Marie Adrien Persac (1823-1873) was a French-born Louisiana artist who worked in a range of mediums to produce a unique view of the lower Mississippi Valley at midcentury. In the first catalogued exhibition devoted solely to this multifaceted but overlooked talent, paintings, drawings, maps, and photographs from numerous holdings have been brought together to present fresh insights and reevaluate this artist's place in the annals of American history and material culture. Due in part to his broad talents artist, cartographer, architect, civil engineer, photographer, and art teacher Persac's work is of major importance to Southern history researchers and art historians. His paintings of south Louisiana plantation houses have captured that now-varnished lifestyle in minute detail, approximating the exactitude of architectural drafting. Today this series is invaluable to scholars of the period, as is Persac's painting of a steamboat interior -- the only one known to exist -- and another French Opera House, which burned to the ground in 1919.

From the Potomac to the Gulf, artists were creating in the South even before it was recognized as a region. The South has contributed to America's cultural heritage with works as diverse as Benjamin Henry Latrobe's architectural plans for the nation's Capitol, the wares of the Newcomb Pottery, and Richard Clague's tonalist Louisiana bayou scenes. This comprehensive volume shows how, through the decades and centuries, the art of the South expanded from mimetic portraiture to sophisticated responses to national and international movements. The essays treat historic and current trends in the visual arts and architecture, major collections and institutions, and biographies of artists themselves. As leading experts on the region's artists and their work, editors Judith H. Bonner and Estill Curtis Pennington frame the volume's contributions with insightful overview essays on the visual arts and architecture in the American South.

Through eighty-nine color plates and six thematic essays, this collection examines depictions of plantations, plantation views, and related slave imagery in the context of the history of landscape painting in America, while addressing the impact of these images on US race relations.

Charting the Plantation Landscape from Natchez to New Orleans examines the hidden histories behind one of the nineteenth-century South’s most famous maps: Norman’s Chart of the Lower Mississippi River, created by surveyor Marie Adrien Persac before the Civil War and used for decades to guide the pilots of river vessels. Beyond its purely cartographic function, Persac’s map depicted a world of accomplishment and prosperity, while concealing the enslaved and exploited laborers whose work powered the plantations Persac drew. In this collection, contributors from a variety of disciplines consider the histories that Persac’s map omitted, exploring plantations not as sites of ease and plenty, but as complex legal, political, and medical landscapes. Essays by Laura Ewen Blokker and Suzanne Turner consider the built and designed landscapes of plantations as they were structured by the logics and logistics of both slavery and the effort to present a façade of serenity and wealth. William Horne and Charles D. Chamberlain III delve into the political activity of formerly enslaved people and slaveholders respectively, while Christopher Willoughby explores the ways the plantation health system was defined by the agro-industrial environment. Jochen Wierich examines artistic depictions of plantations from the antebellum years through the twentieth century, and Christopher Morris uses the famed Uncle Sam Plantation to explain how plantations have been memorialized, remembered, and preserved. With keen insight into the human cost of the idealized version of the agrarian South depicted in Persac’s map, Charting the Plantation Landscape encourages us to see with new eyes and form new definitions of what constitutes the plantation landscape.

Charting the Plantation Landscape from Natchez to New Orleans examines the hidden histories behind one of the nineteenth-century South’s most famous maps: Norman’s Chart of the Lower Mississippi River, created by surveyor Marie Adrien Persac before the Civil War and used for decades to guide the pilots of river vessels. Beyond its purely cartographic function, Persac’s map depicted a world of accomplishment and prosperity, while concealing the enslaved and exploited laborers whose work powered the plantations Persac drew. In this collection, contributors from a variety of disciplines consider the histories that Persac’s map omitted, exploring plantations not as sites of ease and plenty, but as complex legal, political, and medical landscapes. Essays by Laura Ewen Blokker and Suzanne Turner consider the built and designed landscapes of plantations as they were structured by the logics and logistics of both slavery and the effort to present a façade of serenity and wealth. William Horne and Charles D. Chamberlain III delve into the political activity of formerly enslaved people and slaveholders respectively, while Christopher Willoughby explores the ways the plantation health system was defined by the agro-industrial environment. Jochen Wierich examines artistic depictions of plantations from the antebellum years through the twentieth century, and Christopher Morris uses the famed Uncle Sam Plantation to explain how plantations have been memorialized, remembered, and preserved. With keen insight into the human cost of the idealized version of the agrarian South depicted in Persac’s map, Charting the Plantation Landscape encourages us to see with new eyes and form new definitions of what constitutes the plantation landscape.

