Katherine Keenum

While I was working on the previous post, about Anna Ancher of the Skagen colony, I ran across an archived blog post on the Finnish painter, Elin Kleopatra Danielson-Gambogi (1861–1919). She was an almost exact contemporary of Jeanette and, after training in Finland, went to Paris and Pont Aven, where she became a follower of Jules Bastien-Lepage.  Read More 

Although a little girl is, in fact, shown sitting on a chair in this painting, it was one of the pictures I had in mind when I invented Jeanette’s interest in rooms as “portraits without people.” Anna Ancher, an almost exact contemporary of Jeanette,  Read More 

This is the painting I have a melancholy Jeanette copy in the Louvre after Edward has gone south to Dr. Aubanel’s sanatorium. It would obviously appeal to an artist who perceives empty rooms as “portraits without people.”

Samuel van Hoogstraten was  Read More 

Website tip: The Hammock: A Novel Based on the True Story of French Painter James Tissot is Lucy Paquette’s gorgeous, informative website devoted to her historical novel of the same title. The novel (which opens with a fictionalized version of the death of Regnault that Carolus rehearses to Edward) is an e-book that takes advantage of digital technology to include seventeen zoom-able paintings as illustrations. The website provides many, many more pictures by Tissot, his contemporaries, and the artists who influenced him. Go explore! Read More 

Falling back on favorite songs seems a natural way for people (especially students) to experience their emotions. When I was thinking about Jeanette’s loneliness during Edward’s absence in the winter of 1879–1880, I searched the Public Domain Music for a song for her to sing over and over to herself. What luck to find a melancholy, wistful one published in 1872 by a female songwriter, Charlotte Alington Barnard, the pseudonym of Claribel! It even fitted perfectly with Jeanette and Edward’s earlier romantic day by the Seine. Read More