Art Student Mary Hallock Foote's Civil War

 

Sampler quilt inscribed

 "School of Design 

Engraving Class 

Cooper Union"

I loaned this quilt made at the Cooper Union school in New York, probably during the last year or two of the Civil War, to the DAR Museum where it was exhibited in Sewn in America last year.

I fortunately know a bit about it and have guessed a lot.

The quilt is 54" by 88" wide. Sanitary Commission guidelines asked for long, narrow quilts to fit hospital beds.

https://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2019/06/cooper-union-sanitary-commission-quilt.html

Gulielma Field (1814-1875) who taught wood engraving also knew how to quilt. Alice Donlevy, one of her students, recalled:

"Under her guidance many patchwork quilts were made during the Civil War, in an upper room in the Cooper Institute, where the students of the Art School came to quilt for any half hour they could spare after lesson times....Every student that I remember had to learn to quilt."

I recently came upon a biography of one of the engraving students at the school. Mary Hallock spent the last year of the Civil War learning wood engraving at the Cooper, as she called it. Mary, a Quaker from Milton, New York moved to the city, boarding with relatives, making life-long friends at school and learning wood engraving techniques, a new periodical illustration technique thought to be an appropriate occupation for females. (Some accounts tell us she was there after the war but most say 1864-1865.)

"The Female School of Art was a school for the instruction of respect­able females in the arts of design, and, in the discretion of the Board of Trustees, to afford to respectable females instruction in such other art or trade as will tend to furnish them suitable employment." 

Mary A. Hallock Foote (1847-1938) in the 1870s 

about the time of her marriage to Arthur DeWint Foote

"Afternoon at a Ranch"

Mary's 1889 wood engraving for Century Magazine

Mary became a skillful, well-known illustrator and her time at the Cooper Union is often mentioned. In his 1882 History of Wood-Engraving in America: "Mrs. Foote (then Miss Hallock), the best of our designers on the wood began her art studies [at the Cooper-Union.] Credit for her skills are assigned to male teachers rather than Gulielma Field or the other women. 

The wood engraving classes were small. In 1864 Robert O'Brien was listed as teacher and 11 students were noted. (Cannot find the 1865 report.)

"1864 Drawing and Engraving on Wood. ROBERT O’BRIEN
Miss Bianca Bondi, Laura E. Brower, Frederica Barnes, Abbie Crane, Miss Sarah B. Denroche, Alice Donlevy, Sophia A. Grant, Emelie Hueter, Miss Frances Ketcham, Amelia Van Horn, Rhoda A. Wells. —11." ,  In the same school Miss Curtis, Miss Gibbons, and Miss Ledyard had their first lessons." William J. Linton

I list these women because I like to think a few of them might have made the unsigned blocks in my quilt.

Illustration by Mary Hallock Foote

See more about Gulielma Field and the Civil War quilt here:

https://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2016/12/stitching-soldiers-quilts-at-cooper.html