Colored Nineth and Tenth Calvary: Spanish-American War

Description of Illustration: Heroic charge of United States colored regulars near Santiago, Cuba, in the Spanish-American War. (Nine and Tenth Calvary: 24 and 25 Infantry)

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Two Lovely Victorian Beauties

Description of Illustration: restored medallion paintings of Victorian Beauties, one with Winter stole and muff, the other with Spring pink sashes, violets and lace

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Wordsworth Thompson

Wordsworth Thompson in his studio.

Description of Photograph: Wordsworth Thompson born 1840 and died 1896, American painter and illustrator. Wordsworth poses for the photograph in his studio.

The Following article published on January 1, 1880 from The Art Journal

      "Wordsworth Thompson was born in Baltimore, in 1840. At the age of twenty-one he went to Paris and studied successively under Charles Gleyre, Lambinet, and Pasini. The latter master, by-the-way, has recently made extraordinary strides in professional repute, although for many years he has been recognized as to a high degree both painter and artist. To the Salon: of 1865 Mr. Thompson sent his  "Moorlands of Au-Fargi," which was the first picture that he had ever publicly exhibited. He studied in the French capital four years without displaying his works outside the circle of his friends. In 1868 he returned to America, and opened a studio in New York. Five years afterwards he became an associate of the National Academy, and seven years afterwards an Academician. To the annual exhibitions of that institution he has been an important contributor. In addition to views of Mount Etna, Mentone, Lake George, the Potomac, and Long Island, he has painted several historical pictures, such as "Virginia in the Olden Time," owned by Mr. D. H. McAlpine; "Annapolis in 1776," in the Academy of Fine Arts at Buffalo; the "Review at Philadelphia, August 24, 1777" which was in the National Academy Exhibition of 1878; and "Leaving Home to join the Army of the North an Episode of Life in Virginia One Hundred Years ago," in the National Academy Exhibition of 1879. His latest large picture is "A May-Day in Fifth Avenue, New York," in the National Academy Exhibition of 1880. Soon after the American Art Association (afterwards the Society of American Artists) was organized, Mr. Thompson became a member.

      The hanging committee justly gave to the "May-Day in Fifth Avenue" a conspicuous center on the line in the north gallery of the Academy Building, but the fact was noticed as especially commendable on their part because several years ago Mr. Thompson, when a member of a similar committee, had given no striking evidence of his appreciation of their productions. This little incident, though, of course, not suggesting impartiality, a trait unexpected in a hanging committee, is nevertheless not altogether unworthy of mention. The qualities which shone in that picture were in sympathy with the best qualities of Pasini's finest productions, without being in any sense the offspring of that artist. In no former painting of Mr. Thompson's was the touch so felicitously light and certain, or the tones so delicate and luminous, or the composition so compact and fruitful, or the shadows so transparent and true. The visitor with difficulty could have found in the exhibition an example of an Academician which showed growth so marked. It was as if the painter had said, "I will abandon for once my portfolios and historical books, my studies of Mediterranean coast-scenes with donkeys and fashionable women, my researches into ancient history, and will step into the street and take a look at life around me." Fifth Avenue near Madison Square has been represented on canvas before, but never, to our knowledge, so brilliantly as Mr. Thompson there pictured it. The Champs Elysees itself, at the height of the season, is scarcely more variously or radiantly animated than is this famous thoroughfare on a bright afternoon in May. The horses, the equipages, the pedestrians, the Worth Monument, the flower-girls on the pavement, the foliage of the square, the buildings themselves, slight as are their pretensions to architectural beauty, enter into a varied and luxuriant scenic display which Mr. Thompson has transcribed with remarkable fidelity and fervor.

      It is, indeed, upon the " literary " interest of his subject that this artist is usually dependent. He is a landscape-painter, but into his landscapes he is wont to introduce figures. His aesthetic sympathies run into the department of anecdotes. No other American painter of equal ability in the representation of sky, atmosphere, trees, and fields, is so systematic and persistent in refusing to represent these alone. The modern artistic spirit which has so profound a sympathy for landscape pure and simple is not shared by Mr. Thompson, any more than it was by the old masters. And as for the work of a man like Diaz, who, according to M. Charles Blanc, was the first in any school to have the idea of representing a landscape without a sky, of painting a forest as a mysterious and everywhere closed interior, which received its light only through the interstices of the foliage and by the movement of the high branches, why, Mr. Thompson probably does not understand the intense pictorial charm of such denuded scenes. There is no reason to believe that Mr. Thompson's aesthetic sense is ever disturbed by the frequent sight of civilization despoiling a landscape, or that his aesthetic creed contains any article to the effect that civilization can despoil a landscape. On the contrary, the civilization in a landscape is likely to engage his affection. By the human element in landscape Art he is forcibly impressed; and the opinion, uttered by one of our painters, that "French Art scarcely rises to the dignity of landscape‚ a swamp and a tree constitute its sum total‚ it is more limited in range than the landscape Art of any other country" is probably not antipodal to the convictions of the accomplished painter of the "May-Day in Fifth Avenue." Yet, to those realities of light and air which modern landscape Art so cherishes and patiently interprets, Mr. Thompson is by no means indifferent. Qnly their sufficiency for pictorial purposes he seems to question, the reason perhaps being that he is not perfectly susceptible to the religious potentialities of inanimate beauty.

