History, Natural History & the Arts
The American artist Wilhelmina Douglas Hawley (Perth Amboy, NJ 1860 – Rijsoord, Netherlands 1958), my great-grandmother, lived a long and interesting life. Her artistic career and family history has fascinated me since I was a young girl.
Wilhelmina’s ancestors were English and Scottish migrants, who moved to the east coast of the United States and Canada in the seventeenth and eighteenth century. [Read more…] about The Hawleys, Opposition to the War of 1812 and the Church of the Presidents
Radicals and Rogues: The Women Who Made New York Modern (Reaktion Books, 2023) by Lottie Whalen, is an eye-opening new history of the women in New York City.
This is the story of a group of women whose experiments in art and life set the tone for the rise of New York as the twentieth-century capital of modern culture. [Read more…] about Radicals and Rogues: The Women Who Made New York Modern
The latest episode of the Massachusetts Historical Society’s “The Object of History” podcast features a story about the cultural significance of teeth in the 18th century. In this episode, experts examine a portrait of George Washington in which he does not resemble the familiar face on the one-dollar bill. [Read more…] about The Culture of Teeth in the 18th Century
The first annual exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists opened at Manhattan’s Grand Central Palace on the evening of April 10, 1917. Thousands of guests gathered to celebrate what was to be the largest art show ever held in New York. The momentous occasion took place in an atmosphere of growing political tension as it coincided with America’s entry into the First World War.
In spite of these circumstances, there was a single figure who attracted widespread attention. Known by his adopted name of Arthur Cravan, he had been invited to deliver a lecture on “The Independent Artists in France and America.” His outrageous behavior shocked New York’s artistic elite. [Read more…] about Poet-Boxer Arthur Cravan: The Man Who Shocked Greenwich Village
What Thomas Carlyle in 1829 called the Age of Machinery – later renamed the Industrial Revolution – radically altered conventional modes of being and marked a turning point in man’s relationship with his environment. New production systems delivered an abundance of goods for consumption, but in the process natural resources were depleted, water and soil polluted, whilst fumes contaminated the air. [Read more…] about Asher Durand’s Painted Puzzle of Progress
Historical painter Ernest Haas has donated a collection of his original artworks, prints, and materials to the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum in Vergennes, Vermont. Haas has been a longtime supporter of the museum, which already holds a few of his works.
This donation brings the total number of Haas’ original paintings held by the museum to 29. [Read more…] about Lake Champlain Maritime Museum Acquires Historical Paintings by Ernest Haas
Daniel Folger Bigelow, the nationally known landscape painter, was born on a farm in Peru, Clinton County, NY, on July 20 1823. As a child, Daniel stood on a chair and studied a wall painting. Between farm chores, he would sit on a fence and look across Lake Champlain, watching the magnificent change of colors on Mount Mansfield.
His pencil sketches pleased his parents, but they did not take his talent seriously, believing it was an impractical way to make a living. [Read more…] about Northern New York Landscape Artist Daniel Folger Bigelow
Allison M. Stagg’s first book, Prints of a New Kind: Political Caricature in the United States, 1789–1828 (Penn State University Press, 2023) details the political strategies and scandals that inspired the first generation of American caricaturists to share news and opinions with their audiences in shockingly radical ways. [Read more…] about Prints of a New Kind: Political Caricature in the United States
A century ago this year, Josephine Baker traveled on a one way ticket from Philadelphia to New York City, having left her recently-wed husband behind.
Born an illegitimate child in a St Louis ghetto on June 3, 1906, Freda Josephine McDonald had a dismal childhood of poverty living in an area of rooming houses, run-down apartments and brothels near Union Station. The city was beset by racial tension and violence. [Read more…] about Josephine Baker and Illustrator Paul Colin
Painters such as James McNeill Whistler and Childe Hassam exported the streetscape from Paris to America by creating various impressionistic vistas or bird’s-eye city views. As society became increasingly urbanized, art took a less genteel direction. Members of New York Ashcan movement urged painters to drop orthodoxy and depict the bustling streets of the city.
Although not an “organized” school of painting, the unity of the group consisted in a desire to grasp urban realities. The name ashcan (dustbin) was initially hurled against these artists as a term of derision – it became a banner of distinction.
As committed urbanists, these painters were both observers and participants. John French Sloan, Robert Henri and friends created a dynamic record of metropolitan street culture. Although attacked by their opponents as being “devotees of the ugly,” these artists looked for aesthetic vitality in ordinary life. [Read more…] about Greenwich Village’s Free and Independent Republic & John Sloan at Jefferson Market’s Night Court