Victorian Science and Imagery: Representation and Knowledge in Nineteenth Century Visual Culture

374 Pages·2021·18.02 MB·English

by  Nancy Rose Marshall

V
ictorian
s
cience
i
◊
magery
SCIENCE AND CULTURE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Bernard Lightman, Editor
V
ictorian
s
cience
i
◊
magery
representation ◊
knowledge in
nineteenth-century
visual culture

edited by
Nancy Rose Marshall
University of Pittsburgh Press
Published by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, Pa., 15260
Copyright © 2021, University of Pittsburgh Press
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Printed on acid-free paper
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Cataloging-in-Publication data is available from the Library of Congress
ISBN 13: 978-0-8229-4653-3
ISBN 10: 0-8229-4653-X
Cover art: The Peacock Room (digitally altered details), James Abbott McNeill Whistler
Cover design: Joel W. Coggins
To all the students from whom I have learned, and to the very process-
es of scholarly debate, conversation, perpetual curiosity, and discovery
occurring in classrooms, academic conferences, public lectures, and
institutional study days from which these essays originate, I dedicate
this volume. And also to Jim, John, Jamie, and Daniele, the ghosts that
haunt it.

Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction. Victorian Science and Imagery 3
Nancy Rose Marshall
Chapter 1. Measuring Native America: Early American
Archaeology and the Politics of Time 28
Rachael Z. DeLue
Chapter 2. “All That Is Solid Melts into Air”: Burne-Jones,
Glaciation, and the Matter of History 56
Alison Syme
Chapter 3. Grasping the Elusive: Victorian Weather Forecasting
and Arthur Hughes’s Illustrations for George Macdonald’s At
the Back of the North Wind 79
Carey Gibbons
Color Gallery follows page 110
Chapter 4. A Haunting Picture, in Light of Victorian Science:
John Everett Millais’s Speak! Speak! 111
Nancy Rose Marshall
Chapter 5. Photographing Ether, Documenting Pain:
Representing the Chemical Invisible in the Daguerreotypes of
Southworth & Hawes 138
Naomi Slipp
Chapter 6. Drawing Racial Comparisons in Nineteenth-Century
British and American Anatomical Atlases 167
Keren Rosa Hammerschlag
Chapter 7. The Post-Darwinian Eye, Physiological Aesthetics,
and the Early Years of Aestheticism, 1860–1876 189
Barbara Larson
Chapter 8. Darwinian Aesthetics and Aestheticism in James
McNeill Whistler’s Peacock Room 206
Caitlin Silberman
Notes 227
Bibliography 295
List of Contributors 343
Index 345
viii
Acknowledgments
As this book originated in a graduate seminar at the University of
Wisconsin–Madison, I would like to express appreciation for my home
institution’s encouragement of instructors to teach subjects both in their
field and of their own choosing. When scholarship meshes seamlessly
with pedagogy, the resulting alchemy benefits a wide community, and
from this one course emerged two panels at the annual conference of
the College Art Association and this subsequent volume. Along the way
I benefited from a number of conversations with colleagues, and I am
grateful as well to the senior scholars who joined the project, no ques-
tions asked, when I tapped them for contributions. As a mark of her pro-
found impact on the field of Victorian studies, several individuals in this
collection, including myself, have been shaped by their studies with Dr.
Caroline Arscott, whose intellectual presence looms large in these pag-
es. Lynn K. Nyhart, Vilas-Bablitch-Kelch Distinguished Achievement
Professor in the history of science program at UW–Madison, provided
valuable advice and insight at various stages of the collection.
Most instrumental in bringing the collection into focus were edi-
tors Abby Collier and Bernard Lightman at the University of Pittsburgh
Press, who found perceptive, rigorous readers to shared their expertise
and improve the work in countless ways. Also at Pittsburgh, managing
editor Amy Sherman shepherded the project into its final state with vig-
ilance and precision. And finally, thanks to Carol Bracewell for her val-
iant efforts at taming the bibliography.
I would like to express my appreciation for the dedication of the
Kohler Art Library team of director Lyn Korenic, reference librari-
an Linda Duychak, and Soren Schoff. A UW–Madison Vilas Associate
Award helped catalyze thought toward this volume, as did a sabbatical
leave.
And finally, stay-at-home support for the final stages of this man-
uscript was delightfully provided by Harry and Ciccina DiPiazza
Marshall.
ix