Lionel Gossman | Princeton University (original) (raw)
Papers by Lionel Gossman
In 1898-1900 Gabriele Munter, the gifted Blue Rider artist, visited her mother's family, which ha... more In 1898-1900 Gabriele Munter, the gifted Blue Rider artist, visited her mother's family, which had settled in the U.S in the mid-19th century. With one of the new, inexpensive Kodak box cameras she had received as a gift she took photographs of people and places, chiefly in the South West and in Missouri.
pp. 221-236) 3 PREFATORY NOTE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The Burgh Halls of Maryhill -a district in the ... more pp. 221-236) 3 PREFATORY NOTE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The Burgh Halls of Maryhill -a district in the north-western section of Glasgow 1 --are adorned by twenty stained glass panels of extraordinary power, beauty, and originality. Created some time between 1877 and 1881 by the barely thirty-year old Stephen Adam in collaboration with David Small, his partner in the studio he opened in Glasgow in 1870, these panels are unique among stained glass works of the time in that they depict the workers of the then independent burgh not for the most part in the practice of traditional trades (baker, weaver, flesher, cooper, hammerman, etc.) (see Pt. II, 2, Figs. 1-3), not clad in traditional, biblical or classical costume --as, for instance, in the contemporary windows of the Trades Hall in Aberdeen, also by Stephen Adam --but realistically, as workers dressed in modern working clothes and engaged in the tasks required by the many small modern workshops that had opened in Maryhill, even as vast industrial complexes, such as the Tennant chemical works, employing over a thousand workers in the 1840s, were set up in adjacent burghs on the north side of Scotland's then continuously expanding industrial metropolis. The style is also simpler and starker than was common in stained glass art at the time, with exceptionally strong leadlines, larger than usual glass pieces, and a similarly 4 unusual color palette highlighting the composition and producing an effect of both sober, meticulous realism and neo-classical idealism. Salvaged and kept in storage for many years as the Burgh Halls fell into disrepair following the drastic twentieth-century decline of industry in Glasgow, and partly restored only recently to their original site after the Halls' rehabilitation as a community and conference centre 2 (see Part III:3, fig. 7), the panels have lately attracted the attention and admiration of a small number of scholars and writers --notably Michael Donnelly, Iain Galbraith, Ian Mitchell, and Gordon R. Urquhart. "The finest collection of secular stained glass in Scotland" (Urquhart 3 ) rarely figures, however, even in books and articles devoted to nineteenth-century stained glass. I have written this essay with the aim of bringing Stephen Adam's panels to the attention of amateurs of the arts beyond Glasgow and Scotland and especially in the United States, and thus lending what modest support I can to the pioneering studies of Donnelly, Galbraith, Mitchell, and Urquhart. However, as the history of stained glass and the main esthetic issues that arose concerning it in Adam's time are a relatively unstudied and unfamiliar topic among non-specialists (including, until quite recently, the writer of these lines), I have devoted a substantial part of my study to questions of context. Part I reflects my puzzlement, on discovering Adam's panels, at my own general ignorance of and 5 even indifference to the art of stained glass, despite a longstanding interest in and enjoyment of other visual arts. Why is stained glass so little known and poorly understood? In Part II I have attempted to acquaint the reader with the conditions in which Adam's work was produced: the revival of stained glass in the nineteenth century and the lively debates, in which Adam himself participated, about what authentic stained glass is, what it should and should not be. Part III is devoted to the work of the Adam studio and to the panels themselves and their unusual, perhaps even unique style. Three appendices fill out this section. The first, by Ian R. Mitchell, a revised version of a section on the Maryhill panels in his highly readable and richly informed 2013 book A Glasgow Mosaic: Cultural Icons of the City (Edinburgh: Luath Press) describes and explains the real historical background of the various activities reflected in the panels; the second, an article
A study of Stephen Adam's highly original, perhaps unique stained glass panels from c. late 1860 ... more A study of Stephen Adam's highly original, perhaps unique stained glass panels from c. late 1860 representing modern industrial workers in their everyday working clothes. Reflections on stained glass (the "Cinderella" of the arts) and its relation to painting and architecture, and suggestions concerning the stylistic influences on this work by an otherwise fairly traditional stained glass artist.
History and Theory, 1992
... Between history and literature. Post a Comment. CONTRIBUTORS: Author: Gossman, Lionel. PUBLIS... more ... Between history and literature. Post a Comment. CONTRIBUTORS: Author: Gossman, Lionel. PUBLISHER: Harvard University Press (Cambridge, Mass.). SERIES TITLE: YEAR: 1990. PUB TYPE: Book (ISBN 0674068157 ). VOLUME/EDITION: PAGES (INTRO/BODY): 412 p. ...
