Elementary History of Art (London, 1874) with illustration
of the Winged Bulls
372

Fig. 5.5. Autotype illustration of Giotto’s Raizing of Lazarus fresco from the Arena Chapel at
Padua, as bound into Mary Margaret Heaton’s Concise History of Art (London, 1873)

Fig. 5.6. Pages from Wilhelm Lübke’s Grundriss der Kunstgeschichte (Stuttgart, 1860)
373

Fig. 5.7. Pages from Nancy Bell’s Elementary History of Art

Fig. 5.8. Page from Bell’s Elementary History of Art with illustration of the Cave Temple at
Elephanta in India
374

Fig. 5.9. Page from André Lefèvre’s Merveilles de l’architecture (Paris, 1865) with
illustration of the Chateau of Chenonceaux

Fig. 5.10. Page from Bell’s Elementary History of Art (new ed. 1882) with same illustration of
Chenonceaux
375

Fig. 5.11. Page from Bell’s Elementary History of Art (1874) with illustration of a detail of the
Column of Trajan

Fig. 5.12. Page from Bell’s Elementary History of Art (new ed. 1882) with illustration of the
Column of Trajan
376
Conclusion
Writing in the Art Journal in 1995, Mark Miller Graham described what he called the
“undoing” of the art history survey. For Graham, the survey represents little more than an
“outright contradiction to advanced practices of art history,” projecting one falsehood after the
next in its claims to completeness, objectivity, anonymity, neutrality, and universality.
892
Yet,
a decade later, the publication of Thames and Hudson’s Art Since 1900 invited further scrutiny
of the survey.
893
In an Art Bulletin review of Art Since 1900, for instance, Nancy J. Troy notes
that the survey continues to be “the bread and butter” of art history:
Who among those of us assigned to teach the survey of art history has not struggled
with the very concept of the comprehensive overview? In many colleges and
universities, a foundational survey nevertheless remains the bread and butter of the art
history program, the centerpiece of a disciplinary practice...The survey text has been
the indispensable corollary to this deeply entrenched yet problematic curricular
offering.
894

For Troy, the survey’s efficacy and enduring importance in art history demands as much
attention as its problems and failures. Positioning Art Since 1900 within the framework of the
survey, Troy argues that the book challenges many of the critiques highlighted by Graham
and, at the same time, provides a context for rethinking the survey’s role in art history. Can a
survey have “intellectual ambition” while still serving to introduce “new initiates to art
history?” she asks. Can we take such a work-a-day component of the discipline and make it
work in the directions we desire?

892
Mark Miller Graham, “The Future of Art History and the Undoing of the Survey,” Art Journal 54,
no. 3 (1995): 30-34. Graham’s article appeared in an issue of the journal edited by Bradford Collins,
which was dedicated to “rethinking the introductory art history survey.”

893
Hal Foster, Rosalind Krauss, Yve-Alain Bois, and Benjamin Buchloh, Art Since 1900: Modernism,
Antimodernism, Postmodernism (London: Thames and Hudson, 2005).

894
Nancy J. Troy, “Review of Art Since 1900,” Art Bulletin 88, no. 2 (2006): 373-75. Troy’s response
to Art Since 1900 was published as part of a collection of reviews of the volume that appeared in the Art
Bulletin.

377
Troy’s review and the questions it raises demonstrate that the art history survey is still
worth thinking about. More than simply a relic of the nineteenth century forced to function in
the twenty-first, dragging its biases and failures in its wake, the survey as an institution can
offer fresh perspectives on art history itself. A number of scholars have recently explored
these perspectives. Robert Nelson has invoked the genre as evidence of art history’s
ideological mapping.
895
James Elkins examines the survey genre for what it can reveal about
the multiplicity and partisanship of art history’s “stories.”
896
Robert Jensen has turned to
surveys in identifying art history’s canons and the logic of their formation.
897
For these art
historians, the survey offers a unique lens for analyzing the inner workings of their discipline.
My dissertation likewise views surveys as a rich site for the historical analysis and
institutional critique of art history. Like Nelson, I am interested in the changing geographic
landscape of art history as registered in surveys. Like Elkins, I draw upon surveys as a means
to assess art history’s construction across national and linguistic boundaries. Like Jensen, I
have employed the survey genre to engage with art canons and canon formation. However,
this recent scholarly engagement with surveys has failed to account for the full spectrum of the
genre’s implications for art history. None of these studies examines, for example, the thriving
international market for art history surveys in the early years of the genre’s development. Nor
do they acknowledge its significant impact beyond the academy. No scholars of the survey,
moreover, have previously recognized the important gender aspects of the survey’s history,
that is the large proportion of its consumers and producers who were women. Nor have they

895
Robert Nelson, “Living on the Byzantine Borders of Western Art,” Gesta 35, no. 1 (1996): 3-11 and
“The Map of Art History,” Art Bulletin 79, no. 1 (1997): 28-40.

896
James Elkins, Stories of Art (New York: Routledge, 2002) and “Canon and Globalization in Art
History,” in Partisan Canons, ed. Anna Brzyski (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007), 55-78.

897
Robert Jensen, “Measuring Canons: Reflections on Innovation and the Nineteenth-Century Canon of
European Art,” in Partisan Canons, ed. Anna Brzyski (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007), 27-54.
378
provided a complete picture of the foundational role of illustrations in the survey, the effects
of their evolving media, or their educational import. Most discussions of surveys, including
both Graham’s and Troy’s, focus on the survey as a “text” and address only the written
narratives it presents.
In the preceding chapters of this dissertation, I have pointed to the wide variety of
issues that the survey raises. By presenting a history of the survey genre in the nineteenth
century, I have offered a more nuanced picture of the history of art history. Through the
survey, I have argued, the developing field of art history intersected with the emergence of
modernity, embedding itself within the networks of an international and broadly popularized
visual culture. I have additionally invoked the survey as a means to address key problems in
the history of art, including the unquestionably central relationships of original and copy, text
and image, high art and popular culture. My chapters directly engage with the survey as a
pedagogical tool in art history, connecting the educational aspects of early surveys to the
illustrated books, museum displays, and slide lectures that dominate art history to this day.
At the same time, I have sought to show how the survey’s relevance does not stop at
the borders of art history, but instead resonates within other fields of the humanities. In their
pedagogical roles, surveys raise issues for historians of education, including, for example, the
instructional functions of illustrations. As a distinctly visual genre that developed in the
nineteenth century, the survey is in direct dialogue with modernity’s other foundational visual
forms—from panoramas, to department stores, to universal expositions, to the cinema—and
can therefore inform scholars of modern visual culture about practices of spectatorship and
display. Surveys equally illuminate histories of technology, media, print culture, and
publishing, all of which I address in my chapters.
379
Today, the genre of the art history survey has been largely relegated to academic
spheres. When Graham and Troy discuss the survey, it is in reference to university textbooks
and the undergraduate courses those textbooks support. Yet, as my dissertation has shown,
the survey in the nineteenth century developed and circulated outside of these academic
contexts. Has the survey’s impact, and by extension art history’s influence, been confined to
the elite realm of academia? Or do elements of the nineteenth-century survey and its
accessible histories of art reverberate still today? One answer to these questions lies in the
way the survey canon as defined in the 1800s remains pervasive and widely disseminated in
popular forms. The latest tourist guides proclaim these famous artworks as “can’t-miss”
vacation stops, just as museums highlight them as the focal points of their collections. These
same objects and monuments are now also featured on countless websites available to anyone
with access to the internet. Instantly copy-able digital images have replaced the linear wood
engravings and plaster casts from the nineteenth century, but the effects of art history’s broad
circulation are much the same as they were a century ago. Despite diligent attempts by public
museums and private collectors to control the reproductions of these canonical objects—and
the price for permissions to “publish” their images—cheap copies continue to proliferate
worldwide.
No longer so central to art history’s broad popularization, however, are its educational
foundations. The history of art does not register as the subject of general knowledge it did in
the nineteenth century. School-age children are rarely taught art history in their core curricula;
rather, arts education programs have been cut in large numbers. The most popular magazines
feature news and celebrity gossip, and rarely offer art history education. Today, the art
museum provides the most wide-reaching education in art’s history. Indeed, many methods of
public instruction utilized by museums—from didactic wall labels, to introductory audio
380
guides, to interactive computer programs in the galleries—can be traced back to popular
publications and exhibitions during the 1800s. But museums with their original objects can
hardly provide the same comprehensive collections as illustrated books and displays of copies.
André Malraux’s concept of the “museum without walls,” which I argue is rooted in surveys
dating to the nineteenth century, extends its reach beyond the elite environs of the university.
Returning once again to the practical disciplinary questions raised by Troy, how can
we make our “bread and butter” better? How can art historians make the survey resonate for
its “new initiates” while retaining its “intellectual ambition?” How will students with instant
access to world art on the web come to to appreciate art’s complex and ongoing history? With
the pervasive practice in the academy of teaching survey courses and assigning survey
textbooks, these questions deserve continued consideration. Worth thinking about, I argue, is
the survey as problem rather than solution. The genre can be more than the sum of its parts,
insofar as it offers a lightening rod for sparking questions about the discipline itself. Why, we
might ask, is art history based on canonical works? Are its canons a reflection of aesthetic
quality, of political power, of market economies? How do “art” and “history” really come
together in the discipline as it still depends on the survey? Far from an “outright contradiction
to advanced practices of art history,” the survey incites healthy debate about what those
“advanced practices” are.
381
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Principal Archives Consulted

