Published in 1874 | 44 pages | PDF reader required
EXTRACT FROM INTRODUCTION
The remarkable collection of Pre-historic, Ancient, and Middle-age Personages, comprising the "SPIRIT ART GALLERY," is one that challenges public attention and criticism as no other Paintings have ever done since the birth of this form of Art. It is sui generis: singular and unparalleled. In the execution of these Portraits, all hitherto known rules of Art Schools have been ignored or set at defiance. Method or time—whatever has governed the artist in his normal condition, has made no figure in this work. If it were permitted, under the broad radiance of science, to attribute any event—the laws of which we did not understand—to the category of " miracle," these paintings would be as insolvable as other of Nature's phenomena.
When the tiny "raps," at the humble Hydesville home of the Fox family, startled the world, and gave birth to Modern Spiritualism, how few, if a single one, comprehended the stupendous effect upon the opinion of the world that has since been produced. No movement of mind or spiritual forces, within the limits of recorded history, is comparable with this, either in its moral or phenomenal aspects. Wonders have multiplied, till a new wonder ceases to be regarded as but an every-day affair. From the mouths of babes have the wise been confounded.
It is about eighteen years since a young married couple began life together in one of the towns of the Great West. The husband was a mechanic of only a meagre, common school education. He had learned and followed the trade of a cabinet maker. He sometimes worked at the poorly remunerative business of sign painting, which was all he knew of the painter's art, in which he was his own tutor.
The wife was a small, delicate, spiritual young woman. The gift of "second sight" was hers from the days of infancy. A wierd, strange child, she was called by everybody; always seeing and telling things which were incomprehensible to family or friends. After the birth of Spiritualism, the wonderful gift of the young woman placed her among the recognised "mediums" of the new dispensation; not only in clairvoyance, and clairaudience, but in the state known as "trance."
This young couple were Wella P. and L. Pet Anderson. At the period of their marriage, and for several years thereafter, no "signs" of mediumship were manifested in Mr. Anderson, while the fame of Mrs. Anderson, as a most remarkable "test medium," extended far and near.
They sat together for his "development" for a long time-two years, we believe—before the remarkable phase of art mediumship was shown by Mr. Anderson: for which she was, and still remains, the necessary magnet, or battery, and which has given them a world-wide reputation as "Spirit Artists." ...
