Description:
Sketchbook depicting scenes of Greenfield and Deerfield done in pencil and watercolors, which came with a note, "Mr. James R. Long / Age 10." The son of Lemuel H. Long (1799-1881) and Sabrina Flagg Long (1802-1859), James R. Long (1841-1927) was born Greenfield where his father had a farm. He probably attended Greenfield’s short-lived Fellenburg School, an experimental academy that combined farming and manual labor with scholarly studies, before attending Greenfield High School. He enlisted in 1862 for the Civil War as a 32 yr. farmer, and was mustered out of service in 1863 after fighting in Louisiana. James later took over the family farm and was an active in Greenfield on the school committee and a director of the free public library. The content of James Long’s 12-page sketchbook suggests that James received drawing instruction at school, a subject that advocates had only recently begun to promote as an important component of grammar school curricula in America. Starting in the 1830s, textbook authors incorporated simple line drawings in reading and writing primers for teachers to replicate on blackboards and students to copy onto slates. Drawing lessons were progressive, starting with basic geometric shapes and moving on to familiar domestic goods such as the shoe, teapot, and scissors that James drew on the first page of his sketchbook. James numbered each illustration as if following a series of numbered images in a primer. His hot water kettle closely approximates a line drawing of a kettle that Boston-based educator, Mary Tyler Peabody, published in her 1841 manual, "A Primer of Reading and Drawing." In subsequent pages of his sketchbook, James progressed through flowers, trees and cottages and advanced to more ambitious projects - the replication of prints and lithographs depicting local scenes, such as Greenfield’s 1828 landmark hotel, the Mansion House, Deerfield’s 17th-century “Old Indian House,” torn down in 1848, and a view of Amherst College. His sketchbook encapsulates a moment in the history of childhood education in which teachers and professionals urged the incorporation of drawing into the curricula for all students. It illustrates a push for the democratization of observation and drawing skills previously reserved for the wealthy, and often female, students of private boarding schools. By 1870, Massachusetts passed the Massachusetts Drawing Act, which required free drawing classes for children in public schools, as well as free drawing classes for adults in communities of more than ten thousand people. The law was not meant to provide charity or cultural enrichment; rather, its goal was to train draftpeople with the hope of increasing the number and quality of American manufactured goods. The front and back covers are made from newspapers, which are probably from the "Greenfield Gazette and Courier" and bound with reddish-colored silk ribbon. One of the advertisements on the front cover for the Vermont and Massachusetts Railroad announces a schedule change to occur on April 8, 1850. Inside, there are 12 pages and one loose image: Page 1 - an arch, fence, teapot, shoe, scissors, and mug; Page 2 - a bridge flanked by building, cottage, and house with fence; Page 3 - a building with ivy and a ruin; Page 4 - a castle-like building, two trees, and two flowers; Page 5 - a suspension bridge, which may be Stillwater Bridge; Page 6 - "Executed by James R. Long / Mansion House, Greenfield, Mass."; Page 7 - Old Indian House in Deerfield; Page 8 - "Family Tomb of George Washington"; Page 9 - Williston Hall and Johnson Chapel at Amherst College; Page 10 - an obelisk with a steamboat in the background; Page 11 - an unfinished building; Page 12 - blank. The loose image is a commercially printed illustration of a "July Bouquet" on newspaper print that has been painted over with watercolors.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+2003.35 |
