V ictorian s cience i ◊ magery SCIENCE AND CULTURE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY Bernard Lightman, Editor V ictorian s cience i ◊ magery representation ◊ knowledge in nineteenth-century visual culture edited by Nancy Rose Marshall University of Pittsburgh Press Published by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, Pa., 15260 Copyright © 2021, University of Pittsburgh Press All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Printed on acid-free paper 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Cataloging-in-Publication data is available from the Library of Congress ISBN 13: 978-0-8229-4653-3 ISBN 10: 0-8229-4653-X Cover art: The Peacock Room (digitally altered details), James Abbott McNeill Whistler Cover design: Joel W. Coggins To all the students from whom I have learned, and to the very process- es of scholarly debate, conversation, perpetual curiosity, and discovery occurring in classrooms, academic conferences, public lectures, and institutional study days from which these essays originate, I dedicate this volume. And also to Jim, John, Jamie, and Daniele, the ghosts that haunt it. Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction. Victorian Science and Imagery 3 Nancy Rose Marshall Chapter 1. Measuring Native America: Early American Archaeology and the Politics of Time 28 Rachael Z. DeLue Chapter 2. “All That Is Solid Melts into Air”: Burne-Jones, Glaciation, and the Matter of History 56 Alison Syme Chapter 3. Grasping the Elusive: Victorian Weather Forecasting and Arthur Hughes’s Illustrations for George Macdonald’s At the Back of the North Wind 79 Carey Gibbons Color Gallery follows page 110 Chapter 4. A Haunting Picture, in Light of Victorian Science: John Everett Millais’s Speak! Speak! 111 Nancy Rose Marshall Chapter 5. Photographing Ether, Documenting Pain: Representing the Chemical Invisible in the Daguerreotypes of Southworth & Hawes 138 Naomi Slipp Chapter 6. Drawing Racial Comparisons in Nineteenth-Century British and American Anatomical Atlases 167 Keren Rosa Hammerschlag Chapter 7. The Post-Darwinian Eye, Physiological Aesthetics, and the Early Years of Aestheticism, 1860–1876 189 Barbara Larson Chapter 8. Darwinian Aesthetics and Aestheticism in James McNeill Whistler’s Peacock Room 206 Caitlin Silberman Notes 227 Bibliography 295 List of Contributors 343 Index 345 viii Acknowledgments As this book originated in a graduate seminar at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, I would like to express appreciation for my home institution’s encouragement of instructors to teach subjects both in their field and of their own choosing. When scholarship meshes seamlessly with pedagogy, the resulting alchemy benefits a wide community, and from this one course emerged two panels at the annual conference of the College Art Association and this subsequent volume. Along the way I benefited from a number of conversations with colleagues, and I am grateful as well to the senior scholars who joined the project, no ques- tions asked, when I tapped them for contributions. As a mark of her pro- found impact on the field of Victorian studies, several individuals in this collection, including myself, have been shaped by their studies with Dr. Caroline Arscott, whose intellectual presence looms large in these pag- es. Lynn K. Nyhart, Vilas-Bablitch-Kelch Distinguished Achievement Professor in the history of science program at UW–Madison, provided valuable advice and insight at various stages of the collection. Most instrumental in bringing the collection into focus were edi- tors Abby Collier and Bernard Lightman at the University of Pittsburgh Press, who found perceptive, rigorous readers to shared their expertise and improve the work in countless ways. Also at Pittsburgh, managing editor Amy Sherman shepherded the project into its final state with vig- ilance and precision. And finally, thanks to Carol Bracewell for her val- iant efforts at taming the bibliography. I would like to express my appreciation for the dedication of the Kohler Art Library team of director Lyn Korenic, reference librari- an Linda Duychak, and Soren Schoff. A UW–Madison Vilas Associate Award helped catalyze thought toward this volume, as did a sabbatical leave. And finally, stay-at-home support for the final stages of this man- uscript was delightfully provided by Harry and Ciccina DiPiazza Marshall. ix