Sentimental genre prints documented the social image of Victorian virtue through domestic scenes of courtship, family, home life, and images of the “genteel female.” Children are depicted studying nature or caring for their obedient pets as they learn their place in the greater world. Romantic scenes picture devoted husbands with their contented, dutiful wives. In these prints, young women educated in reading, music, needlework, the arts, the language of flowers, basic math and science are subjugated to their family’s needs.
These prints became popular as lithography was introduced to 19th Century Americans. As a new art form, it was affordable for the masses and provided a means to share visual information by crossing the barriers of race, class and language. Sentimental prints encouraged the artistic endeavors of schoolgirls and promoted the ambitions of amateur artists, while serving as both moral instruction and home or business decoration. They are a pictorial record of our romanticized past.
This three-quarter length hand colored print is of young woman apparently floating in space. She holds a red shawl in both hands, which is billowing behind and above her head. She is wearing a simple long sleeved green dress and above her head is a glowing six-pointed star.
This lithograph was published by the D.W. Kellogg & Co and Willis Thrall (1800-1884). Willis Thrall was born in Connecticut and died in Hartford, Ct. He was a publisher of maps, prints and engravings. He published many early D.W. Kellogg lithographs in Hartford in the 1830’s. He left the publishing business to become a rule and hardware manufacturer and owned a hardware manufacturing firm with his son, Edward B. Thrall, called Willis Thrall & Sons.
