On April 13, 1927, the Thomas Jefferson Association sponsored a reception aboard the SS Paris before the departure of a massive painting from Le Havre to New York’s Pier 57 with the crate containing the art work resting on its deck.
The panoramic “Panthéon de la Guerre” (Temple of War) was heading for Madison Square Garden where it was to be exhibited in aid of the Association (the day of leaving coincided with Jefferson’s birth date).
A spectacular opening night in New York on May 19 was attended by 25,000 people and the show attracted a million visitors in eight weeks. The “Temple” created enormous curiosity. [Read more…] about War Artists’ Tragedy & Farce: The Americanized ‘Temple of War’
When hostilities in 1939 created a combat situation between allied European nations and Germany, initiating the 
Living in London in 1841, American portrait painter John Goffe Rand patented his invention of the zinc collapsible paint tube with a stopper cap. He revolutionized the artist’s palette by offering a range of pre-mixed colors in a portable medium.
In 1780, a young man traveled from his provincial hometown in Baden-Württemberg to London to meet his elder brother who had settled there two years previously as a wooden instrument maker. The many small states that constituted Germany at the time had a reputation for developing and producing musical instruments. The export of technology was an important feature of German design and many craftsmen had migrated to London (and eventually to New York and other American cities).
The city of 
Nineteenth century critics constructed an image of the artist as masculine, ignoring the fact that women were very much part of the bohemian subculture. In literary and pictorial representations, the figure of the “grisette” was consistently associated with the Latin Quarter.
The most recent episode of Empire State Engagements features a conversation with Dr. Lizabeth Cohen Professor in the Department of History at Harvard, who discussed her Bancroft Prize-winning book 
During the 1830s, young Romantic poets in Paris were loud and rebellious. They raised the noise levels in literature. Pétrus Borel headed the “Petit Cénacle,” an eccentric group of writers who had declared war on Classicism.