Bibliothèque de l’Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris
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422
Appendix 1: The Illustrators of Art History

Britain

Abbreviations:
AJ: The Art-Journal
BM: British Museum
IHA: Fergusson’s Illustrated Handbook of Architecture
ILN: Illustrated London News
PGA: Knight’s Pictorial Gallery of Arts
PM: Penny Magazine
RA: Royal Academy
RTC: Religious Tract Society
SPCK: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge
YCBA: Yale Center for British Art

Catalogue Organization
1. Illustrated art history surveys to which the artist contributed
2. Publications of Charles Knight to which the artist contributed
3. Publications of John Murray to which the artist contributed
4. Other publications to which the artist contributed

Anelay, Henry
(1817-1883) designer on wood and landscape painter; student of Stephen Sly; exhibited
paintings in London and at RA 1858-73
1. PGA
2. PM; London (1840)
4. ILN; religious magazines; DeFoe, Robinson Crusoe (1864); Cassell’s Illustrated Exhibitor
(1862)
Sources: Engen, 6-7; Houfe, 48; Knight, 258-9; Jackson and Chatto, 575*
Resources: BM owns his drawings that the Dalziel family engraved

Archer, John Wykeham
(1808-1864) designer on wood, watercolorist, etcher, engraver, especially topographical work;
Associate of the Royal Society of Painters in Watercolours; known for his drawings engraved
by W. J. Linton and Mason Jackson, including copies of famous paintings
1. PGA
2. London (1840); Old England (1845)
4. ILN
Source: Engen, 8; Houfe, 49; Jackson and Chatto, 599*

Branston, Robert Edward
Active in the 1827-50s; designer and engraver on wood; son of Robert Allen Branston, who
was the head of the so-called London School of black-line engraving and rival to Bewick;
brother of Fredrick William Branston, another practicing wood engraver; partnership with
John Wright, 1829-35; partnership with James Henry Vizetelly c. 1838-41; employed
Ebenezer Landells as engravings supervisor; in 1841 separated from Vizetelly and became
independent; developed method of color metal relief printing; worked on the drawings of
William Harvey
1. IHA; Gwilt’s Encyclopedia of Architecture (1842)
3. Northcote, Fables, second series (1833)

423
Appendix 1 (Continued)

4. Northcote, Fables (1828); Wordsworth, Greece, Pictorial (1839); French publications, such
as Curmer’s Paul et Virginie (1838); novels of Sir Walter Scott
Sources: De Maré; Engen, 31; Harthan, 172; Jackson and Chatto, 545; Wakeman, 45
Resources: Bodleian Library has drawings of firm Branston &Wright; YCBA

Clarke, Harriet Ludlow
(d. 1866) designer on wood; known specifically for her landscapes and topographical subjects
1. PGA
2. PM; Old England (1845); Pictorial Sunday Book (1845); The Land We Live In (1847)
3. Leslie, Hand-book for Young Painters (1855)
4. Wornum, Epochs of Painting (1864)
Sources: Engen, 47
Resources: BM, YCBA

Cooper, James Davis
(1823-1904) designer and engraver on wood active until into the 20th century; known in
particular for his images after the major artists of the day and his contribution to art books of
various kinds; had a extensive workshop under him, which Randolph Caldecott called an
“expensive establishment” where the master engravers could afford “tall silk hats;” worked
with color printer Richard Clay 1850s and 60s; respected by Ruskin and employed to engrave
some of his sketches; patent taken out in 1857 for making engraved blocks from which
electrotypes could be made for relief printing; collaborated with Caldecott on various books;
worked with the Dalziels
1. Fergusson, Modern Architecture (1862) and History of Architecture (from 1865)
3. Byron, Childe Harold (1859); Kugler, Handbook of Painting (1851); Leslie, Hand-book for
Young Painters (1855); Crowe, Painting in Italy (1864)
4. ILN 1850s-70s; AJ 1880s; Good Words; Henry Shaw, A Handbook of the Art of
Illumination (1866); pictorial bibles; hymn books; Aesop’s Fables (1883)
Sources: Cundall, 127; Dalziels, vi; De Maré, 93-95; Engen, 54; Houfe, 99; Jackson and
Chatto, 550-52; McLean, 55
Resources: BM; YCBA; Beinecke

Delamotte, Philip Henry
(1820-89) had established himself as an illustrator by the 1840s; was also an important
photographer, providing views of the Sydenham Crystal Palace under construction; became
drawing master at King’s College in 1855; completed numerous drawings for wood
engravings; published manuals of instruction for drawing and photography
1. Sydenham Crystal Palace Handbooks
4. Architectural Studies in France (George Bell, 1854); ILN (1854); Cassell’s Illustrated
Exhibitor (1862)
Sources: Seiberling, 127
Resources: Harry Ransom Center has his photographs of the Crystal Palace

Evans, Edward
(Active 1838-48) engraver on wood, not to be confused with Edmund Evans, who was also a
wood engraver as well as a color illustrator; engraved often after William Harvey
1. PGA
2. PM; Old England (1845); Pictorial Sunday Book (1845)
Source: Engen, 84; McLean, 20
Resources: Bodleian

424
Appendix 1 (Continued)

Folkard, William A.
(Active 1830-50) designer and engraver on wood; one of Knight’s standard engravers, worked
particularly on designs by William Harvey; began firm with Wright in 1840; later worked
alone
1. PGA
2. Pictorial Sunday Book (1845)
4. French publications, such as Les Evangiles (1838)
Sources: Engen, 116; Gusman; Jackson and Chatto, 544 and 564*
Resources: BM

Gray, Charles
(1810-1847) wood and metal engraver; studied under a pupil of Bewick along with Alexander
Dalziel; once in London worked under Ebenezer Landells; later trained George Dalziel
1. PGA
2. PM; Arabian Nights (1838); Old England (1845); Pictorial Sunday Book (1845)
3. Lady Mary Fox, The Country House (1843)
4. Wordsworth, Greece, Pictorial (1839); French publications, such as Les Evangiles (1838);
work for the RTS; Madox, Excursions in the Holy Land (1834); Westall and Martin,
Illustrations of the Bible (1835)
Sources: Dalziels; De Maré, 53; Engen, 105; Jackson and Chatto, 544; Muir, 33
Resources: BM owns several small vignettes; YCBA

Green, W. T.
(Active 1837-72) engraver on wood; known for his work after British painters including
Daniel Maclise and John Martin
1. PGA
2. PM; Old England (1845); Pictorial Sunday Book (1845); Pictorial Shakespeare (1838);
Arabian Nights (1838)
4. AJ (1849-50); ILN (1850-51); Wordsworth, Greece, Pictorial (1839); French publications,
including Laborde, Versailles (1839); pictorial bibles; Westall and Martin, Illustrations of the
Bible (1835); Moxon’s Tennyson, (1857)
Sources: Cundall, 125; De Maré; Engen, 106; Gusman; Jackson and Chatto, 544-8
Resources: BM own large collection of his works; YCBA

Harvey, William
(1796-1866) prolific designer for illustrations on wood, also engraved some; trained by
Bewick, under whom he learned first to engrave then to design; remained longtime friend of
Bewick and is often seen as his legacy; according to John Jackson, he was one of the best
vignette designers of his time; after 1822 with death of John Thurston, became chief designer
for the trade; prolific contributions to numerous books and periodicals, 3000 drawings from
1828-38 alone; was one of most popular illustrators of 1840s and was recognized by other
contemporaries, including Chatto, Vizetelly, Dalziel, and Linton; his works were engraved by
the leaders of the medium; has been criticized by historians for producing typical, uninspired
designs, tied to the speed and large output of his work; also tended to work on more popular
publications with large editions and large numbers of illustrations and his work reached a wide
audience; kept a workshop with John Orrin Smith; worked often with the Dalziels
1. PGA
2. PM; Pictorial Bible (1836); Pictorial Shakespeare (1838); Arabian Knights (1838); London
(1841); Pictorial Sunday-Book (1845); Farmer’s Library (1847); The Land We Live In (1847)

425
Appendix 1 (Continued)

3. Lockhart, Spanish Ballads (1842) along with Owen Jones and Henry Vizetelly; Arabian
Nights (1850); Northcote, Fables, second series (1833)
4. ILN (1843-59); Punch (1841-42); pictorial bibles; Northcote, Fables (1828); Wordsworth,
Greece, Pictorial (1839); illustrations to Shakespeare and Milton
Sources: Bain, 104; Cundall, 115 and 121-3; Dalziels; De Maré; Dobson; Engen, 115-117;
Goldman, 12; Houfe, 170; Jackson and Chatto, 527-34; Knight, 258-9; Linton; McLean 8-11,
28; Muir, 28-33; Vizetelly; Woodberry, 167; Wakeman, 18
Resources: BM has his blocks and drawings, Bodleian has drawings for Knight; YCBA has his
proofs to Northcote’s Fables

