Collaborative Albums: Soledad Acosta and José María Samper

“El libro de los ensueños de amor: historia poética del bello ideal de la ventura” // “The Book of the Reveries of Love: A Poetic History of the Beautiful Ideal of Bliss”

The album, in this case, is an object for the private expression of feelings between the couple. In it, they share poems and illustrations of romantic or personal themes. The book adopts a double rhetoric: that imposed by the codes of nineteenth-century courtship and the dynamics regulated by the friendship album, which the pair completed in a first stage during José María Samper’s visits to Soledad Acosta. This detail of the material production of the book likewise imposes its content: It will be the fiancé who writes poetry in tribute to his lover while she, as the recipient of his visits and contributions of the album, is the one who accompanies said dedications with a wide series of alluding illustrations (also including illustrations of the fiancé-husband). There is no text from Soledad Acosta. The space for a woman’s romantic writing stays reserved for her diary, as Isabel Corpas also points out. As it serves as a repository for a romantic relationship, the album is closed to third-party interventions, with the exception of the first page, which includes a dedication signed by M.P. with the title of “To Pepe and Solita.”

The poem “La pintura” ("The Painting”) considers a close relationship between word and image, as the verses admire Soledad as a draftswoman while she illustrates them with an image of the artistic muse, supported on a pillar on which are written the names of various painters of Western culture: Rubens, Velázquez, Tiziano, and Raphael, among others. The drawing functions, within the album, as an exercise in the reading and interpretation of the author, a gesture that is sustained in the rest of the albums. Furthermore, to draw and paint in the albums was a form of expressing how women understood their femininity. It is a performance of the feminine, but also of the social class to which one belongs, as objects or references that indicate the status of the person (like those mentioned of the European painters) are always included.

In "El libro de los ensueños" (“The Book of Reveries”) and in "El libro sagrado" (“The Sacred Book”, to which I will refer later on), attention is called to botanical-themed illustrations and poetry. Not only do the verses establish parallels between a lover and flowers, but Soledad Acosta also demonstrates a great botanical knowledge when it comes to drawing flowers. This reflects the education received in the home, rooted in the sciences and to geography, but also the frequent presence of botanical themes in feminine albums, which often included dried specimens in the style of an herbarium (we think, for example, in the collections of Emily Dickinson and the value of plants in the Victorian sentimental education for women).

The local landscapes that the married couple draw (there is also one with “orientalist” inspiration, with an image of the Dead Sea in the second album, "El libro sagrado de Pepe y Solita" / “The Sacred Book of Pepe and Solita”) are tied to the personal memory of each one, to the past, or to childhood, and to a present that is intended for posterity (in the case of the houses and landscapes of Chapinero, the place where they spent their honeymoon and today is a residential neighborhood of Bogotá). This idea of the album conceived for posterity’s sake is evidenced likewise in the inclusion of a table of contents on the last page, a practice that Soledad Acosta maintains in each one of her notebooks presented here.

As for the theme, reflections on the activities of an educated, upper-class couple, whose free time is dedicated to the arts, abound. That is to say that writing, just as much as drawing, reinforces the class standing of the album’s participants. The album is just one more leisure activity in the series. The love shared by Acosta and her fiancé is united with an aesthetic and an ideal of knowledge and of the arts shared and regulated through the conventions of their time. This first album concludes with the end of the honeymoon and a last entry with the title "Hace un mes" (“A Month Ago”), marking the passage of time in this first stage of the couple.

“El libro sagrado de Pepe y Solita (tomo II)” // “The Sacred Book of Pepe and Solita (Volume II)”

This album is bound in leather with the inscription of the word “Album” in golden letters, in the style of the time. The album is thought of as a continuation of the first (“El libro de los ensueños) and contains entries of poems, narratives (less frequent in the previous album) and drawings made from 1855 until 1859. Many take place in Guaduas, the birthplace of Soledad Acosta and where the pair first met and returned to seasonally after marrying. The theme and logic of this volume is similar to that of the previous, but it includes more specific reflections on married life. Additionally appearing are some texts of José María Samper signed during travel from various cities in Spain, and a series of Soledad Acosta’s drawings in color, in the costumbrista watercolor style, with rural Colombian spaces and characters not relating to the texts of her husband. It is interesting that, even though the courting stage has ended and the pair are established as a married couple, the dynamic of the album continues the same as the previous album: José María Samper dominates the space of writing while Soledad Acosta participates almost exclusively through drawing.

