19th century AD

Magazine Antiques, Sept, 2004 by DeCourcy E. McIntosh

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Whatever Goupil, Vibert and Company's declared mission when they opened their doors at 289 Broadway in February 1848 (8)--they were masters at disguising promotion as education (9)--their real purpose, as Adolphe Goupil stressed later to Michael Knoedler (1823-1878), was "principally, and above all, to dispose of ... our fonds [stock].... There is the whole business; it is as simple as good morning." (10) Nevertheless, when Goupil's agent, the German-born William Schaus, first arrived in New York early in the spring of 1847, part of his assignment had been to scout for American artists whose work might lend itself to reproduction by Goupil in Paris. (11) He was immediately smitten by The Force of Music (also entitled The Power of Music, 1847; Cleveland Museum of Art), by William Sidney Mount (1807-1868), then generating glowing comments in reviews of the National Academy of Design's annual exhibition; (12) the painting became his first choice for a Goupil reproduction. (13)

To Schaus belongs credit for reproductive prints that allied Goupil with such American artists as George Caleb Bingham, Felix Octavius Carr Darley, Emanuel Leutze, Junius Brutus Stearns, and Richard Caton Woodville, as well as Mount. Schaus was also behind most of the topographical views that made Goupil a leading publisher of subjects of current interest to Americans. Fortunately, Schaus's successor at 289 Broadway, Michael Knoedler (like Schaus, a German who entered Goupil's employ in Paris as a young man) (14) perpetuated Goupil's involvement with American art. However, it was Schaus who integrated Goupil into the American art world and vice versa. If his German background inclined him to appreciate American art, especially American genre painting, with its northern European roots, his personality allowed him to mix easily with Americans, as his correspondence with Mount attests. (15) By the time he broke with Goupil in August 1852, he had either published or planned publication of at least half of the more than two hundred American prints the Maison Goupil published between 1830 and 1880. So comfortable was he in New York that, when the break occurred, almost his first act was to become a naturalized American. (16)

In line with print publishers' usual practice, Goupil, Vibert and Company classified its stock first by technique--line engraving, aquatint and mezzotint engraving, lithography--then by subject, such as views, portraits, and genre. Schaus sought appropriate American material in all three subject categories. No sooner was The Force of Music dispatched to Paris for reproduction than he began a collaboration with an immigrant German artist, Augustus Kollner, on an ambitious series of topographical views of American cities and monuments (see Pl. V). The first six of the series, announced on October 28, 1848, were the first of Goupil, Vibert and Company's prints of American subjects actually to reach the market.

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