Pennsylvania’s Forgotten Roseland: George Cochran Lambdin and Rose Culture in Germantown

Posted by on Aug 23, 2021 in | Comments Off on Pennsylvania’s Forgotten Roseland: George Cochran Lambdin and Rose Culture in Germantown Hugh Scott (1900–94), a Pennsylvania lawmaker and Republican who served in the U.S. House of Representatives, 1947–59, and the U.S. Senate, 1959–77, was an avid rosarian who actively worked to have the rose proclaimed as the official flower of the United States — a feat he accomplished when President Ronald Reagan signed appropriate legislation in 1986. A resident of Philadelphia, Scott came...
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Monster Bones: Charles Willson Peale and the Mysterious Nondescript Animal

Posted by on Oct 28, 2019 in | Comments Off on Monster Bones: Charles Willson Peale and the Mysterious Nondescript Animal On October 14, 1800, a New York City newspaper called Mercantile Advertiser published a rather lengthy news/opinion piece on some large and very curious bones that had been unearthed on a farm belonging to John Masten, located about 14 miles from the New York state village of Newburgh. The unidentified author observed that “these huge bones irresistibly force upon us by the power of associating...
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Firm Foundations in Philadelphia: The Lewis and Clark Expedition’s Ties to Pennsylvania

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Firm Foundations in Philadelphia: The Lewis and Clark Expedition’s Ties to Pennsylvania For a century and a half, from 1807 until the early 1960s, the celebrated expedition undertaken by Meriwether Lewis (1774-1809) and William Clark (1770-1838) between 1803 and 1806 was generally perceived to be strictly a western United States phenomenon. Historians and educators who discussed it in their writings or in their teaching usually described the twenty-eight month ordeal as beginning...
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Current and Coming

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Current and Coming Mammoth Scale Sometime about 1808, renowned Philadelphia physician Caspar Wistar (1761-1818) – for whom the city’s Wistar Institute is named – asked sculptor William Rush (1756-1833) to create a series of large-scale anatomical models. Rush, known chiefly as a maker of civic statuary and ships’ figureheads, responded with the strangest works of his career: a massive inner...
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Edwin Austin Abbey, A Capital Artist

Posted by on Nov 24, 2013 in | Comments Off on Edwin Austin Abbey, A Capital Artist For those familiar with his majestic works of art – particularly his grand public murals – it seems improbable that Edwin Austin Abbey (1852–1911) had little formal training. He attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts for just one semester, where fellow students observed he rarely finished a drawing as assigned, preferring instead to produce sketches of his own design. Abbey was the...
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