Posts Tagged ‘art’
Parsing “The Jelly-House Maccaroni” (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
Joe Bauman asked me about the slang in the title. A “jelly-house” was a type of London restaurant that gained a reputation in the eighteenth-century as being an place where young rakes met prostitutes.
For example, the London Magazine’s 1766 summary of a play called ...
Read the original post.
New Site on Northern Renaissance Art (Art History Today)
An interesting history-related post from Art History Today:
I’ve created a site on a course I’m teaching on the northern renaissance as a way of supporting learning for my students, but everybody is welcome to look at it.
The intention is to have an image-light site- with most of the illustrations stored off-site on my Sky Drive folders.
There are posts adapted from my lecture notes; also, lists of slides which contain links to the image galleries.
It’s a word press blog, not Type pad- but so far things seem to b e going OK.
I’ll probably be tying some of this in with my visit to Austria ...
Read the original post.
Pamphlets and Prints at Princeton (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
The Sid Lapidus ’59 Collection on Liberty and the American Revolution features more than 150 recently gifted important books, pamphlets and prints representing the major themes of Lapidus’ collecting: the intellectual origins of the American Revolution; the Revolution itself; the early years of the republic; the resulting spread of democratic ideas in the Atlantic world; and the effort to abolish the slave trade in both Great Britain and the United States.Those publications are now available for viewing online.
Also online ...
Read the original post.
Stan Mack’s Revolting Rebels (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
Stan’s now republishing his earlier sequential-art work on the Revolution, titled Taxes, the Tea Party, and Those Revolting Rebels: A History in Comics of the American Revolution. That first came out in 1994.
Here’s some of Stan’s commentary from Michael Dooley’s interview at Imprint, about both the Revolution book and a similar volume titled The Story of the Jews:
I am very careful to triple-check my historical facts and motivations—not that original documents necessarily agree with each other in the ...
Read the original post.
"The art of memorising the dates of battles" (About.com European History)
An interesting history-related post from About.com European History:
Inspired by the British government changing an immigration test to include more history, the BBC have run an article called 'The art of memorising the dates of battles', which, as you might expect, give you a method helping you do just that. I thought it might be useful, although it gets political at the end as they add some quotes on whether dates are useful in these exams.
Read the original post.
The Gridley Legacy: From Louisburg to Cobble Hill (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
Major Gridley had been ordered to proceed with his battalion from Cambridge to the lines; but had advanced only a few yards beyond the neck, when he made a halt, determined, as he said, to wait and cover the retreat which he considered inevitable.—At that moment Colonel [James] Frye [1709-1776], whose regiment was in the redoubt, but who, being on other duty, as I remarked before, had not ...
Read the original post.
Paul Jennings: “required a ladder to get it down” (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
Jennings (shown here, courtesy of the Library of America blog) was born in 1799, so he was still in his mid-teens as the foreign enemy approached. Over fifty years later he stated:
It has often been stated in print, that when Mrs. Madison escaped from the White House she cut ...
Read the original post.
Jacob Barker: “the portrait was taken by Mr. Depeyster and myself” (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
In 1847 Jacob Barker (1779-1871), a businessman in New Orleans, wrote a letter confirming that he and Robert DePeyster had carried the painting away from the presidential mansion at the First Lady’s behest. Barker also wrote: “Several persons assisted in taking down the portrait, and the most active was the venerable Mr. Carroll.”
That wasn’t good enough for the younger Carroll, who wrote a newspaper article niggling at Barker’s mistaken details. Barker then replied with a much longer account of the event, dated 8 Feb 1848. This extract picks up as Barker rushes back to the White House after the American defenses have broken:
As soon as our troops broke and retreated, the President sent his servant express to warn his good lady of her danger, with directions to leave immediately. . . . The messenger preceded me five or ten minutes, having passed me on the Pennsylvania avenue, and given the information, with a request that I would repair to the house and assist in their departure. . . .The younger Carroll responded with more angry accusations, so in Barker’s next public letter, later in 1848, he cited Dolley Madison’s authority to assert that Charles Carroll deserved no credit at all, not even for helping to get the painting down from the wall. So there.
Whether I found your father there, or whether he came in subsequently, I do not know; but I do know that he assisted in taking down the portrait of Washington and left the house with the President, leaving the portrait on the floor of the room in which it had been suspended to take care of itself, where it remained until the remnant of our army, reduced to about 4,000, passed by, taking the direction of Georgetown, when the portrait was taken by Mr. Depeyster and myself, assisted by two colored boys, from the said room; and with it we fell into the trail of the army and continued with it some miles. Overtaken by night, and greatly fatigued, we sought shelter in a farm house.
