On several occasions during the late 1860s, the novelist Harriet Beecher
Stowe exhorted readers to adorn their homes with chromolithographs,
color prints which reproduced original oil-paintings or, less often,
depicted images created specifically for the print medium. In her 1869
domestic advice manual, The American Woman's Home, co-authored with
her sister Catharine Beecher, Stowe described chromolithographs (or
“chromos,” as they were commonly called) as essential components of a
properly embellished home interior. In proposing a hypothetical budget
devoted to parlor furnishings, the authors recommended that almost one-fourth of
the total be allocated to lithographic reproductions of “really
admirable pictures” by some of “America's best artists.”
Stowe's advocacy of chromos also appeared in the promotional publications of
L. Prang & Company, one of the country's largest publishers of these
images. The short-lived quarterly Prang's Chromo: A Journal of Popular
Art (published in five issues from January 1868 to April 1869) printed a
letter in which Stowe thanked Louis Prang for sending her several free
chromolithographs. After praising the “beautiful objects,” Stowe
concluded her note with the kind of testimonial Prang no doubt had been
seeking when he sent her the complimentary items: “Be assured I shall
neglect no opportunity of proving my sympathy with your so charming
and beautiful mission, and bringing it to everyone's notice, so far as I
can.” And, though it is impossible to know what exact role Stowe's
promotions played in the overall sale of chromos, it is clear that she
aligned herself with a hot commodity: from 1840 to 1900, chromolithographs in
America sold by the millions.
