Art for the Middle Classes: America's Illustrated Magazines of the 1840s

A history of the periodicals that brought art and sophistication to a rising bourgeoisie in the heartland How did the average American learn about art in the mid-nineteenth century? With public art museums still in their infancy, and few cities and towns large enough to support art galleries or print shops, Americans relied on mass-circulated illustrated magazines. One group of magazines in particular, known collectively as the Philadelphia pictorials, circulated fine art engravings of pain...