Artistic Ambitions: Cecilia Beaux in Philadelphia

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Artistic Ambitions: Cecilia Beaux in Philadelphia In 1885, when young Philadelphia artist Cecilia Beaux (1855-1942) sent Les derniers jours d’enfance (1883) to the fifty-sixth annual exhibition of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, her goal to become one of the finest and most successful portrait painters in America was only a glimmering ambi­tion. Painted under the tutelage of artist William Sartain, Les derniers jours...
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“Your Future Depends on Yourself”: Asa Packer as the Self-Made Man

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on “Your Future Depends on Yourself”: Asa Packer as the Self-Made Man Nineteenth-century literature abounds with stories of men who rose from humble circumstances to great wealth by virtue of their own diligence, perseverance, and courage. Several of the most famous such works, novels written by Horatio Alger Jr. (1832-1899), became best-sellers because the American public relished his stories about plucky boys achieving their goals against all odds. In his first...
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Catherine Drinker Bowen (1897-1973)

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Catherine Drinker Bowen (1897-1973) Writers seldom choose as friends those self-contained characters who are never in trouble, never unhappy or ill, never make mistakes and always count their change when it is handed to them” wrote one of twentieth-century Amer­ica’s best-known historians and biographers, Catherine Drinker Bowen (1897-1973). Born in Haverford, Mont­gomery County, she is best known for her narratives of...
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