Despite its widespread popularity in antebellum America, phrenology has
rarely been taken seriously as a cultural phenomenon. Charles Colbert
seeks to redress this neglect by demonstrating the important
contributions the theory made to artistic developments in the period. He
goes on to reveal the links between the tenets of phrenology and the
cultural ideals of Jacksonian democracy. As Colbert demonstrates,
virtually every important figure of the American Renaissance expressed
some opinion of phrenology, whether or not they embraced it. Its
proponents included many artists eager to support a cause that enhanced
the status of their profession by endowing the human form with
extraordinary significance. Colbert reviews the careers of Hiram Powers,
William Sidney Mount, Harriet Hosmer, Asher B. Durand, and Thomas Cole,
among others, in light of their responses to phrenology. Powers's Greek
Slave, for example, can be seen as a model of the physical and moral
perfection available to those who adopted the phrenological program, a
series of dictates on everything from diet to mental and physical
exercise. By creating portraits, genre scenes, ideal figures, and even
landscapes that embodied the theory's teachings, Colbert shows, artists
endeavored to enlist their audience in a crusade that would transform
the nation.
Originally published in 1997.
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