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
A grand Romanesque-style building, Albany’s City Hall was designed in 1882 by Henry Hobson Richardson, then considered one of America’s greatest architect. [Read more…] about Heritage Spotlight: Albany City Hall, Albany County
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
The New York Racing Association (NYRA) has four “giveaway” days planned for the 2023 Saratoga Racing season, which kicked-off today. This tradition, while the supply lasts, has been a standard at the Spa for decades. This year’s red and white swag includes a cooler jug, a T-shirt, a bucket hat and a tote bag.
Souvenirs date back to the earliest visitors at Saratoga Springs, wanting to return home with a tangible memento of their visit to the Spa, in the foothills of the Adirondacks. The Saratoga Association for the Improvement of the Breed of Horses early on recognized this desire of visitors, and devised of a plan for a valuable keepsake early in the twentieth century. [Read more…] about A Remarkable Saratoga Race Track Souvenir
Born on April 18, 1889, in Remagen am Rhein into a Catholic family, Karl Nierendorf was educated in Cologne. He worked as a banker before World War I, but his career was disrupted in 1913 by the social upheaval in the Weimar Republic. One of his acquaintances, an art collector, introduced him to the Swiss-born German painter Paul Klee who persuaded him to attempt a career as an art dealer. The two would remain close. When Klee died in June 1940, Nierendorf published Paul Klee Paintings Watercolors 1913 to 1939 (New York: Oxford UP, 1941) as a tribute and an act of friendship. [Read more…] about The Migration of European Modern Art to New York: Solomon Guggenheim & Karl Nierendorf
Samuel L. Parrish (1849 – 1932) was a prosperous NYC attorney who summered in Southampton on Long Island. He was born into a wealthy Quaker family in Philadelphia and attended Harvard, where he developed an interest in Italian art. After graduating, Parrish went to Italy for a year studying Classical and Renaissance art.
In 1877 he opened a very successful law practice in the city of New York. He visited friends and family in Southampton during the summer season and traveled to Italy regularly. While there he decided to open an art museum in Southampton. [Read more…] about Forgotten Treasures in the Samuel L. Parrish Collection
The new edition of After Icebergs with a Painter A Summer Voyage to Labrador and around Newfoundland (Black Dome Press, 2022), by Louis Legrand Noble with an introduction by William L. Coleman, looks at an internationally renowned American artist of fame and fortune at the very peak of his powers.
A pastor and lauded writer with a sharp eye for revealing and humorous detail, Noble describes a journey fraught with danger and drama aboard the schooner Integrity to the latitudes where icebergs dwell with Hudson River School painter Frederic Church. [Read more…] about After Icebergs: A NY Artist’s 1859 Arctic Adventure
Dia Beacon, on the banks of the Hudson River in Beacon, Dutchess County, NY, is a museum of contemporary art with more exhibition space than Manhattan’s Guggenheim, Whitney Museum, and MoMA combined. [Read more…] about Museum Spotlight: Dia Beacon, Dutchess County
During the 1970s, staff at Preservation Long Island launched the first major effort to document all the known Long Island works by the artist Edward Lange who depicted local communities with precise detail during the 1870s and 80s. [Read more…] about Edward Lange Long Island Artworks Sought For Research