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Picturing a World

Almanac art et al., 1908

August 14, 2014
To visualize Mattie’s world, I’ve been collecting images from 1908. They don’t have to illustrate anything in the story, just help me sharpen my understanding of the period. This almanac cover, for instance, calls attention to pride urban architecture coupled with a Gibson-Girl style allegorical beauty, to modes of traffic, and the  Read More 
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Henry van Ingen

August 11, 2014
Tags: Vassar, rooms
Prof. Henry Van Ingen, Professor of Art (1870)
During my research, it was a delight to discover that there was a popular art teacher at Vassar. If I had known when I was writing that Henry van Ingen was so romantically sensitive in appearance, I suppose I might have given Jeanette a full-scale crush on him. It might have helped prepare for her interest in an older man. Then again, the student author of Letters from Old-Time Vassar, Written by a Student in 1869–70 (Poughkeepsie, 1915) wrote home that “we never think of our teachers as men or Miss Lyman wouldn’t have them here” (p. 70).

A photograph of van Ingen, cigarette in hand as he talks to a girl in the art gallery, captures some of the sly humor I believe the man had. I admit, however, that I pictured him as pudgier and more avuncular.  Read More 
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Truly, deeply felt

August 8, 2014
Blog tip: Do a double-take at Lucy Sparrow's Felt Corner Shop. Oh, how I hope I can incorporate such playfulness and dedication into something one of my characters does!
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Vassar dorm room

August 7, 2014
Tags: Vassar, rooms
G. W. Pach, Vassar College student room (ca. 1878)

“We had two of the dearest rooms, opening into each other, with four windows in the larger. That was mine—absolutely darling!—embroidered pillows all over the couch, and easy chairs, and a tea-table … and photographs stuck up everywhere … and a border of posters at the top of the wall, and signs which  Read More 

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Guns of August

August 5, 2014
Tags: Women artists
Website tip: In this centenary of the start of World War I, the Imperial War Museum in London has mounted a page devoted to 6 Stunning First World War Artworks by Women War Artists.
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Back to a future restaurant

August 4, 2014
Tags: Robida, cafes and restaurants, illustration
Detail, Albert Robida, Leaving the Opera in the Year 2000 (1882)
Oh, what fun! I thought when I saw a Public Domain Review post on Albert Robida’s Leaving the Opera in the Year 2000. I keep an eye out for cafés and restaurants and will cheerfully add this one to my directory of imaginary eating places. The verve and wit of Robida’s style carries well from Jeanette’s 19th C into Mattie’s 20th C—for that matter, as a chic French version of steampunk right into the 21st C.  Read More 
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Suffragists in England

August 3, 2014
Tags: Suffrage, work-in-progress
Blog tip For ideas about what Mattie's suffragist group might be up to, I read about the suffragist movement in England as well as America. Today's Spitalfield Life's East End Suffragette Map caught my eye.
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Martha Walter

August 1, 2014
Tags: Women artists
Martha Walter, At the Beach (n.d.)
Blog tip: A post on Martha Walter introduced me to this American artist who studied in Paris. She spent time in Chattanooga, Tenn., at a time when the real Jeanette lived there. If anybody has an idea how to learn more about Walter's connection to Chattanooga, please let me know! Read More 
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John Sloan as Trilby

July 31, 2014
Tags: Ashcan School, Sloan, Trilby
John Sloan and Frank Taylor in Costume, Burlesque of Trilby (1894)
What can I say? You can’t help loving it when two enthusiasms overlap so wackily. The novel Trilby by George Du Maurier was a bestseller in the 1890’s. Known to all art students in Paris—and evidently, Philadelphia!—it is a wonderful source for  Read More 
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Marie Bracquemond at her easel

July 28, 2014
Tags: Bracquemond, Dammouse, Women artists
Edouard Dammouse, Marie Braquemond au chevalet (1890)
I only recently found Dammouse’s pastel of Marie Braqemond at the Galerie Ary Jan in Paris (where it sold). The picture feels like reentering Jeanette’s world, and so it’s a good place to begin running through Where the Light Falls again, more or less chronologically.

My first ever post showed three women artists in a studio. Because I love novels in which I share friendships vicariously, Jeanette’s time with Amy, Emily, and Sonja was always a major theme for me. Another was the seriousness with which women artists worked in the 19th C—a dedication that seems evident in this image.  Read More 
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