Copies, Casts, and Pedagogy: The Early Teaching of Art and Art History at Vassar College, September 13-October 22, 2006, at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center

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Poughkeepsie, NY — During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, painted copies and plaster casts were used to cultivate an appreciation of major works of western art, as well as a corresponding sense of elite culture to Americans who could not travel to see the original works firsthand. The classical tradition, as represented by the worlds of Ancient Greece and Rome and, to a lesser extent, Renaissance Italy, was revered as a social model; art was granted the authority to educate and even shape the eyes, minds, and morals of the general public.

Professor Henry Van Ingen with a Student

In this era, sometimes dubbed the American Renaissance, many art academies, colleges, and museums held extensive collections of copies and casts, and their popularity helped develop the canon of western art as we know it today. As the first U.S. college founded with both a permanent art collection and an art gallery, and with art among its core academic offerings, "It is no surprise that Vassar College collected and displayed both copies and casts from the very start," said Jacqueline Marie Musacchio, an associate professor of art, and a specialist in Italian Renaissance art.

To explore this revealing chapter in art instruction, Musacchio has curated Copies, Casts, and Pedagogy: The Early Teaching of Art and Art History at Vassar College, on exhibit from September 13 through October 22 in the Projects Gallery of the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center. "This exhibition examines the rise and fall of copies and casts, to help understand how early Vassar students were educated in studio art and art history," said Musacchio. "Through the use of copies and casts their education echoed that of their sisters – and brothers – at other institutions here and abroad, and addressed contemporary taste in a particularly telling manner."

The Art Center and the Robert Lehman Foundation are sponsors of both the exhibition and its related symposium, which will be held at Vassar on September 22. Research for the exhibition was conducted with grants from the Dean Fund of Vassar College, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Ford Foundation. The conservation of the paintings, frames, and plaster casts in the exhibition was made possible by the Robert Lehman Foundation.

In 1862, Matthew Vassar had sent his president Milo Jewett to Europe to study possible models for their yet-to-be-opened college. While Jewett was in Rome, he commissioned the American painter Emma C. Church to execute copies of Old Master paintings as a starting point for the college's collection; two of the three paintings she completed will be on exhibit – Guercino's Unbelief of Saint Thomas, and a Madonna and Child by Carlo Dolci. These copies of Italian Baroque paintings were among the earliest purchases for the college's art collection.

When Vassar trustee Martin Anderson visited Church's studio in Rome in early 1863, he declared the copies superior to all others he had seen. Shortly after that, Church began her third painting for the college, a copy of Raphael's Madonna of Foligno. This copy represented a significant departure from her first two, and she must have had the change approved in advance by Matthew Vassar. The painting contains seven life-size figures, as well as a detailed landscape background, and stands over ten feet high. Unfortunately it is in poor condition and cannot be shown in the exhibition, although a photograph will be included.

The popularity of copies was linked to that of plaster casts. The market for casts in the United States increased dramatically during this time. Museums in the U.S. owned relatively few original works, so they were keen to acquire casts for both educational and civilizing purposes. Most came from shops abroad, and were treated like original works of art; many museums displayed them alongside originals to fill collection gaps or lend a prestigious aura. For example, when the Corcoran Gallery of Art opened in 1874, it included a large display of Ancient and Renaissance casts to enhance its collection and link its mostly American paintings to the classical tradition.

In 1867, on the recommendation of Vassar's first professor of art, Henry Van Ingen, the college began to purchase casts of Ancient and Renaissance sculpture, forming a collection that eventually grew to over 200 examples. The first purchase was a Venus de Milo for the gymnasium, and the most impressive cast, of Lorenzo Ghiberti's several-feet high Gates of Paradise, from the east doors of the Florentine Baptistery, is still installed in a specially designed stairwell in the college's Taylor Hall (which has served as the home of the art department since 1915).

The use of casts in art instruction dated back at least to the fifteenth century, when artists drew from them as part of their training. With the growth of art academies beginning in the sixteenth century, drawing after casts of antiquities and occasionally Renaissance sculpture with classicizing characteristics became the basis of art education. Soon after, cast museums were founded in Europe, not only for art education but also as a means of preserving national heritage and increasing public knowledge. The first Vassar course catalogue, published in 1866, reflected this; it noted that, "Copying, under the eye of a conscientious and skillful educator, is regarded as the first means of imparting correct ideas for what she should aim at…As aids to tuition, the School is provided with a collection of choice elementary drawings, with plaster casts from the antique, and a gallery of paintings and drawings, including specimens of many of the best masters of this and other countries."

Van Ingen's report on art department activities in 1869 included a plea for more copies, casts, photographs, and papier mâché models, since, according to Van Ingen, such objects, "would without doubt be of great influence on the development of art in this country." And for several decades, the college's sizeable collection of these objects functioned as Van Ingen hoped.

However, by the end of the first World War, copies and casts fell out of favor everywhere, due to greater contact with Europe, increased acquisition of original artworks, changing instructional techniques, and emerging modernist perspectives. Vassar's copies went into storage and most of the casts were dispersed or even destroyed.

Copies, Casts, and Pedagogy features a variety of related works, including Winslow Homer's wood engraving Art-Students and Copyists in the Louvre Gallery, Paris, (1868), Clarence Chatterton's painting Vassar Art Gallery (circa 1915), two plaster reliefs, two plaster statuettes, and two plaster busts, as well as documents and archival photographs. The exhibition is further examined in a brochure by curator Jacqueline Marie Musacchio.

About the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center

The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center was founded in 1864 as the Vassar College Art Gallery. The current 36,400-square-foot facility, designed by Cesar Pelli and named in honor of the new building's primary donor, opened in 1993. The Lehman Loeb Art Center's collections chart the history of art from antiquity to the present and comprise over 16,000 works, including paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, photographs, and glass and ceramic wares. Notable holdings include the Warburg Collection of Old Master prints, an important group of Hudson River School paintings given by Matthew Vassar at the college's inception, and a wide range of works by major European and American twentieth century painters. Vassar was the first U.S. college founded with a permanent art collection and gallery, and at any given time, the Permanent Collection Galleries of the Art Center feature approximately 350 works from Vassar's extensive collections.

Admission to the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center is free. The Art Center is open to the public Tuesday-Saturday, 10:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m., and Sunday, 1:00-5:00 p.m. Located at the entrance to the historic Vassar College campus, the Art Center can be reached within minutes from other Mid-Hudson Valley cultural attractions, such as Dia:Beacon, the Franklin Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt national historic sites and homes, and Olana, the Frederic Edwin Church home. The Art Center is wheelchair accessible. For more information, the public may call 845.437.5632 or visit http://fllac.vassar.edu.

Vassar College is a highly selective, coeducational, independent, residential, liberal arts college founded in 1861.

Individuals with disabilities requiring accommodations or information on accessibility should contact Campus Activities Office at (845) 437-5370. Without sufficient notice, appropriate space and/or assistance may not be available.

Vassar College is a highly selective, coeducational, independent, residential liberal arts college founded in 1861.

This article was posted on Thursday, August 31st, 2006.