Joseph Boggs Beale’s artistic work might not have seemed
significant to me were it not for the fact that a large part of his career was
spent in the employ of the firm of C.W. Briggs (lantern slide makers) producing
drawings to be reproduced as lantern slides. I had a number of Beale slides but
only one of his drawings, a romanticized scene seemingly extolling the virtues
of capitalism with a prosperous boss and his busy workers. I had the lantern
slide produced from the drawing and I liked having both the original drawing
and the slide. I did not know until last year when I had the opportunity to buy
some other Beale drawings that this drawing was from a temperance series called
“A Drunkard’s Reform”. The drawing was not meant, as I had formerly imagined,
to be about the rewards of capitalism but rather the return to honest labor and
promotion to foreman of a man almost ruined by drink. I have grown in my appreciation
of Beale’s work and been fortunate enough to add several pieces to my
collection in the last two years.
Who was Joseph Boggs Beale (1841-1926)? He was, a largely unremembered
Philadelphia artist who worked in the last half of the 19th century and the
beginning of the 20th century. He
worked for a variety of publications including Frank Leslie's Weekly, Harper's,
and the Daily Graphic before going on to work for C.W. Briggs. Between
1881-1915 he made more than 2000 drawings which were reproduced as magic
lantern slides. His drawings, and the slides that were produced from them, covered
an amazingly wide view of American life. His work included Bible Stories,
Popular Literature, History, Temperance, Folk Tales and Comic Scenes. A partial list of his work would
include Pilgrim’s Progress, Marley’s Ghost, Paul Revere’s Ride, The Life of Lincoln,
Yankee Doodle, The Star Spangled Banner The Raven, Hiawatha, Uncle Tom’s Cabin,
A Christmas Carol and The Night Before Christmas.
In 1940 Life magazine did a piece on Beale that served to mark
a slight resurgence of interest in his work. The article referred to Beale as America’s
foremost magic lantern painter, not that there was much competition or
recognition for such a title. Terry Borton, the proprietor of the American
Magic-Lantern Theater, has for the past twenty years tirelessly promoted Beale’s
work and used slides based on Beale’s drawings for his magic lantern shows. Terry
and his wife Debbie have finished the manuscript of a soon to be published book
about Beale and his work entitled Before The Movies which will undoubtedly add
greatly to the awareness of Beale as an artist of American life and history.
Although Beale worked well into the 20th century his artistic
style is firmly planted in the 19th century with a kind of heroic grandiosity
and unbridled optimism. Some of
Beale’s drawings seem overly sweet and others sadly capture a stereotyping
common at the end of the 19th century. The best of Beale’s drawings catch grand
figures caught in melodramatic
moments and are packed with detail. They are worth a look and my collection of
Beale material is now up on my site.
