American fancy: Exuberance in the Arts, 1790-1840

Magazine Antiques, May, 2004 by Sumpter Priddy, III

Fancy, thou the Muse's pride, / In thy painted realms reside / Endless images of things, / Fluttering each on golden wings, / Ideal objects, such a store, / The universe could hold no more: / Fancy to thy power I owe / Half my happiness below!

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Few would guess today that such an archaic sounding word as fancy was central to the tastes and perceptions of early nineteenth-century Americans. Fancy meant imagination, and its spirit was well identified in the spring of 1836, when the artist Joseph H. Davis painted a watercolor portrait of Sylvanus C. and Mary Jane Foss of Strafford, New Hampshire (Pl. II). His sitters differed little from millions of people throughout the United States in the early nineteenth century, and if his depiction is an accurate indicator, people like the Fosses lived in a world bursting with colors, patterns, and spirited artistic expressions.

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Like many New Englanders, the Fosses may have possessed a fancy sleigh in which they rode to church or attended fancy balls dressed in fancy clothing. Sylvanus Foss was probably a part-time farmer by occupation and may have owned a fancy horse that grazed upon fancy grass. When Mary Jane Foss caught a cold, she sniffled into a fancy handkerchief, while on fine summer days she might wander into her garden and pick purple "fancies" (violets) from its borders. When they went shopping. Sylvanus Foss most likely purchased goods at the "Fancy Hardware Store," while his wife sampled specialties at the "Fancy Bakery" or browsed at the "Fancy Millinery Shop." After returning home and having supper, perhaps at a fancy table set with fancy china, they may have retired to the parlor to sing a rousing chorus of "Tell Me, Where is Fancy Bred" or "Delighted Fancy Hails the Hour" around their decorated piano. (2) When their ornamented clock (see Pl. III) struck eight, the Fosses sent their children upstairs to their rooms, retired to their parlor fitted out with fancy carpets and fancy wallpaper, then walked upstairs by the flickering light of a fancy lantern (see Pl. IV). They pulled back their fancy coverlet, climbed into their fancy bedstead, read briefly from the most recent fancy literature, and then dreamt the night away.

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These fancy possessions reflected their owner's new and enlightened way of seeing, understanding, and responding to the surrounding world. The decorative nature of the fancy style--whether expressed in exuberantly ornamented surfaces or wildly imaginative forms--was never considered its most significant aspect. Rather, the ornaments served to inspire the intellect, and functioned as reference points that elicited strong emotional responses because of their implicit connection to people, things, and ideas. Most nineteenth-century viewers did not receive information passively from these decorative goods but expected to participate actively in an intellectual and emotional process, centered on absorption and response, allusion and association.

The fancy aesthetic relied upon strong first impressions that caught the eye, fueled the emotions, and impressed itself on the memory. "The fancy must be warm, to retain the print of those images it hath received from outward objects," the English writer Joseph Addison (1672-1719) observed in 1712. (3) Addison emphasized the importance of sight as the foundation of the process: "We cannot indeed have a single image in the fancy that did not make its first entry through sight." (4) Like numerous writers who explored the subject, he recognized the power of three particular visual stimulants--light, color, and motion--to convey these objects to the eye and imagination. Color was widely thought to be the most important: "Among the several kinds of beauty, the eye takes most delight in colours," Addison noted, "colours paint themselves on the fancy." (5) The impact of these visual stimulants is often quite keen, as demonstrated by the small ornamented boxes on the cover and in Plate X.

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Most writers who explored imagination were equally intrigued that the mind perceived fancy objects as possessing novelty, variety, and wit. These qualities do not actually exist in the objects; rather, they reflect the intentions of the maker and the perceptions of the viewer. A trompe I'oeil overmantel painted in the 1780s by the imaginative New Englander Winthrop Chandler epitomizes the combined impact of novelty, variety, and wit inherent in many expressions of the fancy style (Pl. VII). Such objects set in motion a powerful dynamic whereby the maker uses an artful creation to awaken the mind of the viewer--often in very playful ways. Here, a delightful visual trick engages the viewer through the imitation of a bookshelf surmounting the fireplace, a common New England architectural convention. The viewer's mind instinctively churns in response and, contemplating the intent of the maker, visualizes real bookshelves in other houses and weighs alternatives for improving the deception. In early America, where life was ruled by long hours of work and few individuals were formally educated, such expressions provided a desirable opportunity to invigorate the mind and to punctuate the boredom of the day. Objects inspired by fancy thereby served as a link between the imagination of the maker and that of the viewer.