      The skillful honesty of Mr. Thompson's methods is unquestionable. He is not a Paganini who performs cleverly on a single-stringed instrument. He has no pride of eccentricity, and he manifests no desire to detain the attention of the crowd by making a clown of himself. Nor has his liberal course of study in Europe brought him to the sincere conviction that the oldest and best known American painters are a set of ninnies. It is unnecessary to add that an artist who has worked not only under the instruction, but in the atelier, of such a painter as Pasini, has some respect for brilliancy and purity of color, for delicacy and finish in execution, for beauty of keeping not less than for technical dexterity, and a decided distaste for ungraceful trickiness. Mr. Thompson occupies an honorable position in the hierarchy of American artists. His solid and earnest work will stand while other work is tottering around it." 

• Paintings by Wordsworth Thompson at invaluable
• Paintings by Alfred Wordsworth Thompson at ArtCyclopedia
• more paintings at wikipedia by A. Wordsworth Thompson

Two American Eagle Illustrations

Description of Illustration: two American eagles on shields, black and white illustrations

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Two ads for Microscopes from the 1920s

Description of Illustration: restored advertisements of lap equipment, two versions of microscopes, the Stephenson Binocular Microscope and the Leitz Improved Micorscope

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Ophthalmologist or Optometrist Illustrations

Use of illuminating and magnifying lenses.
(From "Wells" Diseases of the Eye," by Bull)

Description of Illustration: restored black and white illustrations of things related to the profession of a Optometrist, this clip art is not Victorian but was drawn for a 1920 publication

Lens measure.

The Clinoscope.

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Hand & Foot Bones

bones of the right hand

Description of Illustration: Old black and white illustration of human hand and foot bones, bones identified, anatomy illustrations, creepy science, bones

bones of the right foot

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Aged Drawings of Shells

This version is cleaned up just a bit.

Description of Illustration: old book pages, shells from the sea for you to craft with

The acid content in this old book page caused it to yellow rapidly.

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Sheet Music from France

French sheet music cover from 1894

Description of Illustration: very decorative, figurative covers for sheet music, horses, women

French sheet music cover from 1895

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March and Two Step

 

Description of Illustration: full color, sheet music cover, 1900, woman in center, transportation, 

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Furry Critters from The Wilderness of England, 1800

Description of Illustration: the following furry creatures originated from the notebook of an English zoologist, written and drawn during the late 1800s

Black and White illustration of a Beaver.

Black and White illustration of a Otter.

Black and White illustration of a Stoat.

Black and White illustration of a Weesel.

Black and White illustration of a Martin.

Black and White illustration of a Fitchet.

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Photographs of President Abraham Lincoln

Ambrotype taken at Pittsfield, Illinois, October 1, 1858,
immediately after Lincoln had made his speech on the
public square - age 49 - Original by C. Jackson, Frederick
 H. Meserve collection during the Victorian Era.

Description of Illustration: antique photographs of Abraham Lincoln collected together and recorded by Victorian era publishers. For those of you who wish to know just what Lincoln looked like before his health began to decline during the Civil War.

• Medical and mental health of Abraham Lincoln? and Marfan syndrome
• Lincoln's Diagnosis: MEN2B
• Disease may have caused Lincoln's 'clumsy gait'
• Abraham Lincoln his family tree here and his modern descendants
• First families reunite in Missouri just for fun

Lincoln at the time of John Brown's
 Raid at Harper's Ferry, age 50.

       The above negative, taken in 1859, was destroyed in the Chicago Fire--Mrs. Lincoln considered it the best likeness of her husband that she had ever seen-- It presents Lincoln as he appeared just before his nomination for the Presidency. 

Ambrotype taken August, 1860, when seventy thousand
 Westerners visited Lincoln at his home in Springfield,
 Illinois. He was 51 years old.

Photograph of Lincoln taken in 1860 at the time of his
"Cooper Institute Speech" in New York during his campaign
 for the Presidency-- age 51.

