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• 1 2021-05-01T09:36:47-07:00 Needlework Visual Elements 17 plain 2021-05-21T08:36:02-07:00
  Visual Elements
  Because the use of needlework indicates that the image was meant to display social taste, its visual composition is important to consider within the context of 18th-century refinement practices. In fact, visual images of female anglers appeared on both sides of the Atlantic in the 1700s (Pappas 2015, p. 1). These "fishing lady" images appeared a century after John Donne's poem, The Bait, was penned in 1633; Donne's poem was a meditation on courtship, casting a suggestive metaphor that positions women in the role of the fisher while men are helpless fish. Fishing functioned as a metaphor for women patiently "luring" men with their looks and their feminine accomplishments, with the ultimate goal being a successful and advantageous marriage (Pappas 2015, p.1). Needlework Picture directly engages with this relationship by placing a fishing lady toward the center of the image. "The elegantly dressed man" is "paying court" to the "finely attired" woman, who turns her head to listen to his address while her body faces the fish on her line (Pappas 2015, p. 2). This visual appears to reference the fishing metaphor by offering a parallel relationship between the fish and the man behind the woman. As he attempts to court her, she catches hold of the helpless fish.
  
  A significant undertone of the metaphor is the "ultimate goal." The woman's pursuit of a successful and advantageous marriage, by luring men with her looks and accomplishments, suggests that the fishing lady would be attempting to impress suitors with her appearance and practices. In this instance, her clothing is colorful and would have been regarded as fine attire. In the 18th century, dress signaled rank and character as surely as posture did, where its value was derived from the feel, the cut, and the expense of the material (Bushman 1993, p. 69). While the gentry did not invariably dress in vibrant colors, their clothes had stronger hues that the poor could not replicate with their vegetable dyes (Bushman 1993, p. 70). As is evident in the image, her vibrant and finely made attire indicates that she is a woman of means. Because her clothes reflect her rank, character, and taste, they contribute to her attempt to lure suitors through appearance. The elegantly dressed gentleman that is courting her appears to match the genteel standard for fine attire.
  
  Additionally, the act of fishing also signifies social virtue. Fishing was not just a way for young women to be out in public in fashionable clothes so as to be seen by potential suitors, but an activity that evidenced their industry, virtue, and patience, contributing to their status as desirable candidates for marriage (Pappas 2015, p. 23). Thus, angling allows the fishing lady to publicly exhibit attractive characteristics for marriage amongst folks in the upper class. Both in the act of fishing and her appearance, the fishing lady in this embroidery suggests a desire for a marriage that would uphold her status as an individual with a refined background.
  
  
  
  To the side of the embroidery is a couple strolling together. Their hands are interlinked and their clothes appear to be of a similar quality to those of the fishing lady and her suitor. Behind them are colonial buildings amidst rolling hills, likely alluding to domestic life (Pappas 2015, p. 2). Given that the couple is walking toward the colonial buildings whilst also moving away from the pastoral landscape, the couple might be moving toward domesticity in their relationship.
  
  Toward the bottom of the image is a mounted huntsman. Surrounding him are several dogs chasing a deer. Given the centrality of the fishing metaphor to the picture, this might signify his "hunt" for a wife (Pappas 2015, p. 2). Overall, the embroidered image utilizes nature to establish iconography that suggests themes of youthful courtship. The relationship between humanity and nature in this instance is consciously drawing upon metaphors to portray nature in a pastoral and upper-class context.
  
  In the middle of the 18th century, land substantiated the upper class with social and economic wealth by offering rich resources and vibrant scenery. Pastoral imagery was an expression of sociopolitical power because agriculture was the primary source of employment and wealth (Ruff 2015, p. 77). Artistic depictions of the landscape exhibit social power because the land itself was imbued with value. The concentration of wealth and beauty ushered in a more romantic conception of the landscape amongst the elites, in which the boundaries between nature and humanity merged (Ruff 2015, p. 81). Upper-class relationships with nature romanticized the pastoral landscape, which is a characteristic that can certainly be attributed to Needlework Picture.
  
  To the other side of the picture is the imagery of humans harvesting crops while sporting genteel attire, as deer and birds can be found behind them. People did not conceive of nature as a separate entity away from the affairs of humanity and the inhabited world in the first half of the 18th century (Baetjer, Rosenthal, & Denver Art Museum 1993, p. 32). Landscape artwork typically was idealized and artificial before environmental thought transformed around the 19th century (Baetjer, Rosenthal, & Denver Art Museum 1993, p. 31). As is commonly found in this period, Needlework Picture offers a romantic depiction of Boston's natural landscape. The juxtaposition of humans with leaping deer and swooning birds in the same lush landscape conveys a sense of fantasy (Pappas 2015, p. 2). By emphasizing fantasy in this depiction of human relationships with Boston's natural environment in the colonial era, this embroidery plays into romantic conceptions of the landscape. Additionally, this romantic portrayal discloses the sense of fantasy that was tied to genteel courtship practices in the 18th century (Pappas 2015, p. 2). Needlework Picture draws upon a romantic conception of nature that was common amongst 18th-century elites. It did so to further substantiate the fishing metaphor and to uphold the romantic fantasies that accompanied the courtship ideals of an upper-class artist. Thus, the embroidery intertwines human practices with lush pastoral visions of the Boston landscape to serve its purpose of tasteful 18th-century imagery and to evince the artist's gentility.
   
