A Natural Legacy, Part 1

Orra White Hitchcock classroom charts. Installation image courtesy of Amherst College Archives and Special Collections and the American Folk Art Museum.

On Monday, June 11th, 2018, Museum Textile Services director and chief conservator Camille Myers Breeze attended the opening of the long-awaited new exhibit at the American Folk Art Museum called Charting the Divine Plan: The Art of Orra White Hitchcock (1796-1863). Curated by the museum's acting executive director as well as deputy director for curatorial affairs and chief curator Stacy Hollander, the exhibit unites nearly all of Orra White Hitchcock's cotton classroom charts along with manuscripts, botanical and zoological samples, and fossils.

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​Orra White Hitchcock was one of the earliest documented female botanical and scientific illustrators in the United States. Born in 1796 in the western Massachusetts town of South Amherst, Orra married Edward Hitchcock, a pastor, geologist, professor of chemistry and natural history, and future president of Amherst College, on May 31, 1821. Immediately upon completion of her formal education, Hitchcock began teaching at Deerfield Academy, a school for ladies located 25 miles from her home. The diverse subjects she taught included fine and decorative arts, mathematics, botany, and astronomy.
 
Orra and Edward likely met between 1816 and 1818. Edward was headmaster at Deerfield and actively conducting field studies of local botany and mineralogy. Orra is described by author Elizabeth Farnsworth as “Fearless...She did not limit herself to the most traditional role of wife and mother, but became an equal and complementary partner to the brilliant and complex Edward…Although she did not exhibit her work, it became known to contemporary scientists including Benjamin Sillman, John Torrey, and Chester Dewey.” 

MTS director Camille Myers Breeze beside Orra White Hitchcock's "Crust of the Earth." Installation image courtesy of Amherst College Archives and Special Collections and the American Folk Art Museum.

"Caricography" or study of sedge grasses. By Chester Dewey with illustrations by Orra White Hitchcock. American journal of Science and Arts, Vol. 9 (June 1825). Installation image courtesy of Amherst College Archives and Special Collections and the American Folk Art Museum.

​The Hitchcocks collaborated on Edward’s geological publications as early as 1822. The couple settled in Amherst Massachusetts in 1826 and Edward began teaching chemistry, natural history, and “natural theology” classes at Amherst College. In addition to her increasingly well-known works of art on paper, Hitchcock started to create painted cotton textiles depicting geological and zoological subjects. These classroom charts were used by Edward and his colleagues as teaching tools. Sixty-one of the classroom charts survive in the Amherst College Archives and Special Collections. All but one is currently on view at the American Folk Art Museum.

In the 2011 exhibition catalog Orra White Hitchcock: An Amherst Woman of Art and Science, authors Robert L. Herbert and Daria D’Arienzo state that, “Orra drew her charts in ink and watercolor on canvas from about 1828 to the 1840s. The mixed media throughout include ink, ink wash, pencil, watercolor, and gum Arabic.”  The cotton plain-weave ground is heavily sized, or glazed, to give the textiles varying degrees of stiffness. We found at least two different lots of fabric. 

"Nautilus Striatus" by Orra White Hitchcock beside its namesake shell. Installation image courtesy of Amherst College Archives and Special Collections and the American Folk Art Museum.

Fossilized footprints in the natural history museum at Amherst College. Installation image courtesy of Amherst College Archives and Special Collections.

​Author Tekla Harms explains in a nut shell that the challenge Hitchcock faced in making the classroom charts was “To faithfully represent what could only be imagined.” "Megatherium Cuv.," for example, had to be adapted from published lithographs because it was not among the fossils in the Amherst College collection. She also ventures a guess as to the appearance of "Anoplotherium" known only by its fossilized remains.

Edward was not afraid to engage his students in geological controversies, such as the origin of the great sand and gravel deposits found throughout New England. While some believed they were caused by a Biblical-style flood, others argued they resulted from the movement of glacier ice. Likewise, Orra’s depictions of megafauna like mastodon and ichtheosaurus clearly acknowledge that prehistoric animals differed from those known in her time. The couple were openly supporting a belief that the earth is dynamic and changing years before the 1839 publication of Charles Darwin’s Voyage of the Beagle and On the Origin of Species (1859). 

Nine Orra White Hitchcock classroom charts on display alongside manuscripts and fossils in "Carting the Divine Plan." Installation image courtesy of Amherst College Archives and Special Collections and the American Folk Art Museum.

Charting the Divine Plan: The Art of Orra White Hitchcock (1796–1863) will be at the American Folk Art Museum through October 14, 2018. In Part II of this blog, we will go into the conservation treatments undertaken by Museum Textile Services to prepare the classroom charts for display.

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Camille Myers Breeze founded Museum Textile services in 1999. She is a prolific author, and educator of museum personnel and emerging conservation professionals in the US and abroad.