Common Knowledge, 2010
In 1991, at Princeton University where I then taught, "The Idea of Europe" was selected as the to... more In 1991, at Princeton University where I then taught, "The Idea of Europe" was selected as the topic of a newly established senior seminar to be offered jointly by the departments of Germanic, Romance, and Slavic languages and literatures. The cold war had very recently ended; the last customs barriers among the member states of the EEC, now the European Union, were about to come down; and the prospects for Europe seemed extremely promising. The EU was at that time a predominantly Western European affair, but since 1991 the Central and Eastern European states
Middle East Quarterly, Sep 1, 2014
Journal of European Studies, 1990
Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society Held at Philadelphia For Promoting Useful Knowledge, 2001
The hard-working molluscs make up an interesting, modest people of poor, little workers, whose la... more The hard-working molluscs make up an interesting, modest people of poor, little workers, whose laborious way of life constitutes the seri-ous charm and the morality of the sea.... Here all is friendly. These little creatures do not speak to the world, but they work for it. They ...
Journal of European Studies, 1992
In the month of June 1768 a shocking piece of news spread rapidly through the learned, literary a... more In the month of June 1768 a shocking piece of news spread rapidly through the learned, literary and artistic world of Europe. Returning to Rome from Vienna, where he had had an audience with the Empress Maria Theresa, Johann Joachim Winckelmann-the celebrated ...
French Studies, 1958
LA Cume de Sainte-Palaye's Glossary of Old French, known to us in the form in which it was pu... more LA Cume de Sainte-Palaye's Glossary of Old French, known to us in the form in which it was published by Lucien Favre in 1875-82, was to have been the crowning achievement of Old French scholarship in the eighteenth century. Planned as early as die'twenties of the ...
In 1898-1900 Gabriele Munter, the gifted Blue Rider artist, visited her mother's family, which ha... more In 1898-1900 Gabriele Munter, the gifted Blue Rider artist, visited her mother's family, which had settled in the U.S in the mid-19th century. With one of the new, inexpensive Kodak box cameras she had received as a gift she took photographs of people and places, chiefly in the South West and in Missouri.
pp. 221-236) 3 PREFATORY NOTE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The Burgh Halls of Maryhill -a district in the ... more pp. 221-236) 3 PREFATORY NOTE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The Burgh Halls of Maryhill -a district in the north-western section of Glasgow 1 --are adorned by twenty stained glass panels of extraordinary power, beauty, and originality. Created some time between 1877 and 1881 by the barely thirty-year old Stephen Adam in collaboration with David Small, his partner in the studio he opened in Glasgow in 1870, these panels are unique among stained glass works of the time in that they depict the workers of the then independent burgh not for the most part in the practice of traditional trades (baker, weaver, flesher, cooper, hammerman, etc.) (see Pt. II, 2, Figs. 1-3), not clad in traditional, biblical or classical costume --as, for instance, in the contemporary windows of the Trades Hall in Aberdeen, also by Stephen Adam --but realistically, as workers dressed in modern working clothes and engaged in the tasks required by the many small modern workshops that had opened in Maryhill, even as vast industrial complexes, such as the Tennant chemical works, employing over a thousand workers in the 1840s, were set up in adjacent burghs on the north side of Scotland's then continuously expanding industrial metropolis. The style is also simpler and starker than was common in stained glass art at the time, with exceptionally strong leadlines, larger than usual glass pieces, and a similarly 4 unusual color palette highlighting the composition and producing an effect of both sober, meticulous realism and neo-classical idealism. Salvaged and kept in storage for many years as the Burgh Halls fell into disrepair following the drastic twentieth-century decline of industry in Glasgow, and partly restored only recently to their original site after the Halls' rehabilitation as a community and conference centre 2 (see Part III:3, fig. 7), the panels have lately attracted the attention and admiration of a small number of scholars and writers --notably Michael Donnelly, Iain Galbraith, Ian Mitchell, and Gordon R. Urquhart. "The finest collection of secular stained glass in Scotland" (Urquhart 3 ) rarely figures, however, even in books and articles devoted to nineteenth-century stained glass. I have written this essay with the aim of bringing Stephen Adam's panels to the attention of amateurs of the arts beyond Glasgow and Scotland and especially in the United States, and thus lending what modest support I can to the pioneering studies of Donnelly, Galbraith, Mitchell, and Urquhart. However, as the history of stained glass and the main esthetic issues that arose concerning it in Adam's time are a relatively unstudied and unfamiliar topic among non-specialists (including, until quite recently, the writer of these lines), I have devoted a substantial part of my study to questions of context. Part I reflects my puzzlement, on discovering Adam's panels, at my own general ignorance of and 5 even indifference to the art of stained glass, despite a longstanding interest in and enjoyment of other visual arts. Why is stained glass so little known and poorly understood? In Part II I have attempted to acquaint the reader with the conditions in which Adam's work was produced: the revival of stained glass in the nineteenth century and the lively debates, in which Adam himself participated, about what authentic stained glass is, what it should and should not be. Part III is devoted to the work of the Adam studio and to the panels themselves and their unusual, perhaps even unique style. Three appendices fill out this section. The first, by Ian R. Mitchell, a revised version of a section on the Maryhill panels in his highly readable and richly informed 2013 book A Glasgow Mosaic: Cultural Icons of the City (Edinburgh: Luath Press) describes and explains the real historical background of the various activities reflected in the panels; the second, an article
A study of Stephen Adam's highly original, perhaps unique stained glass panels from c. late 1860 ... more A study of Stephen Adam's highly original, perhaps unique stained glass panels from c. late 1860 representing modern industrial workers in their everyday working clothes. Reflections on stained glass (the "Cinderella" of the arts) and its relation to painting and architecture, and suggestions concerning the stylistic influences on this work by an otherwise fairly traditional stained glass artist.
