Casper David Friedrich

Back in the '80s, Beth and I bought a poster at a Nashville art museum: "Stages of Life" (Die Lebensstufen, 1835) by the German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich. The poster has ever since hung in our home. It's a nice souvenir of a weekend with Beth's maternal aunt and uncle, who've since passed away. 

Friedrich's landscapes, some of which are allegorical, reflect the contemplation of nature. As in this painting, human figures are rendered small within the scene. Here are two others: his well-known "Wanderer above the Sea of Fog" (1818), and "The Lonely Tree" (1822), with the tiny shepherd in its shade. 

Friedrich was born September 5, 1774, and died in his long-time home of Dresden in 1840. When we visited Dresden back in 2007, we noticed a memorial to him in a city park. This intense portrait was painted by his friend Gerhard von Kügelgen. 

All copied under fair use principles.  

The Treaty of Paris, yay!

It's interesting to think of the American Revolution as one of several European wars that spanned the 18th century. On September 3, 1783, representatives of Great Britain and the new United States signed the Treaty of Paris, which officially ended our War of Independence and recognized the Thirteen Colonies as a new nation. The signing involved British North America (Canada), setting boundaries, and included peace treaties among Great Britain and France, Spain, and the Dutch Republic--the latter three of which had supported the colonists. Famously, artist Benjamin West commemorated the occasion with his painting "The Treaty of Paris." He was able to portray the American delegation--John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, Henry Laurens, and William Temple Franklin--but the British party refused to pose. So the paining remained as it is.

"Walden" Anniversary

"Walden; or, Life in the Woods" by Henry David Thoreau was first published on August 9, 1854 by the firm Ticknor and Fields, Boston. Of course, the book details the author's two years living in his cabin on land owned by his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson. The book records Thoreau's many observations, his reflections as he makes a spiritual journey, and calls for lives of simplicity and self-reliance. Although Thoreau had colonial and stereotyped ideas about Native Americans, he was also fascinated by Native culture and, even as a child, liked to role-play Indigenous living and learn about Indigenous culture. This picture of "Walden's" title page is from Wikipedia and features a drawing by Thoreau's sister Sophia.

I looked online and found some famous quotations from the book: 

"Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains.”

"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."

"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away."

"Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes."

“I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.”

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life..."

"Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify, simplify!"

"To be awake is to be alive."

"I have frequently seen a poet withdraw, having enjoyed the most valuable part of a farm, while the crusty farmer supposed that he had got a few wild apples only. Why, the owner does not know it for many years when a poet has put his farm in rhyme, the most admirable kind of invisible fence, has fairly impounded it, milked it, skimmed it, and got all the cream, and left the farmer only the skimmed milk."

Lincoln's Lost Speech

On May 29, 1856, Lincoln spoke at the Bloomington Convention at Major's Hall in downtown Bloomington, IL. The convention led to the founding of the Republican Party in the state. Lincoln had thought about what he'd say at the convention but he let the inspiration of the moment guide him. He had no manuscript. His speech was so spellbinding that almost no one took notes. His law partner, William Herndon, started to take notes but gave up because he was so moved by Lincoln's words. There is one newspaper summary: https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/mr-lincolns-lost-speech/ Otherwise, the event has become known as Lincoln's Lost Speech. 

Picture from: https://drloihjournal.blogspot.com/2018/05/abraham-lincoln-spoke-at-major-hall-in-bloomington-illinois-in-1856-and-the-speech-was-believed-to-be-unrecorded.html 

Andrew Wyeth's Friend Christina Olson

Born May 3, 1894, Christina Olson and her brother Alvaro lived on their farm in Cushing, ME. She had a degenerative muscular disorder known as Charcot–Marie–Tooth disease, but she disliked using crutches and a wheelchair. Andrew Wyeth befriended the siblings and did many paintings of them--especially Christina--and their farm. Although Wyeth used his wife Betsy's body for the figure, he used Christina's head and thin arms as she crawled along the ground, the way she preferred to get around. "Christina's World" (1948) is the most famous of his Olson paintings--perhaps of his entire oeuvre. Here are several photos of Christina and other Wyeth paintings. Andrew and Betsy are buried close to the Olsons in the Cushing cemetery. 

 

Kent State Anniversary

On May 4, 1970, three days after nationwide May Day demonstrations, a rally took place at Kent State University, a protest about the expansion of American military into Cambodia. At 12:24 PM, twenty-eight National Guard soldiers fired about 67 rounds toward students, killing four and wounding nine. None of the students was armed, although lies were reported that the demonstrating students were violent and that there was a sniper. Allison Krause and Jeffrey Miller were part of the rally, while Sandra Scheuer and William Schroeder were simply watching the rally between their classes. A young woman who was not a student, 14-year-old runaway Mary Ann Vecchio, was photographed wailing over the body of Jeffrey Miller. The photo became the most famous of the tragedy and won a Pulitzer. 

Here's an article about Ohio Gov. Jim Rhodes' legacy in the shooting.  

The Jewish community at Kent took the lead in commemorating the event on campus on its anniversary. Krause, Miller, and Scheuer were Jewish but the Jewish response honored all four students and remembered those who were injured. See this article. 

On May 14, ten days after the Kent State shootings, police fired upon students at the historically black college, Jackson State College in Jackson, MS. Phillip Lafayette Gibbs and James Earl Green were killed and 12 others were wounded.  

An earlier massacre occurred on February 8, 1968, at the campus of South Carolina State College in Orangeburg, SC. A crowd of African American students were protesting racial segregation at a local bowling alley. One city police officer and nine highway patrolmen fired into the crowd, injuring twenty-eight, and killing three: Samuel Ephesians Hammond, Delano Herman Middleton, and Henry Ezekial Smith. The Orangeburg tragedy received less media coverage than the two in 1970. 

Soon after the Kent State shootings, Neil Young quickly wrote the song "Ohio." Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young recorded it by May 21, and the song was released in June.  

Happy 200th Birthday, Frederic Edwin Church

It's the 200th birthday of a favorite artist! Frederic Edwin Church was born May 4, 1826. Here are a few of his paintings: "The Heart of the Andes" (1859), "Cotopaxi" (1862), "The Icebergs" (1861), and "West Rock, New Haven" (1849). Stephen Jay Gould wrote an article about that "Andes" painting and its scientific significance. Church had painted it in tribute to German scientist Alexander von Humboldt, who was the first European to attempt to climb the ice-covered mountain in the picture, Chimborazo in Ecuador. Church was even going to ship the large painting (5-1/2 feet by 10 feet) to Humboldt in Berlin, so he could see it, but Humboldt died before those arrangements could be made. Today, the painting is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in the same room as Emanuel Leutze's famous "Washington Crossing the Delaware."

There is a brand-new biography of church by Victoria Johnson, "Glorious Country: How the Artist Frederic Church Brought the World to America and America to the World."