The Face of the Public

Lukasik situates Philip Freneau's The Picture Gallery and Hugh Henry Brackenridge's Modern Chivalry into the contemporary discourses of portraiture and physiognomy that they invoke to complement recent explanations of the body's relationship to the public in the postrevolutionary period. He also explores how postrevolutionary American culture--its public portraits, silhouettes, printed biographical portrait galleries--utilized the face to represent the abstract ideals of civic virtue and communicate exemplary character and thus participated in creating a visual national imaginary.