[Rarebooks] FS: 1834 History of American Painting & Sculpture

[Joslin Hall Rare Books]

TITLE: “History of the Rise and Progress of the Arts of Design in the
United States”

By William Dunlap.
Published in New York by George P. Scott and Co. in 1834.

DISCUSSION: There is not much need to pontificate at length upon the
extreme importance of Dunlap's book -it remains an invaluable reference
for the student of American painters, sculptors and miniaturists, and is
the granddaddy of all other historical surveys of the American arts, and
in many ways the foundation upon which all subsequent studies have been
based. If Dunlap had not recorded this information much, if not most, of
it would have been irretrievably lost before other researchers got around
to caring about the subject at the end of the nineteenth century.

A much-revised and very useful second edition was edited by Frank W.
Bayley and Charles Goodspeed in 1918 which contained a large amount of new
material but in which the editors also, regrettably, deleted much of the
original material. As Bayley & Goodspeed note in their 1918 preface- "The
peculiar nature of Dunlap's work -its' faulty composition, irregular
orthography, duplications, irrelevancies and prolixity- have made the
editors' office a difficult one", and in their late-Edwardian fit of
"purification" they deleted such things as "extraneous anecdotes of Stuart
and Jarvis, verses by Allston, a technical treatise on miniature painting
by Cummings, and various notes of small value or ephemeral interest".

Well, one man's "irrelevancy" is another's bread and butter, and their
deletions guaranteed that there will always be a place for the original
1834 edition on the art historian's bookshelf.

"William Dunlap [1766-1839] was a pioneer of the American theater. He was
a producer, playwright, and actor, as well as a historian. He managed two
of New York's earliest and most prominent theaters, the John Street
Theatre (from 1796–98) and the Park Theatre (from 1798–1805). He was also
an artist, despite losing an eye in childhood. In 1783, he produced a
portrait of George Washington, now owned by the United States Senate, and
later studied art under Benjamin West in London. After returning to
America in 1787, he worked exclusively in the theater for 18 years,
resuming painting out of economic necessity in 1805. By 1817, he was a
full-time painter. He is best known for his encyclopedic 'History of the
Rise and Progress of the Arts of Design in the United States', which was
published in 1834, and which is now an invaluable source of information
about artists, collecting, and artistic life generally in the colonial and
federal periods."

DESCRIPTION: Hardcover. 2 volumes. 6.25"x9.75", 433 + viii + 480 pages.
Original board covers with patterned cloth spines.

CONDITION NOTES: Covers with moderate wear including some soil; spine
heads and bases chipped; tips rounded; outer cloth on Vol. 1 spine
splitting; slightly shaken; moderate internal foxing, as is so often the
case.

PRICE:  $375 -

SOME PICTURES =>
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Fine books of the 16th-20th centuries
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