Spaightwood Galleries

Our selections by artists working in the 19th century includes the ever-popular Anonymous, hard at work in a number of different genres and with results varying from work to work. Some are no more than a travel record, others quick sketches from life, others still, ways of thinking about possible ways to lay out a composition, yet still others finished works of art serving not only as a model for another work but as independent, polished pieces capable of standing on their own (see particularly the portrait of a young woman on the "Portraits" page.. Some of these artists are anonymous because they never had any desire to be thought of as artists; others because they feared that the little they knew about how to draw could serve to help them remember something they wanted to remember but feared that publicly releasing them might bring them unflattering public attention. Others are by professional artists, sometimes continuing a long-time family trade, sometimes immensely successful, sometimes barely known, whose drawings were meant to serve as a resource to them and to their assistants. In some cases. the works are signed—possibly for presentation; in other cases the style presents a signature almost as reliable as the thing itself. We have identified works by Hans (Johann) Beckmann, Theophile Chauvel, Heloise Suzanne Colin, Felix O. C. Darley, E. F. Gehme, Otto Greiner, Emil Kinkelin, Johann Mader, Mauer, Lothar Meggendorfer, Adrian Ludwig Richter, Marianne von Rohden, Samuel Prout, and Adalbert Wolfe.