History and Theory, 1992
... Between history and literature. Post a Comment. CONTRIBUTORS: Author: Gossman, Lionel. PUBLIS... more ... Between history and literature. Post a Comment. CONTRIBUTORS: Author: Gossman, Lionel. PUBLISHER: Harvard University Press (Cambridge, Mass.). SERIES TITLE: YEAR: 1990. PUB TYPE: Book (ISBN 0674068157 ). VOLUME/EDITION: PAGES (INTRO/BODY): 412 p. ...
Common Knowledge, 2010
In 1991, at Princeton University where I then taught, "The Idea of Europe" was selected as the to... more In 1991, at Princeton University where I then taught, "The Idea of Europe" was selected as the topic of a newly established senior seminar to be offered jointly by the departments of Germanic, Romance, and Slavic languages and literatures. The cold war had very recently ended; the last customs barriers among the member states of the EEC, now the European Union, were about to come down; and the prospects for Europe seemed extremely promising. The EU was at that time a predominantly Western European affair, but since 1991 the Central and Eastern European states
Middle East Quarterly, Sep 1, 2014
Journal of European Studies, 1990
Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society Held at Philadelphia For Promoting Useful Knowledge, 2001
The hard-working molluscs make up an interesting, modest people of poor, little workers, whose la... more The hard-working molluscs make up an interesting, modest people of poor, little workers, whose laborious way of life constitutes the seri-ous charm and the morality of the sea.... Here all is friendly. These little creatures do not speak to the world, but they work for it. They ...
Journal of European Studies, 1992
In the month of June 1768 a shocking piece of news spread rapidly through the learned, literary a... more In the month of June 1768 a shocking piece of news spread rapidly through the learned, literary and artistic world of Europe. Returning to Rome from Vienna, where he had had an audience with the Empress Maria Theresa, Johann Joachim Winckelmann-the celebrated ...
French Studies, 1958
LA Cume de Sainte-Palaye's Glossary of Old French, known to us in the form in which it was pu... more LA Cume de Sainte-Palaye's Glossary of Old French, known to us in the form in which it was published by Lucien Favre in 1875-82, was to have been the crowning achievement of Old French scholarship in the eighteenth century. Planned as early as die'twenties of the ...
Transactions of the American Philosophical Societyiety, 2020
After the Treaty of Union (1707) Scots, often of very humble origin, began to play a major role i... more After the Treaty of Union (1707) Scots, often of very humble origin, began to play a major role in promoting the work of classic and contemporary writers in English. Some set up business in Edinburgh and Glasgow, others in London itself. Their names soon became familiar to all readers in the eighteenth through twentieth centuries: e.g. Blackwood, Constable, Macmillan, Murray, Nelson. Accused of "piracy" by their established English counterparts, the lawsuits brought against them also led to the transformation of copyright law into something resembling its modern form. The activities of eighteen Scottish publishing houses and the writers associated with them are presented in turn. The little volume is intended as a contribution both to Scottish history and to the role of publishers in the production of major works of literature and history. .
A brief, illustrated presentation of the highly original photographic work of a talented Scottish... more A brief, illustrated presentation of the highly original photographic work of a talented Scottish-born woman photographer in the mid-19th century. Her work fell into oblivion after her death in 1865 and the little essay includes some speculation as to the reasons for the revival of interest in it in the later years of the 20th century.