Published by Prestel

Author: Richard Brilliant
Book Type: Hardcover
Pages: 32 pp. with 43 full-color and 7 b/w illus.

Size: 9 1/2 x 11 in.

Item #: 3995
Name: Facing the New World: Jewish Portraits in Colonial and Federal America
Price: $49.95





About this book...
Commissioned by leading Jewish figures between 1700 and the early 1830s, these remarkable porraits provide a fascinating window on Early American Jewish history and American Art. To assert their status and belonging in American society during the colonial and Federal periods, early American Jews commissioned leading artists to paint portraits that were then displayed prominently in their homes. In a groundbreaking discussion, Richard Brilliant identifies modes of representation and "cultural" roles, and shows how the imagery and other ways of self-portrayal evolved. He examines family and regional groupings, concluding that, in these portraits, Jewish individuals and families chose to identify as belonging to a prominent merchan class, rather than to a particular ethnic group or religion.

Ellen Smith explores the tension between Jewish self-representation in portraits and the social reality of early American Jewish life. She reads the portraits as social documents, forming part of the larger material world of early America. smithıs well illustrated overview of early American Jewish colonial history and culture captures the texture of everyday family life and the Jewish communityıs relationship with socirty as a whole, documented by diaries, letters, business records, and domestic objects that have survived to this day.

"Facing the New World" is supplemented with a chronology from 1620 to 1830, genealogical and population information, and a map showing the regions settled by early American Jewish communities. Indices facilitate the locaion of portraits and biographies as well as the artists, including distinguished painters such as Gilbert Stuart, Thomas Sully, Charles Willson Peale, John Wesley Jarvis, and Ralph Earl.