Jackson, John
(1801-1848) engraver on wood; studied with Bewick and William Harvey; had a large
workshop and vast output; was called by contemporaries one of first wood engravers for
popular literature and journalism, largely because of his collaborations with Knight; was one of
Knight’s standard engravers, worked often on Harvey’s designs; was put in charge of the wood
engravings for the Penny Magazine; had London office with many assistants; also worked with
John Orrin Smith; published a treatise on wood engraving with Chatto through Knight’s firm
in 1839 (Chatto wrote most of text, and Jackson contributed the illustrations); Landells worked
for him from 1829
1. PGA: provided over half of the signed illustrations for the fine arts volume
2. PM; Penny Cyclopaedia (1833); Gallery of Portraits (1834); Musical Library (1836);
Pictorial Bible (1836); Pictorial Shakespeare (1838); Arabian Nights (1838); Treatise on
Wood Engraving (1839); Old England (1845); Pictorial Sunday-Book (1845)
3. Northcote’s Fables, second series (1833); Lady Mary Fox, Country House (1843)
4. Magasin pittoresque; Northcote’s Fables (1828); French publications, such as Gil Blas
(1835); Westall and Martin, Illustrations of the Bible (1835); Wordsworth, Greece, Pictorial
(1839), Sources: Bain, 105; Cundall, 122; Dalziels, v; De Maré; Dobson; Engen 133-34;
Jackson and Chatto, 545; Muir, 26-8
Resources: Bodleian owns his works for Knight; BM owns proofs; London Library owns MS
copy of Treatise; YCBA has proofs of his cuts after Harvey for Northcote’s Fables

Jackson, Mason
(1819-1903) engraver on wood and landscape painter; younger brother and pupil of John
Jackson; 1846 was established in London; worked with John Orrin Smith; principal wood
engraver for the Art-Union (later the AJ); was art editor for the ILN from 1860 to 1890 and
later named general editor; for this periodical he completed many reproductive engravings
after artists; wrote The Pictorial Press: Its Origins and Progress, 1885
1. PGA
2. Pictorial Shakespeare (1838); Arabian Nights (1838); Old England (1845); Pictorial
Sunday-Book (1845); The Land We Life In (1847)
3. Lady Mary Fox, Country House (1843)
4. Dickens’ Pickwick Papers; Art-Union; AJ; Cassell’s Illustrated Family Paper; ILN (1850-
1878); Sydenham Crystal Palace Expositor (1854)
Sources: Dalziels, vi and 350; Engen, 134-5; Houfe, 190; Jackson and Chatto, 589
Resources: BM owns some of his engravings after artists, Bodleian owns his work for Knight

Landells, Ebeneezer
(1808-1860) wood engraver and designer, as well as originator of several illustrated papers,
such as Punch in 1841, for which he became the exclusive engraver in 1842; student of
Bewick; worked closely with John Jackson, William Harvey and Charles Gray; worked for the
firm of Branston and Vizetelly as supervisor of engravings; taught the Dalziel brothers and
426
Appendix 1 (Continued)

Edmund Evans; central to the boom of illustrated journalism in the 1840s and 50s, employing
and training a number of important engravers and draftsmen; working for Punch, he had staff
of assistants, including Evans, John Greenaway and hired out to Dalziels; was replaced by
John Swain in 1843; worked for ILN from 1842 with a large staff, and provided travel sketches
for the paper; founded several other ventures of illustrated journalism, including the
Illuminated Magazine, The Lady’s Newspaper, as well as children’s book publishing
1. PGA
2. Knight: Pictorial Shakespeare (1838); Arabian Nights (1838); Old England (1845);
Pictorial Sunday-Book (1845)
3. Northcote, Fables, second series (1833)
4. ILN; Dickens’ books; natural history studies; Madox, Excursions in the Holy Land (1834);
Westall and Martin, Illustrations of the Bible (1835); Wordsworth, Greece, Pictorial (1839)
Sources: Beegan, 53; Cundall, 122-3; Dalziels; De Maré; Engen, 149-50; Goldman, 56; Houfe,
202; Jackson and Chatto, 544-6; McLean; Muir, 33;
Resources: some vignettes at BM; YCBA

Lee, James
(Active 1800-75) prolific engraver on wood, son of wood engraver John Lee; was known for
his “London-school” black-line style, especially images of natural history and science
1. IHA
4. Magasin pittoresque
Sources: Engen 153; Gusman; Jackson and Chatto, 593*
Resources: Bodleian and BM

Nicholls, George Pike
(Active 1841 to 1887) engraver on wood; also worked with John Nicholls and Thomas
Williams; exhibited wood engravings at the RA 1870-73
1. PGA
2. PM; Pictorial Sunday Book (1845); The Land We Live In (1847)
4. ILN; AJ; French publications, such as Curmer’s Les Beaux-Arts
Sources: Engen, 193; Gusman
Resources: BM

Nugent, John
(Active 1871-74)
1. PGA
2. Knight: Old England (1845); Pictorial Sunday Book (1845)
3. ILN
Sources: Engen, 196

Prior, William Henry
(1812-82) designer on wood and landscape painter; influenced by William Harvey, was his
assistant for a time; his work was engraved by Dalziels; exhibited his paintings at British
Institution, RA and Royal Society of British Artists
1. PGA
2. London (1841); Pictorial Sunday-Book (1845)
4. ILN; Illuminated Magazine; Cassell’s Illustrated Family Paper; Illustrated London
Magazine; Illustrated Times
Sources: Engen, 211; Houfe, 264

427
Appendix 1 (Continued)

Sargent, G. F.
(Active 1840-60) draftsman on wood and watercolorist; prolific with topographical and
antiquarian work
1. PGA
2. Pictorial Shakespeare (1838); London (1841); Old England (1845); Pictorial Sunday-Book
(1845)
4. ILN; Cassell’s Illustrated Family Paper; Illustrated London Magazine; pictorial bibles;
Wordsworth, Greece, Pictorial (1839)
Source: Engen, 229; Houfe, 291
Resources: BM owns proof engravings after his drawings

Sly, Stephen
(Active 1836-47) engraver on wood; best known for his prolific cuts for Knight’s publications,
in particular his work on the cartoons of Raphael; learned to keep pace with illustrated
periodicals under Henry Vizetelly; designed the original title heading design for the ILN with
the view of London in 1841, with lettering by Vizetelly; assisted by his protegé Henry Anelay
1. PGA
2. PM; Old England (1845); Pictorial Sunday-Book (1845); Old England’s Worthies (1847)
4. ILN; Wordsworth, Greece, Pictorial (1839)
Source: De Maré, 75 and 81; Engen 239-40; McLean; Jackson and Chatto, 636; Vizetelly
Resources: BM owns his engravings and cuts, Bodleian has Knight commissions

Smith, John Orrin
(1799-1843) engraver on wood; died early, but his works continued to appear in Knight’s later
publications, the blocks having been produced before 1843; noted for his animal and landscape
engravings in black-line style, and imitation of copper plate engravings; student of Samuel
Williams, then worked for Harvey and collaborated with John Jackson; one of Knight’s
standard engravers; trained Henry Vizetelly; kept a workshop that was filled with a steady
stream of artists and writers; worked with Linton in a firm exclusively producing images for
ILN; commissioned illustrations from prominent watercolorists of the day; high pressure of
this work required many assistants; firm lasted until 1848
1. PGA
2. Arabian Nights (1838); Old England (1845); Pictorial Sunday-Book (1845)
3. Northcote, Fables, second series (1833)
4. AJ; Northcote, Fables (1828); Westall and Martin, Illustrations of the Bible (1835);
Wordsworth, Greece, Pictorial (1839) French publications, such as Curmer’s Paul et Virginie
(1839), Molière’s Oeuvres after designs by Tony Johannot, and the Evangiles (1838);
Laborde’s Versailles (1839); Laurent’s Histoire de l’Empereur Napoleon (1839); worked with
Charles Thompson, Wright & Folkard, and F.W. Branston on these French books
Source: Cundall, 125; Dalziel, vi and 38; De Maré; Engen, 116 and 242-3; Gusman; Jackson
and Chatto, 544; Linton; McLean, 30; Vizetelly; Woodberry, 167
Resources: BM, YCBA

Thompson, John
(1785-1866) engraver on wood and metal; brother of Charles and Eliza Thompson, who were
also engravers; pupil of Robert Allen Branston, worked in black-line style that resembled
copper engraving; completed drawings of Thurston before he died in 1822; also engraved on
wood after the designs of Grandville, Ary Scheffer, and Johannot; thought by his
contemporaries, such as Linton, to be among the best wood engravers in England in the early
19th century; awarded grand medal of honor for wood engraving in 1855 at Paris Exposition
Universelle; became superintendent of Female School of Wood Engraving in South
428
Appendix 1 (Continued)

Kensington 1852-59; worked often for Chiswick Press; kept a busy workshop, in which Linton
was an assistant between 1836 and 1838; his metal engraving included Mulready’s design for
the penny postage envelope, and the figure of Britannia on the English banknote
1. PGA
2. Arabian Knights (1838)
3. Northcote, Fables, second series (1833)

4. pictorial bibles; illustrations of Shakespeare; Wordsworth, Greece, Pictorial (1839); French
publications, such as Fables of La Fontaine (1836) after designs by Deveria;
Sources: Cundall, 119, 123-4; Dalziels, 15; De Maré; Engen 260-61; Gusman; Jackson and
Chatto, 541; Linton; Muir, 33; Woodberry, 164-7
Resources: proofs of his work in BM; V&A owns his proofs; YCBA

