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Picturing a World

Children in the Luxembourg Garden

A post on Children in the Summer Park at the blog, It’s About Time, alerted me to a painting I’ve been searching for without being able to remember the artist’s name—Albert Edelfelt. Itwas this painting that first gave me the idea  Read More 
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Harriet Backer

Website tip: Blue Interior by artist Harriet Backer is featured on today’s Lines and Colors. I have shown here another of her interiors, a Breton kitchen, that I wish I had known when I was writing Where the Light Falls. Not only does it illustrate the Gernagans’ kitchen, it fits perfectly with Jeanette’s motif of rooms as “portraits without people.” Read More 
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Kay Nielsen

Having recently bought the gorgeous 2015 Taschen reprint of East of the Sun, West of the Moon, I was much interested to come across an on-line version of the original. It confirms  Read More 
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Studio party

This engraving of Gunnar Berndston's depiction of a Shrove Tuesday pancake supper appears in The Illustrated Catalogue of the Paris Salon for 1882. Such an engraved image might seem inadequate to eyes accustomed to photographic reproduction, yet turning the pages of the Salon catalogues in the research library of The Clark was a wonderful way to grasp the scope of the annual exhibitions. To see what I mean, click here for the next year's catalogue

In the 1882 catalogue, a few pictures seemed to leap out illustratively for Where the Light Falls. This one reminded me of Read More 
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Hat for Jeanette?

Blog tip: Click here for one of several recent posts on hats at It’s About Time. Liljelund’s young woman (and her bangs) caught my eye because she reminds me of Jeanette, who loves clothes but needs to develop a fashion sense. Read More 
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Wish I'd seen Bauck in time

It is gratifying to run across paintings (like Vollon’s Mound of Butter) that seem to jump right out of the world of my novel, but here’s one I wish I had seen while I was writing. What an engaging gaze!

The subject of Danish artist Bertha Wegmann’s portrait’—the Swedish-born Jeanna Bauck (1840–1926)—would have been Edward's contemporary Read More 
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Black hats

(l) Ellen Day Hale, Self-Portrait (1885); (r) Mina Carlsson-Bredberg, Study, Académie Julian
After I saw Manet’s Woman Reading, I came across these two pictures, both by students in the 1880’s, both of women with the same sort of bangs and ears showing, each wearing a soft-crowned black hat. Could they be the same student?!?  Read More 
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Elsa Beskow

Several interests came together for me when I came across Swedish artist, Elsa Beskow (1874–1953)—Jeanette’s future career as an illustrator; my new heroine Mattie’s work in juvenile book publishing; women’s rights; and Scandinavian women artists. As a Christmas present to  Read More 
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Clay maquette

Swedish artist Eva Bonnier accompanied Hanna Hirsch to Paris in 1883.* Bonnier was primarily a painter; but like my characters, Amy Richardson and Sonja Borealska, she practiced sculpture in clay. Read More 
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More Scandinavian interiors

Carl Vilhelm Holsoe The Dining Room

Blog tip: Another artist of domestic interiors—Carl Vilhelm Holsoe.

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