• 1 2021-05-03T12:44:20-07:00 Plate Visual Elements 8 plain 2021-05-20T19:26:36-07:00 Visual Elements
  
  This particular portrayal of Boston Common and the State House offers an intriguing window into how people conceived of the landscape as an open pasture. Views of American landscapes began appearing on printed pearlwares around 1818 (Miller & Earls 2008). Although made specifically for the American market, most of the patterns continued to be general in nature. However, there was a small group of designs that became the most desirable of all collectible printed pottery - patterns illustrating the new nation of the United States (The Transferware Collectors Club, The Winterthur Museum, & Historic New England). Consequently, the image of Boston Common and the State House that is printed on "Plate" would be considered a highly desirable ceramic in early 19th-century America, one that hearkened back to the nation’s founding moment.
  The State House added immeasurably to the Common's appeal because America's upper classes valued neighborhoods near elegant seats of government (Rawson 2014, p. 34). In fact, the State House was so well liked that some wealthy Bostonians set their tables with plates, platters, pitchers, and creamers adorned with renderings of the State House presiding over a Common dotted with cows (Rawson 2014, p. 55).
  

  Beneath the State House are cows and sheep grazing, a worker with a wheelbarrow, and a few individuals on a stroll. In the early 19th century, carpet cleaning and militia drilling were still regular occurrences on the Common, holdovers from the 17th century (Rawson 2014, p. 29). The cows did the most work of all by grazing all day and doing the biological labor of turning grass into milk (Rawson 2014, p. 30).  Bostonians’ relationship to this natural landscape began to change significantly around 1820 when wealthier families began to move to the area. Although white upper-class Bostonians valued pastoral imagery of Boston Common, their relationship with the actual Common was more tenuous in this period. Wealthier Bostonians were developing a preference for a more recreational relationship to natural landscapes in the early 19th century and, as a result, they came to believe that productive activities were degrading the gentility of the Common and inhibited their enjoyment of the land (Rawson 2014, p. 23). Reformers focused their attention on removing the cows from the Common and regulating pasturage, resulting in a decade-long civic debate between the upper classes and working classes over the use of the Common (Pendery 1990, p. 45). Working class individuals valued the land for access to labor while upper-class Bostonians used it for leisure (Rawson 2014, p. 23). Interestingly, both groups' relationships with the land are portrayed in this image, perhaps signifying the growing schism between socioeconomic groups and their conceptions of nature. Aristocratic distaste for manual labor inspired a landscape ideal that treated productive work as if it were inconsistent with nature, reflecting a larger unraveling of the close relationship between labor and leisure in America (Rawson 2014, p. 36). Boston Common was beginning to shift from a pasture into a park in this period because the upper class sought to reform the Common into a place for recreation.

  
  This depiction of the State House on John Rogers & Son's plate was tied to emerging artistic trends that supported land enclosure and consolidation, inspiring new ways of thinking about nature and capitalism (Rawson 2014, p. 55). Around this time in New England, environmental philosophy had begun to shift away from Romanticism. Drawing from rational lines of thought, people began to believe the pastoral landscape brought its own rewards (Ruff 2015, p. 122). The image of the landscape started to represent aesthetic, moral, political, and even religious values (Ruff 2015, p. 136). Thus, a realistic representation of a pastoral Boston Common signified the land's distinct virtues and its benefits for human wellbeing. A subsequent implication of this ideological transition is that people began to regard nature as its own distinct entity because it was something separable from humanity.
• 1 2021-05-04T09:23:26-07:00 Smoker's Circle, on Boston Common Visual Elements 6 plain 2021-05-20T19:42:52-07:00
  Visual Elements 
  
