Publications
The following is a selection of writings by Mary K. McGuigan and John F. McGuigan Jr.
For a full list of Mary’s books and essays, please follow the link below: https://independent.academia.edu/MaryMcGuigan
For a full list of John’s books and essays, please click on the following ink: https://independent.academia.edu/JohnMcGuigan1
American Latium. American Artists and Travelers in and around Rome in the Age of the Grand Tour
Edited by Christopher M. S. Johns, Tommaso Manfredi, Karin Wolfe
Proceedings of the International Conference, Roma, Palazzo Mattei di Giove, 7–8 June 2018
Quaderni degli Atti 2017-2018
Roma: Accademia di San Luca, 2023
ISBN 978-88-97610-37-3
PDF downloadable at https://accademiasanluca.it/iniziative/editoria/edizione/american-latium
This volume brings together the proceedings presented at the international conference, the premise of which was to examine the concept of cultural exchange between America and Rome and its surrounding territory not as a bilateral transfer of culture, but rather as an entangled and reciprocal history of cultural transmission. Interdisciplinary in nature, these proceedings present new, and at times unexpected, research on the experience of reciprocal cultural exchange. Divided into three parts: The American Grand Tour: From Old Masters to the New World; American Latium: Sites and Itineraries in and around Rome; Americans and the Artistic Culture of Rome: Toward an American Art. The book addresses the pioneering origins of the artistic relations between America, Rome and its environs from the eighteenth century up until 1870. It includes essays by Mary K. McGuigan, “Scenery Found: John Gadsby Chapman and Open-Air Oil Sketching in and around Rome, 1830–1882” and by John F. McGuigan Jr., “A Painter and a Diplomat: The Two Careers of James Edward Freeman.”
In Light of Rome. Early Photography in the Capital of the Art World, 1842–1871
Authors: John F. McGuigan, Jr. and Frank H. Goodyear III, with a foreword by Maria Francesca Bonetti
University Park and Brunswick: Penn State University Press and Bowdoin College Museum of Art, 2023
Catalogue of an exhibition held at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, 8 December 2022–4 June 2023
Hardcover Edition
ISBN: 978-0-271-09488-5
Available as an e-book
This comprehensive study of Rome’s contribution to the early history of photography traces the medium’s rise from a fledgling science to a dynamic form of artistic expression that forever changed the way we perceive the Eternal City. The authors examine the diverse transnational group of photographers who thrived in the cosmopolitan art center of Rome—and the pivotal role they played in the refinement and technical development of the nascent medium in the nineteenth century. The book ranges from the earliest pioneers—the French daguerreotypist Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey and the Welsh calotypist Calvert Richard Jones—to the work of the Roman School of Photography and its successors, among them James Anderson and Robert Macpherson of Britain; Frédéric Flachéron, Firmin Eugène Le Dien, and Gustave Le Gray of France; and Giacomo Caneva, Adriano de Bonis, and Pietro Dovizielli of Italy. Lavishly illustrated with 112 plates, many never before published, by nearly fifty practitioners, this volume expands our understanding of the place of Rome in early photography. An exhibition of the same title, to open at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art in December 2022, accompanies this study.
“What makes this catalogue remarkable is its capacity to fully immerse the reader in the transitional decades, marking the passage from painting to photography … a unique cultural moment for the city of Rome.”
––Marco Iuliano, The Burlington Magazine, May 2023
At the foot of the Pyramid. 300 years of the Cemetery for Foreigners in Rome
Authors: Nicholas Stanley-Price, Mary K. McGuigan, and John F. McGuigan Jr.
