UMass Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press

Hammatt Billings of Boston, 1818–1874

James F. O’Gorman Book Jacket: "Accomplished in All Departments of Art" by J.F. O'Gorman

Resurrects the accomplishments of an important nineteenth-century artist

This book reconstructs the career of Hammatt Billings, one of the most prolific and versatile artists of the nineteenth century. Skilled in a wide range of media, Billings designed furniture, statuary, monuments, architecture, and public and private gardens. He was a painter in both oils and watercolors, a portraitist, and an illustrator whose drawings appeared in the original American editions of Uncle Tom's Cabin and Little Women.

Although Billings worked for many private patrons, he was also very much a public artist, giving visible form to the popular celebrations of his era. He designed fireworks displays for the Boston Common, decorated buildings in times of public celebration and mourning, laid out plans for a variety of fairs and festivals, and created floats for parades.

Extensively illustrated and meticulously researched, this book recovers the work of an enormously talented man and makes it clear that no discussion of nineteenth-century Boston or American culture can be complete without a consideration of Billings's contributions.

"O’Gorman demands that Billings, who is today essentially unknown, be reconsidered in the context of his dazzling reputation in his own lifetime, when his 'genius' was fully recognized. . . . This book provides unique new insights into the culture of mid- nineteenth-century America. Its scholarship is impeccable."

Margaret Henderson Floyd, author of Architecture
after Richardson: Regionalism before Modernism
"Gracefully written in succinct and sharply focussed prose, this is a highly informative and quite original study that reflects almost as much virtuosity as did Billings himself."

John Seelye, author of Beautiful Machine:
Rivers and the Republican Plan , 1755–1825

James F. O’Gorman is Grace Slack McNeil Professor of the History of American Art at Wellesley College. His many books include, most recently, Living Architecture: A Biography of H.H. Richardson and ABC of Architecture.

Art History / New England Studies
304 pp., 101 illustrations
LC 97-46542
$45.00t cloth, ISBN 1-55849-148-1
1998

A volume in the series Studies in Print Culture and the History of the Book

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