Love

This board holds the pictures gathered for Love, one of the books in James Lantos's Pictorial America series of illustrated histories. Romance has always been a favorite subject for artists, and the 19th century turned it into a whole industry of cards, prints and photographs.

The valentine is the best example. People had exchanged handwritten love notes on St. Valentine's Day for centuries, but cheap postage in the 1840s made it easy to send printed cards. In Worcester, Massachusetts, Esther Howland began making elaborate valentines of lace paper, ribbons and colored pictures in the late 1840s. Her business grew large, and she is often called the mother of the American valentine.

Not every valentine was sweet. The Victorians also sent comic valentines, sometimes called vinegar valentines, that mocked the person who received them for being vain, lazy or unattractive. They were usually sent without a signature. They are part of the story too, and they show that people have always used holidays to say things they would not say in person.

Weddings changed in these years as well. Queen Victoria wore white when she married Prince Albert in 1840, and over the following decades the white wedding dress became the custom in Britain and America. Wedding portraits became a standard family keepsake once photography made them affordable. Early couples often sat stiffly side by side, and later ones stood together in fuller gowns and veils.

The pictures in this collection include valentines, sentimental prints, courting couples on porches and in parks, stereoviews of romantic scenes and wedding portraits. Look at the details of the valentines, which were often built in layers with paper lace and small pictures that lift or fold. Look also at how couples posed for the camera. Over the years they slowly move closer together, which says something about how public affection itself was changing.