“Cold Weather”
1280 x 960 | 1280 x 800
An over-sized image of a winter-clad charmer from the title page of
Parley’s Magazine’s bound volume for 1838, warmed by some sepia toning
“A Former State of This Earth”: Fossils in Early American Works for Children
1024 x 768
The “splash page” for the online exhibit.
The image on the right is one of the first dinosaur pictures published for American children.
A pleasant scene
1280 x 960 | 1280 x 800
A play on the medium
(“Chopped up” photo from an image archive)
(“Chopped up” photo from an image archive)
A paper wallpaper
800 x 600 1280 x 960
Covers & mastheads from 60+ years of periodicals are “de-aged” & pasted into wallpaper. The 800 x 600 version tiles nicely.
“Antelope to Zebra”
1024 x 768
The alphabet according to “Cousin Sarah’s”
Stories for Children
“Plenty of books, and very good cheer”
1280 x 960 | 1280 x 800
A celebration of reading and books, with a line from
a great New Year’s wish
(Cloud image from sample included in Paint Shop Pro 7)
About these wallpapers: While this sort of trompe l’oeil painting was produced later in the 19th century, they often included images from earlier that century—and, besides, they’re charming and engaging and hugely fun to fake. (Frames courtesy Paint Shop Pro 7.)
“S. G. Goodrich”
1280 x 960 | 1280 x 800
Samuel Goodrich, with some of his creations
“What is truth?”
1024 x 768
A bit of a joke piece based on a certain painting in which the real
object is pasted onto the canvas next to its painted image. With the passage
of time, it’s gotten easier to tell which is which, as the pasted object has
degraded while the painted image is pristine—an inadvertent tribute to art
as a record of the perishable. Here, a “painted” image of a perfect cover of
Parley’s Magazine contrasts with
the hard-used original; a “painted” fragment from a “newspaper article”
explains the gimmick: “ … the artist asks, ‘What is truth?’ A cover from
Parley’s magazine is pasted beside a painting of it, as alike as
twins. To guess which is the image and which the true cover would puzzle
even the artist.”
“John Dunn Hunter”
1024 x 768
John Dunn Hunter &
his Memoirs, with images of the
Osage River & of mid-Missouri grasses (photographed by the owner of the web
site)
“Life imitates Art imitating Life”
1280 x 960
Look long enough, & you’ll find pictures that mirror photos—or,
vice versa. Amusingly, most of the photographs postdate their twins,
implying that sometimes life does imitate art. Many of the
illustrations are from Nancy Sproat’s
Ditties for Children.
“E Pluribus Unum,” by Frederick Thomas Mygatt
1280 x 960
A marvelous pen & ink trompe l’oeil drawn in 1830 by a 19-year-old
“Where Slavery is, there Liberty cannot be”
1280 x 960
The American Civil War: Liberty triumphant
“Old Abe, the War Eagle,” ex-slaves, Union soldiers, & celebration, with a quote from Charles Sumner, the Massachusetts senator attacked on the floor of the Senate by a cane-wielding Southern senator who took issue with some of Sumner’s remarks
“Old Abe, the War Eagle,” ex-slaves, Union soldiers, & celebration, with a quote from Charles Sumner, the Massachusetts senator attacked on the floor of the Senate by a cane-wielding Southern senator who took issue with some of Sumner’s remarks