Product Details
Hardcover
171 pages
Harry N Abrams
Published 1994
From Booklist
Newport, Rhode Island, was America's version of the nineteenth-century European haut bourgeois resort full of grand homes, grander landscapes, and architectural motifs lifted from earlier history. Louis Auchincloss' long introduction to Turbeville's pictures gives a clear account of Newport's history and what made it such a magnet to some of this country's wealthiest citizens. Artists and writers were valued participants in Newport life: Henry James was a young arrival (although not yet, of course, a novelist) in 1858 who waxed enthusiastic over an invitation into the literary parlor of Julia Ward Howe. Turbeville's soft-focused and pastel-colored or sepia photographs--which often include models dressed in nineteenth-century clothing styles and are deliberately given an aged appearance--hauntingly, beautifully conjure the past, and with an air of informality or studiedly antique formality that makes them seem both finished work and pictures whose exact themes are still being worked on. This is a book lovely enough for the art collection, historical enough for the American studies shelves. Ra{ú}ul Ni{¤}no |
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