The Culture and Art of Death in 19th Century America

D. Tulla Lightfoot is an emeritus faculty member of the University of North Carolina at Pembroke and lives in Aventura, Florida. She is the author of many academic articles on art and art education, has edited academic journals and has made several presentations in her field.

Table of Contents


Preface

1. The Victorian Age

2. Psychic Artists, Performance Art and Death

The Afterlife

Mesmerism as Performance Art

Séance as Performance Art

Performing Medium: Performance Art

Houdini, Conan Doyle and Twentieth Century Investigations

3. Traditional Artist and Death

Nineteenth Century Visual Artists

Portraits of the Deceased

Spirit Painting

Post-Impressionists and Death

Theosophy, the Anthroposophy Society, Rudolph Steiner and Abstract Art

Clairvoyance and Abstract Art

4. Mourning Garb

Mourning Franklin, Hancock and Washington

Etiquette

Mourning Princess Charlotte

Marie Antoinette and Rose Bertin

Emerging Magazines

Napoleon Bonaparte and Fashion Designer Hippolyte Leroy

American Ladies’ Journals

Books on Etiquette

Creation of Patterns, Empress Eugénie and Charles Frederick Worth

Changing Fashion Styles in the Victorian Era

Retail Mourning Clothes

The Role of Widows and Charles Dana Gibson

5. Illustrious Widows’ Influence on Art and Design

Mourning Clothes

Queen Victoria—Fashion Trendsetter

Mary Todd Lincoln—Fashion Designer

6. Memorial Jewelry

7. Artists Working in Hair

8. Photography and Death

Postmortem Portraits

Matthew Brady and the Civil War

Spirit Photography

9. Art and the Corpse

Graveyard Design and Tradition

Early Stonecutters and Grave Markers

Death and the Landscape Artist: The English Garden

Rural or Garden Cemeteries in America

Monuments to Death

The Importance of Memorial Sculpture for Emerging Artists

Granite and Concrete Grave Markers

Funeral Arts

Epilogue

Bibliography

Index