Roma: Edizioni AsKI / Casa di Goethe / Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome, 2016
Catalogue of an exhibition held at the Casa di Goethe, Rome, 23 September–13 November 2016
ISBN-13: 978-3-930370-40-5 (English version)
In celebration of three hundred years of burials at the foot of the Pyramid, this exhibition catalogue explores the Cemetery’s history as seen through the eyes of artists. These include foreigners such as J. M. W. Turner, J. P. Hackert, Salomon Corrodi, and Edvard Munch, and Italians such as Bartolomeo Pinelli and Ettore Roesler Franz. The catalogue devotes two pages to each of the forty-four exhibits, one of description and the other a full-colour reproduction of the work of art. Many of them have never been previously exhibited or published in detail. In their two introductory essays the authors discuss how artists in Rome have responded to this beautiful place and how their work can throw new light on its history. An essential book for understanding better the cemetery in its Roman context. Available in English, German, and Italian editions.
“The beautifully produced catalogue is an important addition to the literature of the Grand Tour.”
––Jonathan Yarker, The British Art Journal, Spring 2017
Am Fuße der Pyramide. 300 Jahre Friedhof für Ausländer in Rom
Authors: Nicholas Stanley-Price, Mary K. McGuigan, and John F. McGuigan Jr.
Roma: Edizioni AsKI / Casa di Goethe / Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome, 2016
ISBN 13: 978-3-930370-38-2 (German version)
Ai piedi della piramide. Il cimitero per gli stranieri a Roma–300 anni
Authors: Nicholas Stanley-Price, Mary K. McGuigan, and John F. McGuigan Jr.
Roma: Edizioni AsKI / Casa di Goethe / Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome, 2016
ISBN 13: 978-3-930370-39-9 (Italian version)
John Gadsby Chapman: America’s First Artist-Etcher. With a Catalogue of his Italian Etchings
Authors: John F. McGuigan Jr. and Mary K. McGuigan
Harpswell, Maine: Arcady Editions, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-692-45493-0
This monograph is the first to appear on the Virginia-born Chapman (1808–1889) for more than half a century and the first ever to consider the totality of his etching career and situate it within the broader context of his personal life and painting practice. Readers familiar with Chapman’s mural The Baptism of Pocahontas in the U.S. Capitol, his more than 1,400 designs for Harper Brothers’ landmark Illuminated Bible (1846), his American Drawing-Book (1847), and oeuvre of Grand Tour paintings will be delighted to learn more about his prolonged commitment to fine art etching.
America’s Rome. Artists in the Eternal City, 1800–1900
Authors: William L. Vance, Mary K. McGuigan, and John F. McGuigan Jr.
Edited by Paul S. D’Ambrosio
Cooperstown, New York: Fenimore Art Museum, 2009
Catalogue of an exhibition held at the Fenimore Art Museum, Cooperstown, New York, 23 May–31 December 2009
ISBN: 978-0-917334-36-1
Inspired by the landmark 1989 two-volume book of the same title by William L. Vance and the groundbreaking research conducted by Mary K. McGuigan and John F. McGuigan Jr. over the past twenty years, this catalogue includes an essay by William L. Vance summarizing the main ideas of his book; an essay entitled “‘This Market of Physiognomy’: American Artists and Rome’s Art Academies, Life Schools, and Models, 1825-1870” by Mary K. McGuigan; and “American Open-Air Landscape Painting in Rome, 1825-1885” by John F. McGuigan Jr.
“[T]he Fenimore show takes a serious, investigative look at the pictures it has brought together. And with work as ideologically loaded and serious as 19th century American art, serious study makes sense.”
––Holland Cotter, New York Times, 13 August 2009
James E. Freeman 1808–1884. An American Painter in Italy
Authors: John F. McGuigan Jr. and Mary K. McGuigan
Utica, New York: Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute, 2009
Catalogue of an exhibition held at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute Museum of Art, Utica, New York, 13 September 2009–17 January 2010; Newington-Cropsey Foundation, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY, 19 September–18 November 2011
ISBN: 978-0-915895-35-9
This catalogue demonstrates the full range of Freeman’s artistic pursuits: the fancy pictures, figure studies, portraits, and drawings produced during his formative years in America and, later, when he lived in Italy. An afterword discussing the critical fortunes of the fancy picture and two appendices (a chronology of Freeman’s life, and a compilation of his American exhibition record with contemporary critical reviews) supplement the main essay.