  Broadly, this newspaper print portrays an image of men lounging on Boston Common in 1852. The Common, now populated with a number of trees and park benches, takes on a different appearance in this image than in the ceramics from 1820. In 1822, under the leadership of Josiah Quincy, the city's government began to modify the city's aesthetics and physical landscape. Boston's moralists endorsed objects of sight that would elevate the spectator’s character (Clark 2018, pp. 17-18). Indeed, the early 19th century brought unprecedented population growth, immigration, and industrialization to the city along with heightened poverty, uncollected waste, and crippling infrastructure; Boston’s population doubled between 1790 and 1820 and the city grew "denser, messier, and more Dickensian" in its social contrasts (Clark 2018, pp. 18-26). Reform of the city's physical landscape was in response to the negative externalities that came with the broader trends of industrialization and population growth. Elite Bostonians sought to clean the streets by establishing morally inspiring landmarks and removing what they deemed to be sources of vice, including people with mental health problems and criminals (Clark 2018, p. 18). This was a phenomenon that was driven by elitist beliefs regarding public morality. Urban reform swept through the city in the period prior to the publication of "Smoker's Circle, on Boston Common." As part of this urban renewal process, Mayor Quincy sought to reform pasturage on the Common by limiting the number of cows and eliminating their ability to freely roam the city's streets untended (Rawson 2014, p. 42). Bostonians never fought more fiercely over the Common's aesthetics, as the removal of cows threatened the labor and life practices of the working class (Rawson 2014, p. 49). Eventually cows were removed, unleashing a series of rapid physical changes to Boston Common with the intention of elevating the land from a pasture to a recreational park. Over 200 trees were planted and the space was finally enclosed in 1836 (Rawson 2014, p. 64-65).
  

  When Boston Common shed its cows in 1830, it became the largest municipal green space in America dedicated entirely to passive recreation (Rawson 2014, p. 73). In this print, it is evident that recreational relationships with the Common had usurped its use as a pastoral space. Underneath trees and dispersed throughout the ground, a crowd of men are found smoking on the grass and on park benches. The men are all dressed in suits. In this period, an emerging middle class sought to be included in genteel circles and therefore attached substantial social value to the Common's recreational amenities and the refinement they conferred (Rawson 2014, p. 49). People from middle-class backgrounds began to value the Common for access to genteel virtues and leisure. Consequently, this was a space in which average Bostonians could engage in refined behavior and intermix with the city's elites; after largely avoiding the Common in prior decades, Bostonian aristocrats began to return to the Common for recreational activities after it was transformed into a public park (Rawson 2014, p. 67). Wealthy white Bostonians returned because it offered the experience of nature's "peaceful, benign, healthful, and holy" attributes through morning walks and pleasant conversation (Rawson 2014, p. 67). As a result, this was a space that wealthier Bostonians and the middle class both occupied for access to the land's natural virtues and moral improvement. These traits are indicative of the contemporaneous emergence of transcendentalism in environmental philosophy in New England. Transcendentalism emerged in the first half of the 19th century, greatly influencing relationships with nature by introducing German romantic aesthetic principles (Ruff 2015, p. 149). By the 1840s, Frederick Law Olmsted believed that it was the responsibility of the government to provide its urban citizens with the social and cultural advantages provided by nature, endorsing the provision of public parks and recreational greens to promote the harmonious cooperation of man and nature (Ruff 2015, pp. 154-155). To contemporary leaders in transcendental thought, the availability of recreational greenery contributed to Boston's project of moral reform in the city. 

  In this print, human relationships with the land and with each other suggest the influence of transcendental principles. While the ceramic "Plate" lent a central focus to the State House, this depiction of the Common foregrounds nature and almost entirely leaves out the built environment. Prints of Boston Common tended to exclude the State House after the 1820s, placing more emphasis on the land's natural elements than ever before (Rawson 2014, pp. 68-69). This depiction of the Common as a recreational space, in which humans could enjoy the pleasures of nature, upheld the refined interests of the upper class. Worcester's portrayal of the park exhibits how men would lounge, smoke, and socialize comfortably under the trees. Because transcendental relationships with nature prioritized recreation, its influence on Boston Common fostered public morality by allowing humans to build harmonious relationships with the land and with each other. The land provided natural virtues that shaped genteel moral principles, which was central to the relationships cultivated in the park. From this depiction of the Common, it is evident that men used this space to uphold their gentility by spending recreational time in the presence of nature and other refined individuals. This image posits that Boston Common was enjoyed by aristocratic white men and those aspiring to reach the upper class. 

  An interesting and salient aspect of this image is that it appears to entirely omit the presence of women and children in addition to any suggestion of mixed-race usage on the Common. Americans in the mid 19th century largely subscribed to the notion that men and women occupied separate spheres, with middle- and upper-class women occupying a more domestic role (Kerber 1988, pp. 9-10). However, women were intimately involved with the Common's reform movement and its transformation from a pasture to a park was partially because cows and pastural labor inhibited women and children from fully enjoying the land (Rawson 2014, p. 62). Consequently, it would be expected that women and children would also use Boston Common as a recreational park in the 1850s. Whether Worcester consciously omitted women from his artwork or whether women were not present on the Common in this specific instance is unknown. In either scenario, this gendered depiction of Boston Common exhibits a level of inequality in 19th-century America. It does so by attempting to offer a visual of how people recreationally used the Common and subliminally conveying that this use was restricted to white men engaged with public refinement and transcendental relationships with the land. Meanwhile womens' relationships with nature, and those of people of color in Boston, are not represented.