Maybe once you hit a certain age, it is normal to become nostalgic. We look to the past, longingly remembering those simpler times, when no one worried about the safety of a five-year-old girl and her seven-year-old brother walking to the corner drugstore to spend their nickel allowance on a candy bar. Those kids grew … Continue reading Out of Time; Out of Place: Nostalgia, Time Travel, and Ernest Haslehust’s Enchanted England
Literature
Lessons from Proust: Love and Deception
“Don’t stop. Keep moving. There’s nothing to see here.” You look away and continue about your business. But who are you kidding? If there was nothing to see, why did you drop your gaze? Genre artist Berthold Woltze (1829-1896), who was born on August 24, 1829, in Havelberg, Kingdom of Prussia, often portrayed scenes that … Continue reading Lessons from Proust: Love and Deception
Keeping It Real: The Bad Boys
In 1886, Thomas Eakins (1844-1916) was forced to resign his position as an instructor at the Philadelphia Academy of Art. At the time, it was unthinkable for a fully nude male to pose for female students in a life drawing class. While their male counterparts would be in a room with a naked guy, the … Continue reading Keeping It Real: The Bad Boys
Seeing and Telling
Even before the last brush strokes had been applied to the canvas, President Theodore Roosevelt was dissatisfied with his official White House portrait. Just the previous year, French artist Théobald Chartran (1849-1907) had painted a dignified yet casually posed portrait of First Lady Edith Roosevelt. Edith Roosevelt, First Lady of the United States; 1902 by … Continue reading Seeing and Telling
The Naked Truth
Have you ever wondered about the origin of the phrase the naked truth? Ever since I began writing historical fiction, I have had this almost obsessive desire to know the etymology of words, slang expressions, and clichés. In my novel A Moon Garden, when I put words in the mouth of an 18th-century gentleman living … Continue reading The Naked Truth
A Portal to the Past: Edward Matthew Ward
One of the elements that makes classical art so compelling is that it serves as a portal to the past. You can evaluate a painting from a purely aesthetic perspective, or you can scratch beneath the surface and discover an untold story. Edward Matthew Ward (1816-1879) was an artist who consciously put his masterful skills … Continue reading A Portal to the Past: Edward Matthew Ward
Art*Connections 