Tiffin, Walter Francis
(Active 1844 to 1867) designer on wood, miniaturist, and portrait painter; his work was
engraved by Charles Gray and J. W. Whimper; exhibited landscapes at the RA, British
Institute, and Society of British Artists
1. PGA
2. PM; Old England (1845)
Source: Engen, 263
Resources: Bodleian for his Knight materials

Whimper, Josiah Wood
(1813-1903) designer and engraver on wood, watercolorist, and landscape painter; with work
he did for Knight, he set up wood engraving business in London, along with his brother
Ebenezzar Whimper; 1840 changed spelling of his name from Whymper to Whimper, but still
signed with old way too; also studied watercolor; published first etching of London Bridge
1831; took on apprentices, teaching a number of prominent “1860s-school” draftsman (Charles
Keene and G. J. Pinwell, for example); employed his sons Edward and Frederick, who later
took over the business (by 1880s the business was listed as joint with JW and Edward as
draftsmen and engravers on wood; Edward ran it in 1890s); but thrived most on engraving
work for John Murray, was major engraver for this firm; according to Engen, the name of
Whymper had become prominent and a successful mark of quality wood engravings; exhibited
watercolors in London from 1844
1. PGA
2. PM; Pictorial Shakespeare (1838); Arabian Nights (1838); Old England (1845); Pictorial
Sunday-Book (1845)
3. Leslie, Handbook for Young Painters (1855); Street, Brick and Marble in the Middle Ages
(1855); Livingson, Mission Travels in South Africa (1857); Byron, Childe Harold (1859);
4. ILN; Westall and Martin, Illustrations of the Bible (1835); publications for the SPCK and
RTS; Wordsworth, Greece, Pictorial (1839); Sydenham Crystal Palace Expositor (1854);
children’s book illustrations
Source: Cundall, 127; Dalziels; De Maré; Dobson, 219; Engen, 285-6; Houfe, 347; Jackson
and Chatto, 544 and 569*
Resources: BM; Bodleian; YCBA

429
Appendix 1 (Continued)

Williams, Mary Ann
(b. 1788) engraver on wood, genre painter, and illustrator; sister of Samuel and Thomas
Williams and Aunt of Joseph Lionel William and Miss E. Williams, all of who were also
practicing wood engravers; one of Knight’s standard engravers; worked often on drawings of
William Harvey and GF Sargent
1. PGA
2. Arabian Nights (1838); Old England (1845); Pictorial Sunday-Book (1845); The Land We
Live In (1847)
4. Work for the SPCK; Wordsworth, Greece, Pictorial (1839); French publications, such as
Prevost’s Manon Lescaut (1839) and Curmer’s Paul et Virginie (1839)
Source: Engen, 116, and 288; De Maré, 53-4 and 66; Gusman; Houfe, 348-50
Resources: Bodleian; BM; YCBA

Williams, Thomas
(b. 1800) engraver on wood; younger brother and pupil of Samuel, brother of Mary Ann;
engraved after Harvey; one of Knight’s standard engravers
1. PGA
2. PM; Arabian Nights (1838); Old England (1845); Pictorial Sunday-Book (1845)
3. Northcote, Fables, second series (1833)
4. ILN; AJ; Northcote, Fables (1828); pictorial bibles; children’s books; Westall and Martin,
Illustrations of the Bible (1835); Wordsworth, Greece, Pictorial (1839); French publications,
such as Curmer’s Paul et Virginie (1839); Moxon’s Tennyson (1857)
Source: De Maré; Engen, 116 and 290; Gusman; Linton; McLean, 30; Jackson and Chatto,
544-47
Resources: BM owns large collection of his engravings; Bodleian; YCBA

Williamson, J.
(Active 1839-67) engraver on wood; known for his work after paintings and photographic
portraits
1. PGA
2. Arabian Nights (1838); Pictorial Sunday Book (1845)
4. ILN
Source: Engen, 290-91
Resources: BM

Wright, John
(Active 1828-41) engraver on wood; worked first with Robert Branston as “Branston and
Wright” then with Folkard as “Wright and Folkard”; one of Knight’s standard engravers;
worked on Harvey’s designs
1. PGA
2. PM; Arabian Nights (1838)
4. Northcote, Fables (1828); French publications, such as Evangiles (1838); Curmer’s Paul et
Virginie (1839)
Sources: Engen, 116 and 295-6; Gusman; Jackson and Chatto, 544
Resources: BM; Bodleian

430
Appendix 1 (Continued)

France

Abbreviations:
BNF: Bibliothèque Nationale Française
GBA: Gazette des Beaux-Arts
GJ: Hachette’s travel guides “Guides Joannes”
HP: Blanc’s Histoire des peintres de toutes les écoles
ILL: L’Illustration
Lefèvre: André Lefèvre, Les Merveilles de l’architecture
MP: Magasin pittoresque
TM: Tour du monde
Viardot P: Louis Viardot, Les Merveilles de la peinture, 2 vols.
Viardot S: Louis Viardot, Les Merveilles de la sculpture

Catalogue Organization
1. Illustrated art history surveys to which the artist contributed
2. Other art-related publications to which the artist contributed
3. Publications under editor Edouard Charton to which the artist contributed
4. Publications of Louis Hachette to which the artist contributed
5. Other publications to which the artist contributed

Ansseau, François Jospeh
(c. 1833-?) engraver on wood from 1865; showed at the Salon between 1866 and 1885
1. Viardot P
2. HP
3. MP
5. ILL; Monde Illustré; Histoire de France populaire
Sources: Blachon, 196; Gusman, 202
Resources: BNF

Bertrand, Antoine
(b. 1824) engraver on wood; showed work regularly in Paris between 1864 and 1879,
including the Salon of 1874; Bassy names him along with Pannemaker as one of the best wood
engravers of his time
1. Lefèvre; Clément’s Histoire abrégée des beaux-arts
2. HP
3. MP; TM (especially the architectural designs of Thérond)
4. Cut Doré’s designs for the fables of La Fontaine and Danté’s Divine Comedy; Hugo’s Notre
Dame (1877); Musée des familles
Sources: Duplessis, 12; Bayard, 37; Gusman, 174; Blachon, 200; Bassy, 306
Resources: BNF

Catenacci, Hercule
Designer on wood; born in Ferrara and was naturalized as a citizen of France; also worked as a
painter of ornaments
1. Lefèvre; Jacquemart, Les Merveilles de la céramique
2. HP
3. MP; TM
Sources: Gusman, 103
Resources: BNF

431
Appendix 1 (Continued)

Chapon, Léon
(1836-1918) engraver on wood; was admitted to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1853 and was
also the pupil of Trichon; first exhibited at the Salon of 1859; in 1892 he was awarded a
second class medal by the Salon Jury, and in 1900, a gold medal at the Paris Universal
Exposition; showed at numerous Salons between 1859 and 1898
1. Viardot P
2. HP; GBA
3. MP
4. Bible populaire (1864-5)
5. ILL; Doré’s designs; Monde illustré
Sources: Beraldi, vol. 4, 98; Gusman, 181; and Blachon, 207
Resources: BNF

Chapuis, Hippolyte
(1843-1885?) designer on wood; was a student at the Ecole des Beaux-Art in Dijon and studied
with Alexandre Cabanel at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris; showed work in numerous
Salons after 1870 and his most well-known piece is the painting Les Derniers moments de S.
Dominique (1875); his painting Atelier de l’artiste (1863) is at the Musée des Beaux-Arts at
Besançon

1. Viardot P and S
3. TM
5. novels by Hugo
Sources: Dictionnaire de biographie française; Bénézit; Thieme-Becker

Cordier, Alfred
(b. 1827) engraver on wood
1. Lefèvre
4. Bible populaire (1864-5)
5. Musée des familles; Monde illustré (1860s and 70s); Hugo’s Notre Dame (1877)
Sources: Blachon, 209
Resources: BNF

Daubigny, Charles-François
(1817-1878) designer on wood; derived his main income from illustrations before becoming a
successful Salon painter and gaining his reputation as part of the Barbizon school of
landscapists; produced nearly 1000 designs for wood engravings
1. Lefèvre; Viardot S
2. HP; Les Beaux-Arts; L’Artiste; GBA
3. MP; TM
4. GJ
5. Curmer’s Wordsworth, Greece, Pictorial (1839) and Les Français peints par eux-mêmes
(1840-42)
Sources: Fidell-Beaufort and Bailly-Herzbert; Beraldi, vol. 5, 91-98; Gusman, 79-80; Harthan,
180
Resources: BNF

432
Appendix 1 (Continued)

De Bar, Alexandre
(1821-1908) was first a porcelain painter, then later became a landscape painter, etcher, and
designer for wood engravings; specialized in designs of landscape and architecture; in 1856
left for Egypt as a draftsman on an expedition to the source of the Nile commanded by M.
D’Escayrac de Lauture; returned to France in 1857 after this expedition failed; showed several
landscape paintings at Salons between 1845 and 1870; significant popularity as an illustrator
during the Second Empire
1. Lefèvre
2. Journal des artistes; L’Artiste; Revue des beaux-arts
3. MP; TM; Lefèvre’s Merveilles des parcs et jardins
4. GJ
5. Monde illustré; Musée des familles
Source: Blachon, 197; Beraldi, vol. 1, 92-99; Gusman, 109
Resources: BNF

