By Allie Richmond, M.A. ‘26, Art History
Illustrated magazines were an inescapable part of modern life in the 19th-century United States. Harper’s Weekly and Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper capitalized on advances in technology to mass produce publications filled with images. Readers (and illiterate consumers) enjoyed the detailed artworks, which often did more than merely report the news or accompany a short story. In her D.C. Mondays program on September 16, 2024, George Mason University Professor Vanessa Meikle Schulman explored the publications’ visual language and what contemporary illustrators had to say about Washington’s landscape.
Schulman charts the magazines’ development and role in American life in her 2015 book Work Sights: The Visual Culture of Industry in Nineteenth-Century America (Massachusetts Press). Alongside telegraphs and railways, illustrated publications expanded communication networks and helped establish a shared visual culture. Electrotyping, a reproduction method devised in the 1830s, made printing engraved images alongside text possible, efficient and affordable. New, richly illustrated articles connected readers with their changing world.
Artists working for the magazines used a visual language to communicate ideas about history, technology, politics, fashion and other significant aspects of American culture. Their illustrations showcased a modernizing country through imagery underscoring industrialization and urbanization. Cityscapes framed as maps of technological systems stressed interconnectivity, and depictions of factories emphasized a growing commercial economy propelled by innovative mass reproduction techniques.
Managers took center stage in many images. After the Civil War, the professional managerial class expanded to impose order and control over workplaces amid reconstruction. Illustrations of industrial labor reinforced, and defended, their increasingly visible role in American capitalism.
Illustrators primarily used three visual techniques to highlight industry and managerial capitalism, even in cities like Washington where few factories operated. Cut-away views allowed readers to visualize the architectural complexity and technological feats of modernized urban development. The unrealistic, but unique, perspective inspired awe in viewers, as intended in this 1866 cross-section of the Capitol’s dome.
Multi-paneled images include multiple scenes in one composition. During the Civil War, reporters used the technique to show a single event from different perspectives. Such images also helped show (and educate viewers on) sequential, industrial processes in factories. The Albert H. Small Washingtoniana Collection includes several paneled images, like this 1861 depiction of the army’s bakery in the Capitol’s basement.
Panoramas presented broad horizons from impossible vantage points to depict scenes in their entirety. This perspective reflected managers’ authority, allowing viewers to look over whole factories — and sometimes landscapes. This panorama, depicting the labor of the United States Treasury Department in 1861, emphasizes the unique perspective offered by its elevated vantage point.
Illustrated publications from D.C. often used these visual strategies to showcase examples of federal government work, as opposed to the operations of private industries. These representations illustrate the efficiency of the government, while also demonstrating how the federal bureaucracy reflects post-war ideologies of emerging power hierarchies.
You can watch a video of this D.C. Mondays program below and browse upcoming talks on the website.
About the Author
Allie Richmond has a B.A. in art history and history and is currently pursuing a master’s degree in art history with a concentration in museum studies at GW. Interested in art historical research and museum management, she is the digital media editor for the Albert H. Small Center for National Capital Area Studies.