"Picture Mania," Picture Collecting and Periodicals in Nineteenth-Century America1

Things past ought not to be extinguished by length of time, nor great and admirable actions be destitute of glory, (qtd. in Herodotus in S. "History of the Foundation of the British Museum." Mechanics' Magazine, and Journal of the Mechanics' Institute, 209-14 and S. "History of the British Museum." New York Farmer, 343) Visual instruction is a method of reaching the mind through the eye . . . The present is an age of pictures. (Abrams "Libraries and Visual Instruction," 235-36) American periodicals recognized that, whether valuable paintings, more widely distributed, inexpensive prints, or "reproductive prints" replicating a painting, or rare prints, pictures were an important part of the record. Picture collecting and its evil twin "picture mania" were a broad cultural phenomena, which newspapers, magazines, and journals linked to other issues in the development of a people and country. "Picture mania" was an excessive attention to or employment of pictures of any kind whether wealthy, obsessive individuals were extravagantly spending to purchase original paintings for personal pleasure or public benefit; or educators were extensively using images to teach at the expense of employing textual readings; or publishers were reporting historic and current events with prolifically illustrated tabloids and newspapers. Picture mania was a "pet" term of the nineteenth-century periodical press. The phrase was commonly derisive but in contrast could also be praise or sarcasm. In 1909, approximately seven decades after the Mechanics' Magazine, and Journal of the Mechanics' Institute and the New York Farmer emphasized the importance of evidence of the past, the professional journal New York Libraries, similarly noted the potential of images to record then instruct in "an age of pictures" (Abrams 235-36). Americans understood the power of pictures to instruct or influence the "mind through the eye," uplift, serve as a souvenir, nostalgically or objectively resurrect the "great and admirable actions" of the past or just plain entertain. These powerful, even laudatory goals, sometimes drove collectors to obsessive acquisitiveness of images of all types. This article descriptively surveys and analyzes how nineteenth-century American periodicals of all sorts recounted picture collecting particularly concentrating on "picture mania" in a cultural context. Whatever the extent or type of pictures collected, whether unique paintings, rare prints or more commonplace prints or large run printing press produced illustrations and reproductions, the periodical press associated this "irrational exuberance" with such important and diverse reader interests as gender roles, education (Figure 1), nationalism, greatness, and governance, fine art, social class, urban development and pride, religion, wealth, psychology, philosophy, visual information, and cultural envy of Europe particularly England. Cultural envy reflects our behavior seeking to think like, copy "slavishly," or distinguish ourselves and surpass European culture. (Trollope with an introduction by Smalley; Grund.) Observers of our efforts to civilize ourselves often criticized Americans as little more than tobacco-spitting rubes. (Trollope with an introduction by Smalley, IX.) Yet the publication of information about picture collecting and "picture mania" occurred earlier than but continued after Frances Trollope and other foreign critics wrote; this fairly indicates that Americans were more conscious of visual art and visual information than credited and more civilized or cultured than laconic tobacco users (Dickens American Notes). The articles most often associate picture collecting and "picture mania" with our common cultural heritage with England. No single American newspaper, magazine, or journal dominates the use, narrative and comment about "picture mania" whereas publications devoted to art dominate the narrative and comment about the more restrained and less "insidious" aspects of art and picture collecting. …