Lincoln with his youngest son,
Thomas, (Tad) in the White House.

       Photography taken with Lincoln in his characteristic attitude at home with his eleven year-old son by his side. His son William Wallace had died only two years before of typhoid, at the White House.

Photograph taken when Lincoln was seeking a
General for all the armies of the Republic in 1864.

Photograph of Lincoln in the closing
days of the American Crisis in 1865.

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speaking of "OATS" advertisement

Description of Illustration: restored black and white ad, farmer, tractor, horse, horse feed, Hot Shot Battery, Canada, text "there's nothing like the Columbia Hot Shot Dry Battery for tractor ignition. The Columbia "runs standing still." Its spark is as not for starting as for running. It works like a beaver over the rough slowdown places where other ignition current peters out...", stonewall, cloudy day

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Junket Ice Cream Ad

Description of Illustration: restored greyscale ad, "Use of a Junket Tablet in making ice cream means that you can use more milk and less cream and yet produce a more "creamy" ice cream than ever before; and it will be more wholesome and digestible....", cherries on top, chef's hat, apron

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"Use it without soap-- Is is economical..."

Description of Illustration: restored color trade card, Pearline, child drumming on a wooden box of product, apron, curly top, calico dress, cheribum, text, "Let It Help You. Shortsighted and to be pitied is the woman who rejects the wonderful article--Pearline;..."

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Greeting With The Tip of A Hat

Description of Illustration: fully restored, antique color illustration, very old Christmas greeting card, children dressed like adults, Victorian neighborhood, front gate, red bonnet

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Ship Sinking Into The Deep...

Description of Illustration: Old black and white illustration of two ships at sea, waves, sails, sinking ship

 
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An Open Secret: Poultry PAN-A-CE-A

Description of Illustration: black and white illustration, large rooster, open beak, text "It is an open secret among poultry raisers who have been successful that found is not all that makes..."

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The blue bow tie...

Description of Illustration: fully restored color illustration of a cat with a blue ribbon tied around his neck, green eyes, head and shoulders only, pointed ears

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Use Rubifoam for the Teeth

Description of Illustration: Victorian Trade Card for Rubifoam teeth cleanser, restored color illustration of three little girls in white ruffled night dresses, text reads "This card is perfumed with Hoyts German Cologne, the most fragranted lasting of all perfumes." Yes, these are two different products. I guess these products may have the same manufacturer?

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Where IS He?

Description of Illustration: Old black and white photograph of a young maiden languishing by the roadside with her bike. It was captioned, "Where is he?"

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Puppy Attack!

Description of Illustration: fully restored color illustration of a puppy stealing food, baby cries, highchair, table, spilled milk, kitchen, 

Originally this was a Victorian Christmas card; I don't get it? 

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The Popular KRIBS Electric

Description of Illustration: black and white photograph, washtub and wringer, text "The  demands for this beautiful washing and wringing machine increase daily. It works on the most approved principes and give immediate and absolute satisfaction..."

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"My busy day"

Description of Illustration: advertisement for Pearline cleanser, text reads "the day when housecleaning sets in. If you do it in the hard-working, bustling way, every man, woman and child wants to get under cover. Do it with Pearline, and nobody's troubled, not even you yourself. Pearline housecleaning is quicker, quieter, sooner through with, easier. Saves much rubbing. Saves paint. Saves temper...." black and white illustration, little girl with bucket, rags, dust pan and brrom

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Happy New Year Card

Description of Illustration: fully restored color scrap, Victorian New Year's Eve Card, text "I fondly wish you a Happy New Year!" children carrying wood kindling, backyard, snow, bare trees, city homes, siblings

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Prince Albert Tobacco Ad

Description of Illustration: black and white illustrated ad, pipe tobacco, soldiers, flag, fire cracker, military uniforms

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Domolco Molasses

Description of Illustration: black and white illustration, canned goods, Victorian label, Guaranteed pure

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Curly Horned Goat

Description of Illustration: black and white illustration, etching of a goat, curly horns, long hair, thick coat

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Spratt's Dog Cakes

 

Description of Illustration: advertisement, black and white illustration of ad for dog biscuits, "Remember that a dog fed on Spratt's is always a credit to his master. At three shows recently over 3,000 prizes were won by dogs fed regularly and exclusively on Spratt's Dog Foods." Victorian dog owners

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Eyeball Illustration

 

Description of Illustration: eyeball, eye brow, eyelashes, facial feature, sight, seeing, greyscale illustration, anatomy

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Beautiful Wings

Description of Illustration: two restored antique butterflies, wings, delicate patterns, one blue and green butterfly, one with neutral coloration plus a touch of blue and red

 

 

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