Etherington, Alfred
Engraver on wood; born in England but worked in Paris
1. Lefèvre (and/or Edward)
2. HP
3. MP (especially architectural images after Thérond)
4. GJ (and/or Edward)
5. Musées des familles; Doré’s designs
Sources: Duplessis, 24; Gusman, 174; Blachon, 217
Resources: BNF

Etherington, Edward
Engraver on wood; most likely the brother of Alfred and the nephew and student of John
Quartley, the English wood engraver living in France
1. Lefèvre (and/or Alfred)
2. HP
3. MP
4. GJ (and/or Alfred)
5. Doré’s designs
Sources: Duplessis, 24; Gusman, 174; Blachon, 217
Resources: BNF

Ettling, Jacob
Engraver on wood; born in Frankfort and worked in Paris until 1872, when he moved to
Germany and continued work there
1. Viardot P and S
2. HP
3. MP
5. Doré’s designs
Sources: Blachon, 217
Resources: BNF

Gauchard, Félix Jean
(1825-1872) engraver on wood; son of François Gauchard, a metal engraver in Paris; was
married to the sister of wood engraver Charles Barbant; known particularly for his images after
Doré; showed in the Salon from 1850 to 1870
1. Lefèvre; Viardot S
433

Appendix 1 (Continued)

2. HP
3. MP; TM
4. GJ
5. Doré’s designs; Musée des familles
Sources: Duplessis, 25; Beraldi, vol. 6, 236; Gusman, 36 and 170; Blachon, 220
Resources: BNF

Gusman or Gusmand, Adolphe
(1821-1905) engraver on wood; was a friend of Doré and often did cuts after his designs;
according to his son Pierre Gusman, who was himself a wood engraver and the author of an
important study on the medium, Adolphe provided the first wood engraving after a wash
drawing, which was designed by Daubigny; was professor at a school for wood engravers
started by Guillaume-Alphonse Harang who went by Cabasson, the painter who executed
many designs for Blanc’s Histoire des peintres; this school was part of the Ecole Impériale de
Dessin, which later became the Ecole Nationale des Arts Décoratifs; according to Duplessis
writing in L’Artiste in 1855 and then later reprinted in Les Graveurs sur bois contemporaine
(1857), Adolphe was “sans contredit un de nos meilleurs graveurs sur bois, il comprend
parfaitement les maîtres qu’il reproduit, et sait donner à ce qu’il grave une finesse et un
moêlleux extraordinaire; aussi le Magasin pittoresque et l’Histoire des Peintres ont-ils confié à
cet artiste leurs travaux les plus importants, et ont-ils fait preuve de goût et d’habilité”; showed
in the Salon between 1848 and 1888; his engraving of Veronese’s Marriage at Cana
at the Louvre, after the design of Cabasson, won a gold medal at the 1857 Salon
1. Viardot P
2. HP; Les Beaux-Arts; L’Art
3. MP
4. Bible populaire (1864-5)

5. Curmer’s Les Français peints par eux-mêmes (1840-42); Hugo, Notre Dame (1844); Doré’s
designs; Musée des familles; Monde illustré; Revue illustré
Sources: Duplessis, 28; Beraldi, vol. 8, 11; Gusman, 163-65; Blachon, 223
Resources: BNF

Hildibrand, Théophile
(1824-1897) engraver on wood; was a student of Andrew, Best, and Leloir and collaborated
often with his friend François Pannemaker; was part of a studio with LaPlante and Barbant that
was frequently supported by Hachette’s commissions; was one of the principal engravers for
Doré, and did a large amount of work for Hachette, especially on the publisher’s illustrated
series of children’s books, the Bibliothèque Rose; showed in a number of Salons between 1866
and 1883
1. Lefèvre; Viardot S
2. HP
3. MP; TM
4. Bibliothèque Rose; Bible populaire (1864-5)
5. ILL; novels by Jules Verne; Doré’s designs
Sources: Duplessis, 30; Beraldi, vol. 8, 177; Gusman, 183; and Blachon, 224
Resources: BNF

434
Appendix 1 (Continued)

Hotelin, Laurent
(b. 1821) engraver on wood and relief engraver on metal; joined the important studio of Best
and Leloir after 1843; formed a new studio with his student Hurel and others in 1861, and then
a partnership with Hurel between 1862 and 1866
1. Lefèvre (Hotelin and Hurel signed their blocks together)
2. HP
3. MP
5. Doré’s designs; Musée des familles
Sources: Blachon, 225
Resources: BNF

Hurel, Alexandre
(b. 1827) engraver on wood; formed a new studio with his teacher Hotelin and others in 1861,
and then a partnership with Hotelin between 1862 and 1866
1. Lefèvre
2. HP
3. MP; TM
Sources: Blachon, 225
Resources: BNF

Koch, H.
German engraver working in Paris for publishers such as Firmin-Didot and Hachette
1. Viardot P
3. MP
Sources: Blachon, 228
Resources: BNF

Laly, Pierre
(b. 1824) engraver on wood; most likely partner with his brother Charles; worked often after
designs by Doré, Thérond, and Lancelot; signed work only with last name
1. Lefèvre
2. HP
3. MP; TM
4. GJ
5. Musée des familes; Doré’s designs
Sources: Blachon, 230
Resources: BNF

Laly, Charles
(b. 1827) engraver on wood; most likely partner with his brother Pierre; worked often after
designs by Doré, Thérond, and Lancelot; signed work only with last name
1. Lefèvre
2. HP
3. MP; TM
4. GJ
Sources: Blachon, 230
Resources: BNF

435
Appendix 1 (Continued)

Lancelot, Dieudonné-Auguste
(1822-1894) designer on wood, specialized in landscape views; was also an etcher and
lithographer, showing his work in these media at the Salons of 1853, 1873, and 1876
1. Lefèvre
3. MP; TM
4. GJ
5. Hugo’s novels in 1855; official illustrated catalogue of the Universal Exposition 1867
Sources: Bayard, 36; Duplessis, 9; Beraldi, vol. 9, 42-43; Gusman, 120; Bénézit
Resources: BNF

LaPlante, Charles
(d. 1903) engraver on wood; worked in a studio with Hildibrand and Charles Barbant that
fulfilled numerous commissions for Hachette
1. Lefèvre; Viardot S and P; Duplessis, Les Merveilles de la gravure
2. HP
3. MP; TM
4. GJ; Bible populaire (1864-5)
5. Doré’s designs; Monde illustré
Sources: Beraldi, vol. 9, 50; Gusman, 36 and 182; Blachon, 231
Resources: BNF

Meunier, Eugène
Engraver on wood; exhibited at the Salon of 1873, 1875, and 1881
1. Lefèvre
3. MP; TM
5. Doré’s designs
Sources: Beraldi, vol. 10, 56; Gusman, 173; and Blachon, 237
Resources: BNF

Minne, Alphonse Joseph Ferdinand
Engraver on wood; born in Belgium but worked in Paris
1. Lefèvre
2. HP
3. MP
5. Doré’s designs
Sources: Duplessis, 35-36; Blachon, 237
Resources: BNF

Pannemaker, François Adolphe
(1822-1900) engraver on wood; born in Brussels; was a student at the Ecole Royale de
Belgique; moved to Paris first in 1843 and then permanently in 1855, although he kept a studio
in Brussels run by Doms, and founded as well two studios in Paris, one directed by his son
Stéphane (1847-1930), who was also a wood engraver; was a professor of wood engraving at
the Ecole Impériale de Dessin between 1859 and 1874; was one of Doré’s favorite interpreters
of his work and became one of the most famous wood engravers of the century with an
international reputation; executed currency bills for France, Belgium, and Italy; exhibited at
the Salon beginning in 1855 and received the Grand Prize at the 1889 Paris Exposition
Universelle; Bassy names him, along with Bertrand as one of the best wood engravers of the
period.