"Pensamientos y recuerdos consagrados a la señorita-ángel Soledad Acosta" // “Consecrated Thoughts and Memories to the Angel-Lady Soledad Acosta”

This is a leatherbound album with another typical feature in the center: a bouquet of flowers and details in mother-of-pearl. It was made by José María Samper as a declaration of love to Soledad Acosta before fleeing to Bogotá due to the 1854 coup d’état. Although Solidad Acosta is not the author, it is included here as an example of another particular use of these volumes in relation to the feminine world. The pages display José María Samper’s poetry, drawings, and thoughts (narratives) from a distance, which are inspired by his feelings toward his beloved.

To individually compile or gather material from other artists and writers in an album to then give as an offering of love was a common practice between nineteenth-century couples. There are also albums in tribute to political figures, military figures, or distinguished intellectuals. In relation to women writers from South America, we can point to the case of the Palma literaria y artística (Literary and Artistic Palm), an album given in Buenos Aires to the writer Juana Manuela Gorriti in recognition of her career (1875) and which contains entries written by citizens and intellectuals like Juan María Gutiérrez or Bartolomé Mitre.

A similar case to that of “Pensamientos y recuerdos consagrados” is the album that the German painter Johann Moritz Rugendas gave to his beloved, the Chilean writer Carmen de Arriagada, around 1850. This extremely fine object contains portraits, business cards, autographs, and poems dedicated to the woman by figures such as Alberto Blest Gana, and drawings of landscapes and local characters made by Rugendas himself, along with other additions. Even though historical and literary studies have repaired the epistolary archive that tells of the relation between the two figures, scant references have been made to this other means of sentimental connection– through the writing, images, and objects that the album circulates.

In nineteenth-century Colombia, one of the writers that reflected on the romantic use of the album was Juan Francisco Ortiz (1801-1875), a driving force behind costumbrista sketches in national literature. In a tale titled "El álbum de Mimí" (“Mimí’s Album,” 1852), Ortiz satirically tells the story of a young girl named Mimí, who possesses a luxurious album brought from London which she fills with insipid or frivolous verses and drawings. The contempt or ironic note about the literary quality of the album was also frequent among the personalities of the time, who vacillated between participating in this object that was so popular with young women because it built their reputation and social network, and judging it as being of bad quality and characterized by less selective criteria. At the end of the tale, Ortiz concludes by condemning the lack of morality that he perceives in this practice:

“If an album is for lovers the repertory of their tenderness, why do they not insert reflections of their sweet memories that correct vanity, some words that ignite or that reanimate the call of virtue in the hearts of the virgins? If the Album must not contain but insipid and diminished praises of a beauty that is today and tomorrow is not, I maintain that the Album should be placed on the index of prohibited books.”

Showing themselves conscious of the fashionable, but also of the contemporary criticisms, the albums between Acosta and Samper include both praises of feminine beauty and the presentation of Christian ideals, amid other mentioned records, with references to the model of the Virgin Mary and Christ.

Autograph Album of José María Samper

This is a typical autograph album bound in a bordeaux color, with golden letters and frame, that holds  signatures and dedications by Venezuelan personalities gathered during Samper’s travels in Caracas in 1875. The book opens with a text of the Venezuelan artist and businessman Ildefonso Meserón y Aranda. As in the previous cases, the existence of the volume delimits a concrete experience that one wants to record (courtship, honeymoon, travel).

The album is erected here as a transnational element that relocates but also gathers names of personalities of diverse origin. Likewise, it makes visual the homosocial networks between men. While the albums for or dedicated to women contain requests and contributions from both genders (here sustaining the binarism of the period), this masculine album defines the contact between peers. The object is exhibited, consequently, as a sign of the inequalities in the gender relationships that are also expressed in this sphere of writing and creation.