| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.4

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Margaretta M. Lovell. Art in a Season of Revolution: Painters, Artisans, and Patrons in Early America. (Early American Studies.) Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 2005. Pp. x, 341. $39.95.

In economic terms, portraits are "expensive but valueless," material goods that only their subjects are usually interested in possessing. Yet as colonial Americans amassed wealth, a hunger for portraiture widened among the elite. Collections of landscapes and historical subjects were confined to cheaper engravings; when it came to canvases, eighteenth-century Anglo-Americans wanted images of themselves. What then did art signify for them? Portraits were more than indulged vanity or an ostentatious show of moneyed status. Margaretta M. Lovell argues persuasively that portraits functioned to mark significant events—for women, typically marriage; for men, perhaps some other major personal achievement—as well as to fix lineage during uncertain times. The term "patron" itself only makes sense in the context of family networks; just ten percent of John Stuart Copley's sitters became repeat customers, and one may presume the figure would be lower for less talented portraitists. By the same token, a successful painting portrayed a social self and a strong physical resemblance, not psychological insight. In "picturing" individuals and families, portraitists were thus thinking about social relationships; their subjects—and others who bought, kept, or merely saw the paintings—are also implicated in these visions.

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