436
Appendix 1 (Continued)

1. Viardot P
2. HP
3. MP
4. GJ; Bible populaire (1864-5)
5. Doré’s designs; Musée des familles
Sources: Beraldi, vol. 10, 241-46; Gusman, 36 and 168-69; Blachon 69 and 240-41
Resources: BNF

Paquier, A.
Designer on wood; first name remains unknown, but recognized in the 1860s and 70s for his
work reproducing Old Master paintings; he is not mentioned in any of the artist dictionaries I
have consulted, including Bénézit; Grove Dictionary of Art; Thieme and Becker, or in studies
on wood engravers by Beraldi, Gusman, and Blachon
1. Viardot P
2. HP
Resources: BNF

Petot, J.
Designer on wood; first name remains unknown; not mentioned in artist dictionaries or in
studies on wood engravers (see list of consulted works in entry on Paquier)
1. Viardot S
Resources: BNF

Pouget, Achille
Engraver on wood; student of well-known illustrator Louis-Henri Brévière
1. Lefèvre
3. TM
4. Bible populaire (1864-5)
Sources: Blachon, 244
Resources: BNF

Robert, Jules
(1843-1898) engraver on wood and metal; student of Chapon; worked as the engraver for the
Banque de France and executed the 100 F and 500 F bills; member of the Salon jury of
engraving for 1882 and received the Legion d’Honneur that year.
1. Viardot P
2. HP
3. MP
4. Bible populaire (1864-5)
5. Monde illustré

Sources: Beraldi, vol. 11, 206; Gusman, 183; and Blachon, 246
Resources: BNF

Sellier, Paul
Designer on wood
1. Viardot S; Duplessis, Les Merveilles de la gravure
3. MP
Sources: Aurenche, 430 and 435; Blachon, 248
Resources: BNF

437
Appendix 1 (Continued)

Sotain, Eugène
(1816-1874) engraver on wood; one of Doré’s favored wood engravers; showed work at the
Salons of 1850, 1852, 1863, 1865, and 1870
1. Lefèvre
2. HP
3. MP
4. Bible populaire (1864-5)
5. Musée des familles; Doré’s designs
Sources: Duplessis, 45; Beraldi, vol. 12, 47; Gusman, 171; and Blachon, 250
Resources: BNF

Thérond, Emile
(b. 1821) designer on wood, etcher; specialized in designs of architecture; signature often
appears as “E.T.;” according to Bayard, he “excelled” in engraving after photographs, and that
“ses bois sont étonnant par leur finesse et leur scrupuleuse exactitude malgré leur exiguïté,”
and along with de Bar and Lancelot provided “des paysages dignes d’être cités;” did a number
of etchings for illustrated books and showed work in the Salon of 1865
1. Lefèvre; Viardot S
3. MP; TM
4. GJ
Sources: Bayard, 36; Beraldi, vol. 12, 111; Duplessis, 9; and Gusman, 107
Resources: BNF

Trichon, Auguste
(1814-1898) painter and engraver on wood; student at the Ecole Royale de Dessin; showed in
Salons in 1848 and 1880; formed a studio with G. Monvoisin that employed many workers,
including a number of women, and produced hundreds of vignettes for illustrated publications;
according to Duplessis, “il est un des graveurs les plus employés par les journaux illustrés”
1. Lefèvre
2. HP; Les Beaux-Arts
3. MP
4. GJ; Bible populaire (1864-5)
5. Le Journal pour tous; ILL; Musée des familles; designs after Daumier
Sources: Duplessis, 47; Beraldi, vol. 12, 154; Gusman, 174; and Blachon, 253
Resources: BNF

438
Appendix 2: The Survey Canon

Works Consulted

1. Works appear in chronological order by date of original publication
2. I am designating the handbook format as between 16 and 23cm
3. I have not included histories of art with more than three volumes, such as Charles Blanc’s Histoire
des peintres de toutes les écoles, 14 vols. (1861-76); Carl Schnaase’s Geschichte der bildenden Künste,
8 vols. (1843-64); and André Michel’s Histoire de l’art, 8 vols. (1905-29)
4. Each listing below begins with the shorthand designation I have used for that source

PM: Penny Magazine (London, 1832-45)
Illustrated articles on art objects; wood engravings

MP: Magasin pittoresque (Paris, 1833-1914; I consulted 1833 to 1848)
Illustrated articles on art objects; wood engravings

Lossing: Benson John Lossing, Outline History of the Fine Arts, Harper’s Family Library (New York:
Harper and Bros., 1840)
Illustrated history of art; single volume handbook; wood engravings

Gwilt: Joseph Gwilt, An Encyclopedia of Architecture, Historical, Theoretical, and Practical (London:
Longman, 1842)
Single volume handbook, 23 cm; includes illustrated history of architecture; wood engravings

Denk: August Voit, Ernst Guhl, and Joseph Caspar, Denkmäler der Kunst, 3 vols. (Stuttgart: Ebner
und Seubert, 1845-56); later editions and translations
Published in parts, 28 x 39cm; image-atlas of art history with engraved plates, a few
chromolithographs, and separate textual descriptions

Knight: Charles Knight, ed., Pictorial Gallery of Arts, 2 vols. (London: Charles Knight and Charles
Cox, 1845-47); later editions Vol. 2 is an illustrated history of art; published in parts, 36 cm;
wood engravings

Kugler Eng: Franz Kugler, Handbook of Painting: The Italian Schools, 2 vols., ed. Charles Eastlake,
trans. Margaret Hutton (London: John Murray, 1851); and Handbook of Painting: The
German, Flemish and Dutch Schools, 2 vols., ed. Edmund Head, trans. Hutton (London: John
Murray, 1854); later editions
Illustrated history of painting; multi-volume handbook, 21 cm; wood engravings

CP: Sydenham Crystal Palace Fine Arts Courts, open 1854 to 1936
Plaster cast collection of art history

Fergusson: James Fergusson, Illustrated Handbook of Architecture, 2 vols. (London: John Murray,
1855) and History of the Modern Styles of Architecture: Being a Sequel to the Handbook of
Architecture (London: John Murray, 1862); later editions
Illustrated history of architecture; multi-volume handbook, 22cm; wood engravings

Lübke Ar: Wilhelm Lübke, Geschichte der Architektur (Leipzig: Seemann, 1855); later editions
Illustrated history of architecture; single volume handbook; wood engravings

439
Appendix 2 (Continued)

Kugler: Franz Kugler, Handbook der Kunstgeschichte, 3rd ed., 3 vols. (Stuttgart: Ebner und Seubert,
1856-59); later editions
First illustrated edition of Kugler’s history of art; multi-volume handbook, 23cm; wood
engravings

Manchester: Manchester Art-Treasures Exhibition, 1857.
Display of original paintings arranged as an historical survey

Lübke: Wilhelm Lübke, Grundriss der Kunstgeschichte (Stuttgart: Ebner und Seubert, 1860); later
editions and translations
Illustrated history of art; single volume handbook, 23cm; later editions had multiple volumes;
wood engravings

Wornum: Ralph Wornum, The Epochs of Painting (London: Chapman and Hall, 1864)
Illustrated history of painting; single volume handbook, 23cm; wood engravings

Lefèvre: André Lefèvre, Les Merveilles de l’architecture, Bibliothèque des Merveilles (Paris: Hachette,
1865); later editions and translations
Illustrated history of architecture; single volume handbook, 18cm; wood engravings

Lübke Eng: Wilhelm Lübke, History of Art, trans. Fanny Elizabeth Bunnètt, 2 vols. (London: Smith,
Elder, and Co., 1868) and later editions
Illustrated history of art; multi-volume, 26cm; wood engravings

Viardot P: Louis Viardot, Les Merveilles de la peinture, 2 vols., Bibliothèque des Merveilles (Paris:
Hachette, 1868-9); later editions and translations
Illustrated history of painting; two-volume handbook, 18cm; wood engravings

Viardot S: Louis Viardot, Les Merveilles de la sculpture, Bibliothèque des Merveilles (Paris:
Hachette, 1869); later editions and translations
Illustrated history of sculpture; single volume handbook, 18cm; wood engravings

Heaton: Mary Margaret Heaton, A Concise History of Painting (London: Bell and Daldy, 1873)
Illustrated history of painting; single volume handbook; photomechanical illustrations bound
with text

Bell: Nancy Bell, Elementary History of Art (London: Asher, 1874; New York: Scribners, 1875; and
London: Sampson Low, 1882); later editions
Illustrated history of art; single volume handbook, 19cm; wood engravings

Ménard: René Ménard, Histoire des beaux-arts (Paris: Librairie de l’Imprimerie Générale, 1875)
Illustrated history of art; single volume, 29cm; wood engravings

Clément: Félix Clément, Histoire abrégée des beaux-arts (Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1879)
Illustrated history of art; single volume, 27cm; wood engravings

Destremau: A. Destremau, Manuel d’histoire de l’art (Paris: Renouard, H. Loones, successeur, 1882)
Illustrated history of art; single volume handbook, 18cm; wood engravings

440
Appendix 2 (Continued)

Bayet: Charles Bayet, Précis d’histoire de l’art, Bibliothèque de l’Enseignement des Beaux-Arts (Paris:
Quantin, 1886); later editions
Illustrated history of art; single volume handbook, 21cm; drawings reproduced
photomechanically

Guillaume: Edmond Guillaume, L’Histoire de l’art et de l’ornement (Paris: Delagrave, 1886)
Illustrated history of art; single volume handbook; drawings reproduced photomechanically

Reymond: William Reymond, Histoire de l’art (Paris: Delagrave, 1886); later editions
Illustrated history of art; single volume handbook; drawings reproduced photomechanically

Turner: Francis Turner, A Short History of Art (London: Swan, Sonnenschein, 1886); later editions
Illustrated history of art; single volume handbook, 22cm; wood engravings

Goodyear: William Henry Goodyear, A History of Art (New York: A. S. Barnes, 1888); later editions
Illustrated history of art; single volume handbook, 25cm; in-text wood engravings and extra-
text halftones

Peyre: Roger Peyre, Histoire générale des beaux-arts (Paris: Delagrave, 1894)
Illustrated history of art; single volume handbook; drawings and a few photographs reproduced
photomechanically

M d’A: Eugène Müntz and Pierre-Louis Moreau, eds., Le Musée d’art: galerie des chefs-d’oeuvres et
précis de l’histoire de l’art, 2 vols. (Paris: Larousse, 1902-07)
Illustrated history of art; multi-volume, 32cm; halftones on heavy, glossy paper