No other persons assisted in removing or preserving the picture. I acted at the special request of Mrs. Madison, and Mr. Depeyster co-operated with me in carrying her wishes into effect. I always supposed the praiseworthy solicitude originated with her; it would require very positive and clear proof to induce me to change that opinion. It certainly did not originate with me or with Mr. Depeyster; nor have I ever intimated that any other than Mrs. Madison was entitled to the least credit therefor.
COMING UP: The servants speak.
(The photograph about shows Charles Carroll’s 1801 Bellevue mansion in Washington, D.C., now known as Dumbarton House and the headquarters of the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America.)
Read the original post.
Spain has the World’s Oldest Cave Art? (About.com European History)
An interesting history-related post from About.com European History:
Archaeologists who studied a red disk at the El Castillo cave in Cantabria, Spain have concluded that it's 40,000 years old and thus the world's oldest cave art. And the twist? It may have been created by Neanderthals. Humans had arrived in the area by the date of 40,800, but Neanderthals may not have fully left, and either could have put the disk - which you can see in this picture - on the cave. Nature.com have more detail on the dating techniques used.
Read the original post.
Dolley Madison: “I have ordered the frame to be broken” (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
A major source for that episode is Madison’s own letter to her sister dated 23 Aug 1814, which says in part:
Our kind friend, Mr. [Charles] Carroll, has come to hasten my departure, and is in a very bad humor with me because I insist on waiting until ...
Read the original post.
Legends of the Lansdowne Portrait (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
Some articles on the web (including its Wikipedia entry until I edited it) say that portrait was the one saved from the White House as the British army approached. But that painting was commissioned for the first Marquess of Lansdowne (formerly Earl of Shelburne) and shipped to his home in England before he died in 1805. It didn’t come back to the U.S. of A. for many decades.
Rather, Stuart ...
Read the original post.
Visiting William Carpenter at the Worcester Art Museum (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
William Carpenter lives at the Worcester Art Museum, which has just reopened its grand front doors and is offering free admission in July and August.
Here are articles on the museum from the Boston Globe and Worcester Telegram & Gazette. Its Early ...
Read the original post.
The Gravestone of James Reed (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
James Reed is buried in the Laurel Hill Cemetery in Fitchburg, under a fine large stone carved in John Dwight’s workshop in Shirley. He might have become as well known as his fellow New Hampshireman John Stark, but the year after Bunker Hill he became ill, possibly with smallpox, and this left ...
Read the original post.
WWII art from UK National Archives on Wikimedia (The History Blog)
An interesting history-related post from The History Blog:
More than 350 original World War II artworks from the National Archives collection have been scanned and uploaded to Wikimedia. Wikimedia UK gave the National Archives a grant to take high resolution pictures of part of their 2000-piece collection of art created for Ministry of Information propaganda during the Second World War. The long-term goal is to scan the entire collection, but they’re starting off with 350 posters, drawings, oil paintings, portraits, and caricatures by well-known artists and talented artists who should be well-known, including famous images and slogans.
The National Archives is hoping the new visibility of their ...
Read the original post.
Simeon Lyman Carves a Horn (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
Friday, 13th. I went to Cambridge to get some walnuts and see the College.
Saturday, 14th. I went to carry victuals to the guard and viewing the forts and the regulars.
Sunday, 15th. Our minister preached 2 sermons. He preached from Dutrinomy 23rd and 9th verse in ...
Read the original post.
The Civil War in Art (USHistoryFiles - American History Blog)
An interesting history-related post from USHistoryFiles - American History Blog:
I received an email yesterday announcing The Civil War in Art - http://civilwarinart.org/. While it seems geared toward teachers and students (there are links to lesson plans and classroom projects), I found it to be an interesting resource. We don’t often think about what art says about how we think about ourselves – and rarely think about it during wartime – though postwar art and what it says about how the war was viewed has been examined. (I think of Gary Gallagher’s, “Causes Won, Lost, and Forgotten:How Hollywood and Popular Art Shape What We Know about the Civil War”.)
...
Read the original post.
A Close Look at Ephraim Moors’s Powder Horn (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
This view includes a crude drawing of the Continental Army encampment on Winter Hill, five grenadiers, a mansion house, the head of a beast, some decorative foliage, and (upside-down at the top) the name “Ephraim Moors,” claiming the horn. Aside from what the carving itself says and the name of the sea captain who donated it to the society, almost nothing else is known about this ...
