Supported by a generous grant from the Alabama Humanities Foundation.
October 1 - November 15, 2009
Gallery Hall, Library/Tech Building
Troy University Dothan Campus
Larger versions of the illustrations above along with their descriptions appear below
The Archives of Wiregrass History and Culture, the Library and the History Department at Troy University Dothan Campus will partner with the Wiregrass Museum of Art in Dothan to host "Alabama Illustrated: Nineteenth Century Magazine Engravings of the State," an exhibition of thirty reproductions of engravings from nineteenth century American magazines that depict scenes from the state of Alabama. Many scenes are fanciful or constructed from descriptions of the events they portray while others are made from sketches and photographs. The engravings, many from Harper's and Frank Leslie's Weekly, depict such scenes for primarily northern audiences. Thus they examine southern life within an emerging sectionalized political and cultural framework that changed over the century.
ILLUSTRATIONS
"City of Montgomery, Alabama"
Harper's Weekly, June 1, 1861
Artist: "Drawn by our Special Artist Traveling with W.H. Russell, LL.D."
This illustration—depicting African-American slaves working along the banks of the Alabama River outside Montgomery—is known as a genre scene. Common in 19th-century print media, genre scenes were sometimes realistic, but many were stylized, dramatized, or romanticized. African Americans were underrepresented in the 19th-century white press, and the benign view of slavery in this engraving ignores the brutality of the system. But the image illustrates an important aspect of Southern history: the city in the background depends on the forced labor of the people in the foreground for its prosperity and physical existence. The accompanying article does not refer to this image.
"Alabama-- The Recent Floods in the Alabama River--A Family Refuge in a Tree-Top"
Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, April 17, 1886
Artist: unknown, from a sketch by R.A. Templeton
This image of an African-American woman shows a striking evolution in the portrayal of Blacks in illustrated newspapers. While many images of the time show Blacks, Jews, people of Irish descent and others as grotesque caricatures, this representation presents an attractive woman with natural features.
From the accompanying article: “The ‘Spring freshets’ began their destructive outbreak with remarkable unanimity at the opening of the showery month. . . . With the great storm of March 29th began the overflow of the Alabama, Warrior, Coosa, Tallapoosa, Cumberland, Tombigbee and Cahaba Rivers, together with their numerous tributaries. By April 1st, hundreds of miles of territory in East and Middle Tennessee, North Georgia and North Alabama were under water. Alabama suffered most. Plantations were inundated, houses and mills swept away, with thousands of horses, mules, cattle and hogs. . . . Steamboat men on the Alabama River reported on Monday of last week that every plantation for three hundred miles around, from ten miles up river from Mobile, was under water. . . . These lowlands are mostly inhabited by negroes, who, being more or less accustomed to such floods, were generally provided with skills or bateaux, and were enabled to save some of their live stock by removing them to platforms erected above the water.”