Reinach: Salomon Reinach, Apollo: histoire générale des arts plastiques (Paris: Hachette, 1904); later
editions and translations
Illustrated history of art; single volume handbook, 18cm; combination of drawings reproduced
photomechanically and halftones

Gardner: Helen Gardner, Art Through the Ages (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Co., 1926); later
editions and translations
Illustrated history of art; single volume handbook, 19cm; combination of drawings reproduced
photomechanically, halftones, and a single color plate

Roos: Frank J. Roos, An Illustrated History of Art History (New York: Macmillan, 1938)
Image-atlas of art history; photographs

Bazin: Germain Bazin, Histoire de l’art (Paris: Massin, 1953); later editions and translations
Illustrated history of art; single volume handbook; photographs

Gombrich: E. H. Gombrich, The Story of Art (New York: Phaidon, 1950); later editions and
translations
Illustrated history of art; single volume; photographs; color plates

Janson: H. W. Janson, History of Art (New York: Abrams, 1962); later editions
Illustrated history of art; single volume; photographs; color plates

441
Appendix 2 (Continued)

Hartt: Frederick Hartt, Art: A History of Painting, Sculpture, Architecture (New York: Harry N.
Abrams, 1976); and later editions
Illustrated history of art; single volume; photographs; color plates

H and F: Hugh Honour and John Fleming, The Visual Arts: A History (New York: Harry N. Abrams,
1982); later editions
Illustrated history of art; single volume; photographs; color plates

Hooker: Denise Hooker, ed., Art of the Western World (London: Boxtree, 1989)
Illustrated history of art; single volume; photographs; color plates

Silver: Larry Silver, Art in History (New York: Abbeville Press, 1993)
Illustrated history of art; single volume; photographs; color plates

Stokstad: Marilyn Stokstad, ed., Art History, 2 vol. (New York: Abrams, 1995)
Illustrated history of art; multi-volume; photographs; color plates

Adams: Laurie Schneider Adams, A History of Western Art (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1994); later
editions
Illustrated history of art; single volume; photographs; color plates

Thuillier: Jacques Thuillier, History of Art, trans. from French by Deke Dusinberre (Paris: Flammarion,
2003)
Illustrated history of art; single volume; photographs; color plates

ARTstor: “Art History Survey Collection,” ARTstor, online resource of digital images

Canonical Objects

1. I focus on objects that entered the canon before or during the 19th century
2. I have organized the objects based on general chronological and periodic progressions common to
surveys
3. Citations are based on the appearance of an illustration of the named object
4. Numbers in parentheses signify edition dates after the original edition

Prehistoric

Stonehenge
PM; Gwilt; Denk; Knight; Kugler (56); Cook; Reinach; Gardner; Roos; Bazin; Janson; Hartt;
H and F; Stokstad; Adams; Artstor

Neolithic Monuments
PM; MP; Denk; Lübke; Lübke Eng; Lefèvre; Lübke Eng; Clément; Destremau; Reymond;
Reinach; Gardner; Janson; H and F; Adams; Artstor

Prehistoric Carvings
Kugler (56); Viardot S; Reinach; Gardner (36); Roos; Bazin; Janson; Hartt; H and F; Adams;
Artstor

442
Appendix 2 (Continued)

Cave Paintings
Peyre; Reinach; Gardner; Gombrich; Bazin; Janson; Hartt; H and F; Silver; Stokstad; Adams;
Artstor

Far East

Great Stupa at Sanchi, India
Fergusson; Kugler (56); Turner; M d’A; Gardner; Bazin; H and F; Stokstad

Chaitya Hall, Karli, India
Denk; Fergusson; Lübke Ar; Kugler (56); Lübke; Lübke Eng; Gardner; Bazin; H and F;
Stokstad

Buddhist Sculpture (India, China, Japan, or Sri Lanka)
Bayet; M d’A; Gardner; Gombrich; Bazin; H and F: Stokstad; Thuillier; Artstor

Ajanta Caves and Cave Paintings, India
CP; Fergusson; M d’A; Gardner; Bazin; H and F; Stokstad

Cave Temple, Elephanta, India
PM; MP; Gwilt; Knight; Denk; Kugler (56); Lübke; Lübke Eng; Bell; Peyre; H and F;
Stokstad

Kailasanatha, Ellora, India
MP; Denk; Fergusson; Lefèvre; Lübke Ar (58); Ménard; H and F

Other Hindu Temples in India
Gwilt; Denk; Fergusson; Lübke Ar; Lefèvre; Reymond; Bell (89); Gardner; Bazin; H and F;
Stokstad

Raths at Mahamallapuram, India
Fergusson; Kugler (56); Lübke; Lübke Eng; M d’A; Bazin; H and F; Stokstad

Relief from Mahamallapuram, India
Kugler (56); Lübke; Cook; M d’A; Gardner (36); Bazin; H and F

Other Ancient Indian Sculpture
Knight; Denk; Kugler (56); Lübke; Lübke Eng; Clément; Reymond; M d’A; Gardner; Bazin;
H and F

Chinese Pagoda
MP; Gwilt; Knight; Fergusson; Kugler (56); Lübke; Lübke Eng; Turner; Gardner; Bazin; H
and F; Stokstad; Thuillier

Other Chinese Architecture
PM: MP; Knight; Fergusson; Kugler (56); Lübke; Lübke Eng; Reymond; Turner; Gardner;
Bazin; H and F; Stokstad; Thuillier

Ancient Chinese Bronze Vessels
Clément; M d’A; Gardner; Bazin; H and F

443

Appendix 2 (Continued)

Chinese Painting
Kugler (56); Reymond; M d’A; Gardner; Gombrich; Bazin; H and F; Silver; Stokstad;
Thuillier

Chinese Decorative Arts
Knight; Peyre; Gardner; H and F; Stokstad; Thuillier

Japanese Architecture
Bell (89); Bayet (93); M d’A; Gardner; H and F; Silver; Artstor

Japanese Woodblock Print
Bayet; M d’A; Gardner (36); Gombrich; Bazin; H and F; Stokstad; Adams

Japanese Sculpture or Decorative Arts
Bell (89); Peyre; M d’A; Bayet (08); Gardner; Bazin; H and F; Stokstad; Artstor

Javanese Architecture and Sculpture
Fergusson; Kugler (56); Lübke; Lübke Eng; Bazin; Gardner; H and F

Angkor Wat
Clément; Peyre; M d’A; Gardner; Bazin; H and F

Pre-Columbian

Mayan Architecture
MP; Denk; Fergusson; Kugler (56); Lübke; Lübke Eng; Bell; Gardner; Bazin; Hartt; H and F;
Stokstad; Artstor

Mayan Sculpture
MP; Denk; Kugler (56); Lübke; Lübke Eng; Gardner; Gombrich; Bazin; Hartt; H and F;
Artstor

Peruvian Architecture
Denk; Fergusson; Bazin; Hartt; H and F; Stokstad

Peruvian Sculpture and Decorative Arts
PM; Denk; Kugler (56); Lübke; Lübke Eng; Gardner; Gombrich; Bazin; Hartt; Gombrich; H
and F

Egyptian

Pyramids
MP; Gwilt; Denk; Knight; Fergusson; Lübke Ar; Kugler (56); Lübke; Lübke Eng; Ménard;
Turner; Reymond; Goodyear; Bell (89); Peyre; M d’A; Reinach; Gardner; Roos; Gombrich;
Bazin; Janson; Hartt; H and F; Silver; Stokstad; Adams; Artstor

444
Appendix 2 (Continued)

Sphinx (either Great Sphinx or a smaller version)
MP; Gwilt; Knight; CP; Kugler (56); Lübke Eng; Clément; Bell (82); Turner; Goodyear; M
d’A; Reinach; Roos; Janson: Hartt; H and F; Stokstad; Adams; Artstor

Obelisk
PM; MP; Lossing; Knight; Lübke Ar; Lübke; Lübke Eng; Artstor

Egyptian Columns with Lotus or Papyrus Capitals
Lossing; Gwilt; Denk; Knight; CP; Fergusson; Lübke Ar (58); Lübke; Lübke Eng; Bell; Peyre;
Goodyear (17); Gardner; Roos; Bazin; Stokstad; Adams; Thuillier; Artstor

Tomb of Beni Hassan
MP; Gwilt; CP; Fergusson; Kugler (56); Lübke; Lübke Ar (65); Lübke Eng; Reymond;
Goodyear; Bell (89); Peyre; Roos; Gombrich (60); Stokstad; Gardner (03)

Wall Painting, Beni Hassan
CP; Kugler (56); Gardner; Gombrich; Bazin; Janson; Stokstad

Egyptian Low Relief
Denk; Knight; Kugler (56); Lübke; Lübke Eng; Bell; Cook; Bayet; Reymond; Guillaume;
Goodyear; Reinach; Gardner; Roos; Gombrich; Bazin; Janson; Hartt; H and F; Thuillier;
Artstor

Temple at Karnak, Thebes
Denk; Knight; CP; Fergusson; Kugler (56); Lübke Ar (58); Lübke; Lefèvre; Lübke Eng;
Ménard; Clément; Bell (89); M d’A; Reinach; Bayet (08); Goodyear (17); Gardner; Roos;
Bazin; Hartt; Stokstad; Adams; Gardner; Thuillier; Janson (04); Artstor