Read the original post.
Timothy Newell’s Diary on the Block (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
Newell was one of Boston’s selectmen that year, as well as a deacon of the Brattle Street Meetinghouse. He recorded what he considered the royal authorities’ outrages and transgressions. He also sometimes wrote down rumors about the besieging forces, which are valuable for knowing how news traveled into Boston. Newell didn’t have a lot to say about his own daily experiences in the town, however. In that respect, this diary is more of an official document than a personal one.
The Rev. Jeremy Belknap transcribed Newell’s manuscript for the young Massachusetts Historical Society, and the society published that transcription in 1852. It took a while for Google Books to get to that volume, so I shared Newell’s intermittent entries day by day back in 2007-08.
Along with the diary Bonhams is selling an oil painting said by descendants to show Newell and attributed to Henry Sargent. Since Sargent was born in 1770, it would have been painted well after the war, but Newell was still wearing a curled wig in traditional style.
Bonhams says:
Newell was a moderate. He remained in Boston and did not join the Provisional [sic] Congress at Lexington as [John] Hancock and Samuel Adams did at this juncture.I think Newell’s diary shows him as a firm Whig, but one who felt his greatest responsibility lay in Boston with the town and meetinghouse he was supposed to look after. Hancock and Adams had been elected to posts in the Massachusetts Provincial Congress and Continental Congress.
In the same 19 June auction, Bonhams is selling handwritten notes on the proceedings of the House of Lords from 26 Oct 1775 to 23 May 1776. During those months the Crown responded to the Continental Congress’s “Olive Branch” petition and moved toward equipping a massive expeditionary force.
Read the original post.
The Grasshopper on Faneuil Hall (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
That grasshopper was the work of Boston metalworker Shem Drowne (1683-1774), who also created a rooster weathervane for the New Brick Meeting in the North End, a wavy banner for Christ (Old North) Church, and an Indian figure for the Province House. (Drowne himself was a member of the First Baptist Meeting.)
An Indian appeared on the Massachusetts provincial seal, and therefore an appropriate figure to top the governor’s mansion. A rooster was an ...
Read the original post.
A Hockey Game Broke Out (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
Of course, those scholars are the first to say that hockey evolved out of older ball-and-stick games with other names. But the first recorded time that the word “hockey” was applied to the game was in a 1776 London publication called Juvenile Sports and Pastimes, by “Master Michel Angelo” (a pseudonym ...
Read the original post.
Paul Revere’s Iconography (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
Revere wasn’t the most gifted artist in this form, but we have to give him credit for working the iconography. Starting on the left we have Liberty with a Phrygian cap on a staff trampling “Laws to Enslave America.” At top is the figure of Fame blowing a trumpet.
Below Fame is Adams drawn inexpertly but recognizably from the portrait by John Singleton ...
Read the original post.
Art of England (Art History Today)
An interesting history-related post from Art History Today:
Yesterday, somebody pressed a copy of this magazine into my hands. I quite liked it: good production values, diverse in content; good illustrations. I gather it’s been going for some time- but I’ve lost touch with a lot of high street art publications.
The current edition has quite a lot of interesting material. The accent is mainly on exhibition reviews. There are reviews of the Impressionism and Gainsborough exhibitions at Compton Verney; a review of the Ashmoleon Capture of the Westmoreland show; the Zoffany exhibition, a lot of modern art, plus gallery talk and a Gallery Review.
I used ...
Read the original post.
In Search of a Model for Renaissance Art (Art History Today)
An interesting history-related post from Art History Today:
One of the problems that I face when I teach survey courses on renaissance art is this: what model should I adopt, especially with this year’s course where I’ve been trying to trace the growth of art over most of renaissance Italy. Map of Italy, 1500
There are several options open to me. I can choose to divide Italian painting up into “schools” tied to geographical regions. Alternatively I can try to match styles, and their subdivisions, to specific painters in centres like Venice and Milan. Or I can do a form of close analysis focusing on specific, “canonical” works ...
Read the original post.
Portrait of a Lady Chevalier (Boston 1775)
An interesting history-related post from Boston 1775:
Mould saw something more in the painting, bought it, and brought it to Britain for conservation. Eventually he determined the portrait wasn’t by Stuart, and wasn’t of a woman.
According to the History Blog:
Old varnish and dirt had obscured the signature of the real artist: Thomas Stewart, an 18th century ...
Read the original post.
Child Workers In The Industrial Revolution