THE NORTH AMERICAN PRINT CONFERENCE 2007

• Jenny Ambrose, The Library Company of Philadelphia. "Picturing Factories and Storefronts: Mid-19th Century Advertising Lithographs."
  Drawing from the Library Company of Philadelphia's extensive collection of nineteenth-century advertising lithographs, Ms. Ambrose will explore the printed views of Philadelphia's factories and storefronts, focusing on the work of William H. Rease, the city's leading advertising artist, and examining this rich source of visual documentation from the era before widespread photography.

• Sarah Weatherwax, The Library Company of Philadelphia. "Matthias Weaver: The Reluctant Lithographer."
  
  By examining the journals and lithographs of Matthias S. Weaver (1816-1847), a native of rural Ohio who traveled to Philadelphia to study art and came reluctantly to lithography, Ms. Weatherwax will explore the relationships Weaver established with his clients, potential clients, other artists, and printers in pursuit of success in a career toward which he felt ambivalent.

• Kelli Lucas, The Philadelphia Print Shop, Ltd. "The Artist, the Irishman, and the Immigrant: John James Barralet's representations of immigration in Athenian Philadelphia."
  
  In 1793, Mathew Carey convened a group of Irish Philadelphians to form the Hibernian Society for the Relief of Emigrants from Ireland, a population which, in 1795, would include Irish artist John James Barralet. Within ten years of his arrival from Dublin (and, presumably, his welcome from Carey's group), Barralet had produced for the Society an allegorical membership certificate, creolizing the traditional iconography of the sending culture and the emergent symbolism of the nascent republic to suggest a language of acceptance and benevolence toward immigrants in Athenian Philadelphia. This paper will unpack Barralet's visual statement of reception, employing Neoclassical symbolism of the Early Republic and the allegorical output from the artist's Philadelphia years as lexicons to understand a new American confluence of cultural imagery.

• Amy Bogansky, New York, NY. "The Devil's Servants: Satire in Colonial America and the Visual Language of Conflict."
  
  This paper, which focuses on the political satires created in the wake of the so-called "Paxton Boys' " attack on a Native American settlement in 1763 and their subsequent march on Philadelphia, will argue that the prints in question evince a process whereby the enemies of the Quaker elite attempted to undermine contemporary power structures and struggled to define themselves amidst an increasingly volatile political scene. Upon close scrutiny of patterns of aesthetic conventions and connections to other textual products, these prints emerge as sophisticated documents that embody the way proper leadership and citizenship was defined and circumscribed during the period. Moreover, the prints illuminate the ways in which the character of American visual satire was affected by the wider world of British print culture and the colonial print market.

• Nancy R. Davison, York, ME. "E.W. Clay's Life in Philadelphia: A Moment in Time"
  
  In 1828-30 Edward Williams Clay drew some of the first images of Blacks in America. His "Life in Philadelphia" etchings satirized the fancy dress, the manners, and the dialects of Philadelphians, white and black. Today these images are often used as easy examples of prejudice against Blacks. However, an examination shows humorous, theatrical pictorial satire, grounded in Philadelphia culture just before the rise of the Abolition Movement.

• Erin P. Cohn, University of Pennsylvania. "Imprinting Race: The Philadelphia Fine Print Workshop of the WPA Federal Art Project and the Visual Politics of Race."
  
  In 1937, the Pennsylvania Federal Art Project (FAP) opened a Fine Print Workshop at 311 South Broad Street in Philadelphia, where at least five African American artists were employed. By examining the environment of the Fine Print Workshop, Ms. Cohn's paper considers how African American artists on the FAP were able to carve out a space for their own participation in the battle over representation of black people, and the implications of federal support for such a project.

2.00-5.00 Afternoon session at the Woodmere Art Museum. 9201 Germantown Avenue

• David Wright, Baltimore, MD. "Peter Moran: The Early Years of a Masterful Artist-Etcher."
  
  Peter Moran, so often eclipsed by his more prolific and publicized elder brothers Edward and Thomas, deserves attention and his works warrant significant study and respect. Mr. Wright's paper will consider Moran's early life, focusing on his development as an artist and etcher, as an associate academician in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, as a leader in the Artist Fund Society of Philadelphia, as an instructor in the Philadelphia School of Design for Women (later Moore College) and follow his career up to the founding of the Philadelphia Society of Etchers. Also discussed will be the artist's professional relationships with artists Samuel Sartain, Stephen Ferris, and Henry Ranken Poore, with author William S. Baker, with publishers Gebbie and Barrie, and with community leaders James L. Claghorn, John Sartain, and Thomas Donaldson.

• Alexandra Greist, University of Pennsylvania. "The Franklin Institute and Printmaking in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia."
  
  From the earliest years of its exhibitions and journals, the Franklin Institute's interest in printmaking in all forms focused on the dissemination of the "technical" forms of the fine arts throughout America. Within Philadelphia, the Institute's attitude toward printmaking adds a distinct voice to the dialogue on nineteenth-century print culture in the city. In her paper, Ms. Greist examines the Franklin Institute's publications and exhibitions, as well as its relationship with other cultural institutions to demonstrate its unique position in the nineteenth-century print culture in Philadelphia.

• Kenneth Finkel, Philadelphia, PA. "Casting a New Urban Image: Cephas Grier Childs' Views of Philadelphia."
  
  A full generation after William Birch depicted the young nation's capital, Philadelphia found new footing as the "Athens of America." In the late 1820s, Cephas Grier Childs led a group of home-grown artists and engravers in a printing tour-de-force that documented the city anew in his Views of Philadelphia. These new images of Philadelphia pre-date, by only a few years, the city's explosive growth and dynamic documentation in lithographic and photographic imagery.

7:00 Optional dinner at Roller's Flying Fish, 8142 Germantown Avenue