Temple at Luxor
PM; MP; Gwilt; Denk; Knight; Bayet; Guillaume; Reymond; Goodyear; Peyre; M d’A;
Gardner; Roos; Bazin; Janson; Hartt; H and F; Silver; Stokstad; Adams; Thuillier; Artstor

Temple at Edfu
Knight; CP; Fergusson; Lübke Ar (58); Bell; Ménard; Clément; Goodyear; Gardner; Roos;
Hartt; H and F

Temples of Abu Simbel or Ipsambul in Nubia
Gwilt; Denk; Knight; CP; Fergusson; Lübke Ar (58); Bell (82); Ménard; Reymond; Goodyear;
Peyre; M d’A; Gardner (36); Roos; Hartt; H and F; Stokstad; ARTstor

Khafre or Chephren (seated), Egyptian Museum, Cairo
Viardot S; Ménard; Goodyear (17); Gardner; Roos; Janson; Hartt; Stokstad; Adams; ARTstor

Ka-aper or Sheikh el-Beled (standing wooden statue), Egyptian Museum, Cairo
Viardot S; Ménard; Cook; Bayet; Bell (89); Goodyear; Reinach; Gardner; Roos; Hartt;
ARTstor

Seated Scribe, Louvre Museum
Bayet; Peyre; M d’A; Reinach; Goodyear (17); Gardner; Roos; Bazin; Janson; Hartt; H and F;
Stokstad; Adams; Thuillier; ARTstor

445
Appendix 2 (Continued)

Egyptian Wall Painting
MP; Denk; Knight; CP; Wornum; Viardot P (70); Reymond; Bell (89); Peyre; M d’A;
Gardner; Roos; Gombrich (60); Janson; Hartt; H and F; Adams; Thuiller; ARTstor

Near East

Winged Bulls, Louvre Museum and British Museum
Denk; CP; Fergusson; Kugler (56); Lübke Ar (58); Lübke; Lübke Eng; Viardot S; Bell;
Guillaume; Turner; Goodyear; Reinach; Gardner; Roos; Bazin; Janson; Hartt; Silver; H and F;
Stokstad; Adams; ARTstor

Reconstruction of an Assyrian Palace
CP; Fergusson; Lefèvre; Bayet; Turner; Bell (89); Peyre; Goodyear (17); Gardner; Roos;
Bazin; Janson; Hartt; H and F; Stokstad

Lion Hunt Reliefs, British Museum
Denk; CP; Kugler (56); Lübke; Lübke Eng; Bell; Peyre; M d’A; Reinach; Gardner; Roos;
Bazin; Janson; Hartt; H and F; Silver; Stokstad; Adams; Thuillier; ARTstor

Palace of Persepolis, Persia
Gwilt; Denk; CP; Fergusson; Lübke Ar; Lübke; Lübke Eng; Peyre; Bayer (08); Gardner; Roos;
Janson; Hartt; H and F; Stokstad; ARTstor

Double-Bull Capital, Persian
Gwilt; Denk; CP; Fergusson; Lübke Ar; Lübke; Lübke Eng; Bell; Clément; Peyre; M d’A;
Gardner; Roos; Bazin; Janson; Hartt; H and F; Stokstad; Adams; Thuillier; ARTstor

Persian Relief
Denk; Knight; Kugler (56); Lübke; Lübke Eng; Bell; Clément; Reinach; Goodyear (17);
Gardner; Janson; Hartt; H and F; Stokstad; Adams

Statue of Gudea (various versions)
Peyre; Reinach; Goodyear (17); Gardner; Roos; Bazin; Janson; Hartt; H and F; Stokstad;
Adams; Thuillier; ARTstor

Aegean

Treasury of Atreus, Mycenae
Gwilt; Fergusson; Lübke Ar (58); Lübke; Lefèvre; Lübke Eng; Cook; Gardner; Roos; Bazin;
Janson; Hartt; H and F; Stokstad; ARTstor

Lioness Gate, Mycenae
PM; Gwilt; Denk; Fergusson; Kugler (56); Lübke; Lefèvre; Lübke Eng; Bell; Ménard; Cook;
Guillaume; Bayer (93); Peyre; M d’A; Reinach; Gardner; Roos; Bazin; Janson; Hartt; H and F;
Stokstad; Adams; ARTstor

446
Appendix 2 (Continued)

Greek

Temple of Aphaia, Aegina and its Sculptures (now in the Munich Glyptothek)
MP; Denk; Knight; CP; Fergusson; Lübke; Lübke Eng; Bayet; Bell (89); Goodyear; M d’A;
Reinach; Gardner; Roos; Janson; Hartt; H and F; Stokstad; ARTstor

Temples of Hera I and Hera II, Paestum
PM; MP; Denk; Knight; CP; Kugler (56); Lübke Ar (58); Lübke; Lefèvre; Lübke Eng; Bell;
Ménard; Cook; Turner; Peyre; M d’A; Goodyear (17); Roos; Janson: Hartt; H and F; Hooker;
Stokstad; ARTstor

Capital Orders (Doric, Ionic, Corinthian)
Lossing; Denk; Knight; CP; Fergusson; Lübke Ar; Lübke; Lübke Eng; Bell; Clément;
Destremau; Guillaume; Reymond; Turner; Goodyear; Peyre; Bayet (08); Gardner; Roos;
Bazin; Janson: Hartt; H and F; Hooker; Silver; Stokstad; Adams; ARTstor

Acropolis, Athens
PM; MP; Gwilt; Knight; CP; Fergusson; Lübke Eng; Bell (82); Reymond; Turner; Bayet (93);
Peyre; M d’A; Reinach; Goodyear (17); Gardner (36); Roos; Bazin; Janson; Hartt; H and F;
Stokstad; Adams; ARTstor

Parthenon
PM; MP; Lossing; Gwilt; Denk; Knight; CP; Fergusson; Lübke Ar; Lübke; Lefèvre; Lübke
Eng; Clément; Destremau; Bayet; Goodyear; Bell (89); Peyre; M d’A; Reinach; Gardner;
Roos; Gombrich; Bazin; Janson; Hartt; H and F; Hooker; Silver; Adams; Thuillier; ARTstor

Parthenon Marbles (so-called Elgin Marbles), British Museum
PM; MP; Denk; Knight; CP; Kugler (56); Lübke; Lübke Eng; Viardot S; Bell; Cook; Clément;
Bayet; Turner; Goodyear; Peyre; M d’A; Reinach; Gardner; Roos; Gombrich; Bazin; Janson;
Hartt; H and F; Hooker; Silver; Stokstad; Adams; Thuillier; ARTstor

Lapith and Centaur, South Metope XXVII, from Parthenon, British Museum
PM; Knight; Lübke; Lübke Eng; Bell; Goodyear (17); Roos; Hartt; H and F; Stokstad; Adams;
ARTstor

Erechtheum, Athens
Gwilt; Denk; Knight; Fergusson; Lübke Ar; Kugler (56); Lübke; Lefèvre; Lübke Eng; Bell;
Ménard; Cook; Goodyear; Peyre; M d’A; Reinach; Gardner (36); Roos; Gombrich; Janson;
Hartt; H and F; Hooker; Silver; Adams; ARTstor

Caryatid Figure from Erechtheum
PM; Denk; Knight; Fergusson; Lübke; Lübke Eng; Cook; Clément; Bayet; Peyre; Roos;
Gardner (03); ARTstor

Choragic Monument of Lysikrates, Athens
Lossing; Gwilt; Denk; CP; Fergusson; Kugler (56); Cook; Reymond; Goodyear; M d’A;
Gardner;
Roos; Janson; Hartt; ARTstor

447
Appendix 2 (Continued)

Apollo Belvedere, Vatican Museum
PM; MP; Denk; Knight; CP; Kugler (56); Lübke; Lübke Eng; Viardot S; Bell; Cook;
Goodyear; Peyre; M d’A; Reinach; Roos; Gombrich; Janson; H and F

Laocoon, Vatican Museum
PM; MP; Denk

Asset Metadata

Creator Von Lintel, Amy M. (author)

Core Title Surveying the field: the popular origins of art history in nineteenth-century Britain and France

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

School College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Art History

Publication Date 04/10/2010

Defense Date 02/16/2010

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag art canon,art history survey,book history,history of art history,history of education,illustration,OAI-PMH Harvest,plaster cast,popular publishing,reproduction,visual culture,visual pedagogy,women's history,wood engraving

Place Name France (countries), Great Britain (countries)

Language English

Advisor Troy, Nancy J. (committee chair), Roberts, Sean (committee member), Schwartz, Vanessa R. (committee member)

Creator Email avonlint@gmail.com,vonlinte@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-m2903

Unique identifier UC1455780

Identifier etd-Lintel-3526 (filename),usctheses-m40 (legacy collection record id),usctheses-c127-321243 (legacy record id),usctheses-m2903 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-Lintel-3526.pdf

Dmrecord 321243

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Von Lintel, Amy M.

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Repository Name Libraries, University of Southern California

Repository Location Los Angeles, California

Repository Email uscdl@usc.edu

Abstract (if available)

Abstract The field of art history has often been criticized for its elitism