Guide to Joseph Boggs Beale's Illustrations of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's The Wreck of the Hesperus, 1894
Gift of American National Insurance Company, 2017
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Joseph Boggs Beale was born in 1841 in Philadelphia. He was educated at the Central High School in Philadelphia, graduating in 1862. A talented artist, he won a competitive examination to become the professor of art at Central High School where he taught for several years and also attended classes at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. In 1863 he enlisted in the 33rd Pennsylvania Volunteers and became the regimental artist, serving for a few months. After the war Beale shifted from teaching to a career in professional art and his illustrations appeared in Harpers Weekly and Frank Leslie's Weekly, where he became an "artist reporter." In 1870 he moved to Chicago to work for Baker and Company, a firm that supplied wood engravings to clients, returning to Philadelphia in 1881 to begin a 39-year career as the foremost magic-lantern artist in the Briggs Company, and nationwide. Beale died in 1926.
Twelve pen and ink and watercolor illustrations, created for lantern slides, of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's The Wreck of the Hesperus. Each illustration measures 12 3/4 x 12 3/4 inches.
Ink and watercolor illustrations; hinge-mounted on acid free 8 ply mats.
"It was the schooner Hesperus"
"Blue were her eyes as the fairy-flax"
"The skipper, he stood beside the helm"
"Then up and spake an old Sailor"
"Last night the moon had a golden ring"
"The snow fell hissing in the brine"
"He wrapped her warm in his seaman's coat"
"And bound her to the mast"
"Like a sheeted ghost the vessel swept"
"A fisherman stood aghast"
"The Wreck on the Rocks"
Two women on a ship wreck" (not Hesperus, from hymn "Rock of Ages")