It's no secret that the stories we choose to tell ourselves about ourselves go a long way towards creating a sense of national identity. In America, in the 19th century, such stories were told by authors like Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and James Fenimore Cooper.
Of course, the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves draw not only upon language, but also upon art. When works by authors such as the above are particularly well illustrated, such illustrations -- given sufficient time and distribution --become part of our national iconography.
Interestingly enough, as many collectors of 19th century American literature are well aware, all four of the authors noted above were illustrated by the same artist:
Felix Octavius Carr Darly (frequently credited as F. O. C. Darley), has as good a claim as any to the title Father of American Illustration. Born in Philadelphia in 1821, Darly -- though little remembered today -- was America's pre-eminent illustrator for a large chunk of the nineteenth century.
Darly began his artistic life as a staff artist for a Philadelphia publishing company, but it was not until he moved to New York that his career began to skyrocket. In addition to illustrating the authors noted above, he created numerous illustrations for Harper's Weekly, designed a wide variety of banknotes, and illustrated Dickens, Poe and Clement Clark Moore (for the latter's A Visit from St. Nicholas he created America's first iconic Santa Claus):
Darly was the only artist to ever illustrate all 32 of Cooper's novels (for which he produced 64 steel engravings and 120 wood engravings):
Darly also is responsible, perhaps more any other American artist, for much of the iconography associated with George Washington. Much of this may be attributed to his numerous illustrations for Irving's 5-volume Life of Washington, but much also is due to the numerous stand-alone prints of Washington that Darly produced over the course of almost four decades (the print below is by way of The Phildaelphia Print Shop):
The above notwithstanding, it was in books like Benson Lossing's 4-volume Our country : a household history for all readers, from the discovery of America to the present time (for which Darly produced over 500 illustrations) that Darly really can be said to have "invented the American past:"
His depictions of pioneers and Pilgrims, pedlers and the pious, have long since passed into this nation's collective consciousness as exemplars of what it means to be American:
Folks interested in exploring Darly's work in more detail may wish to visit the the New York Public Library's Digital Gallery, which provides access to many of Darley's illustrations for Lossing's Our History. NYPL also published the best work to date about this artist:
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