House Proud: Nineteenth-century Watercolor Interiors from the Thaw Collection

Our house is where we enjoy privacy, comfort, and safety. It is a refuge in which we take shelter from worldly cares, and family and possessions become the focus. This cherished concept of the house and its interior spaces originated in the nineteenth century, when a number of factors combined to glorify the house as a source of pride, convenience, and status. The new middle class copied royal and aristocratic tastes in furnishing their own houses. Technological developments multiplied the types of furniture and interior furnishings available, enabling homemakers to project themselves into their surroundings. The "cult of domesticity" emphasized the home as the province of women, and rooms became gender- as well as function-specific. Finally, revivals of neoclassical, Gothic, and other period styles encouraged continual cycles of decorating and redecorating. As homes grew in importance, it became fashionable for their owners to commission watercolors of their domestic interiors and to collect them in albums to be passed on to children, given as gifts to visiting royalty, and displayed in drawing rooms.

House Proud: Nineteenth-century Watercolor Interiors from the Thaw Collection commemorates the recent gift of eighty-five watercolor interior drawings—the largest collection of its kind in America—to Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum by Eugene V. and Clare E. Thaw. Approximately seventy drawings and a selection of related objects from Cooper-Hewitt’s permanent collection document the evolution of the domestic interior in the nineteenth century, revealing the impact of economic, social, and political developments on the concept of the house.

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