Description
Book SynopsisEliza Pratt Greatorex (18191897) was America's most famous woman artist in the mid-nineteenth century, but today she is all but forgotten. Beginning with her Irish roots, this biography brings her art and life back into focus. Breaking conventions for female artists at that time, Greatorex specialized in landscapes and streetscapes, traveling from the Hudson River to the Colorado Rockies and across Europe and North Africa. Her crowning achievement, a monumental tome of drawings and narratives titled Old New York, awakened the public to the destruction of the city's architectural heritage during the postCivil War era. Exploring Greatorex's fierce ambition and creative path, Katherine Manthorne reveals how her success at forging an independent career in a male-dominated world shaped American gender politics, visual culture, and urban consciousness.
Trade Review“One of the best things about this book is that, in spite of its multitextured account of the artist’s life and work, the reader wants to know more about women artists in this period. . . . The author’s clear and accessible prose helps the reader digest the multifaceted view that emerges from the book.”
* Panorama: Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art *
"Manthorne’s prose is quite lyrical at times, and her visual analysis of Greatorex’s compositions provide a fluid and balanced assessment of her work." * Imprint, Journal of the American Historical Print Society *
"Manthorne’s study is a fascinating voyage...filled with a wealth of historical and social context. Most importantly, it significantly adds to our knowledge of nineteenth-century women artists and their experiences both in the US and abroad, and encourages us to further explore their roles as travelers and writers, and their efforts to occupy public spaces, whether on the streets, the exhibition gallery, or the studio, which they had been long denied." * Nineteenth Century Art World *
"Manthorne “chases [a] shadow” to craft a robust and, at times, moving account of the life of this painter and etcher." * Irish Journal of American Studies *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction
Prologue: The Old Church
1. Maeve’s Daughters: From Ireland to America, 1819–1848
2. Art, Domesticity, and Enterprise, 1850–1861
3. Civil War and Architectural Destruction
4. Success in the New York Art World, 1865–1870
5. In the Footsteps of Dürer, 1870–1872
6. Taming the West:
Summer Etchings in Colorado (1873)
7.
Old New York (1875): Witnessing Urban Transformation
8. Centennial Women, 1876–1878
9. Transatlantique: From New York City to Paris, from Cragsmoor to Morocco, 1878–1897
Epilogue: Kathleen and Eleanor Greatorex Carrying On Alone
Notes
Bibliography
List of Illustrations
Index