French priest Joseph M. Paret (1807-1872) served in the missions of Louisiana from 1847 to 1869 as pastor of the Little Red Church, located upstream from New Orleans on the east bank of the Mississippi River. During his somewhat lonely tenure, Paret sketched landscapes, architecture, and interiors, capturing everyday life in prosperous St. Charles Parish. In 1987, fifty-three watercolors were discovered -- still bound in their original sketchbook -- among his personal effects. Plantations by the River contains twenty-eight of these paintings created in or about the year 1859. Paret's insightful artwork provides a visual social history of the antebellum creole culture of south Louisiana and documents properties in addition to structures and furnishings of the period. The book features full-size reproductions of Paret's paintings, which have been restored to their original vibrancy. The value of Paret's detailed folk art lies in the accuracy of his depiction of the region he lived in. He faithfully renders parishioners attending church, men pulling driftwood from the Mississippi River, and the edifices and flora gracing local plantations Ormond and Good Hope, among many others. The text is presented in both English and French; and as a supplement to the art, an appendix of excerpts from Mon Journal d'Amerique -- a collection of correspondence between Paret and his family -- is included. The beautiful, brightly colored paintings of Plantations by the River are a rare discovery and provide a unique view of rural Louisiana life before the onset of the Civil War.

Planter's Prospect: Privilege and Slavery in Plantation Paintings

Born into slavery in rural Louisiana, Rose Herera was bought and sold several times before being purchased by the De Hart family of New Orleans. Still a slave, she married and had children, who also became the property of the De Harts. But after Union forces captured New Orleans in 1862 during the American Civil War, Herera’s owners fled to Havana, taking three of her small children with them. Beyond Freedom’s Reach is the true story of one woman’s quest to rescue her children from bondage. In a gripping, meticulously researched account, Adam Rothman lays bare the mayhem of emancipation during and after the Civil War. Just how far the rights of freed slaves extended was unclear to black and white people alike, and so when Mary De Hart returned to New Orleans in 1865 to visit friends, she was surprised to find herself taken into custody as a kidnapper. The case of Rose Herera’s abducted children made its way through New Orleans’ courts, igniting a custody battle that revealed the prospects and limits of justice during Reconstruction. Rose Herera’s perseverance brought her children’s plight to the attention of members of the U.S. Senate and State Department, who turned a domestic conflict into an international scandal. Beyond Freedom’s Reach is an unforgettable human drama and a poignant reflection on the tangled politics of slavery and the hazards faced by so many Americans on the hard road to freedom.

From the accounts of 18th-century travelers to the interpretations of 21st-century historians, Jumonville lists more than 6,800 books, chapters, articles, theses, dissertations, and government documents that describe the rich history of America's 18th state. Here are references to sources on the Louisiana Purchase, the Battle of New Orleans, Carnival, and Cajuns. Less-explored topics such as the rebellion of 1768, the changing roles of women, and civic development are also covered. It is a sweeping guide to the publications that best illuminate the land, the people, and the multifaceted history of the Pelican State. Arranged according to discipline and time period, chapters cover such topics as the environment, the Civil War and Reconstruction, social and cultural history, the people of Louisiana, local, parish, and sectional histories, and New Orleans. It also lists major historical sites and repositories of primary materials. As the only comprehensive bibliography of the secondary sources about the state, ^ILouisiana History^R is an invaluable resource for scholars and researchers.

One of the finest architectural photographers in America, Robert W. Tebbs produced the first photographic survey of Louisiana's plantations in 1926. From those images, now housed in the Louisiana State Museum, and not widely available until now, 119 plates showcasing fifty-two homes are featured here. Richard Anthony Lewis explores Tebbs's life and career, situating his work along the line of plantation imagery from nineteenth-century woodcuts and paintings to later twentieth-century photographs by John Clarence Laughlin, among others. Providing the family lineage and construction history of each home, Lewis discusses photographic techniques Tebbs used in his alternating panoramic and detail views. A precise documentarian, Tebbs also reveals a poetic sensibility in the plantation photos. His frequent emphasis on aspects of decay, neglect, incompleteness, and loss lends a wistful aura to many of the images -- an effect compounded by the fact that many of the homes no longer exist. This noticeable vacillation between objectivity and sentiment, Lewis shows, suggests unfamiliarity and even discomfort with the legacy of slavery. Poised on the brink of social and political reforms, Louisiana in the mid-1920s had made significant strides away from the slave-based agricultural economy that the plantation house often symbolized. Tebbs's Louisiana plantation photographs capture a literal and cultural past, reflecting a burgeoning national awareness of historic preservation and presenting plantations to us anew. Select plantations included: Ashland/Belle Helene, Avery Island, Belle Chasse, Belmont, Butler-Greenwood, L'Hermitage, Oak Alley, Parlange, René Beauregard House, Rosedown, Seven Oaks, Shadows-on-the-Teche, The Shades, and Waverly.