Most Recent. In Arts & Letters – Spirituality.

Arts & Letters – Spirituality

John Chiaverina – Van Gogh: “The sadness will last forever.”

“The sadness will last forever.” According to Vincent van Gogh’s brother Theo, these were the final words the painter uttered before his death on July 29, 1890, which stemmed from an untreated infection likely caused by a self-inflected gunshot wound two days earlier. Van Gogh’s sadness may be eternal, but today, thanks to the Parisian auction house Remy Le Fur & Associates, one presumably happy bidder was able to purchase the...

Tessa Solomon-The Women of Impressionism: Berthe Morisot, Mary Cassatt, and Other Pioneering Figures Who Shaped the Movement

When the Impressionists debuted their work as a group in 1874, critics were quick to label their art “feminine.” Their canvases were small, their pastel palettes were too gauzy, their brushstrokes were too loose. Slices of everyday life—seascapes and English gardens, mothers and daughters—appeared in the place of moralizing historical scenes. “Only a woman has the right to rigorously practice the Impressionist system,” critic Téodor de Wyzewa wrote in 1891. “She alone can limit her...

Joanna Scutts-Feminize Your Canon: Fanny Fern

 Column Feminize Your Canon explores the lives of underrated and underread female authors.  In 1854, one of America’s most popular newspaper columnists, the pseudonymous Fanny Fern, published Ruth Hall: A Domestic Tale of The Present Time, an autobiographical novel so thinly veiled as to be downright scandalous. In a preface, Fern announced that her book was “entirely at variance with all set rules for novel-writing,” eschewing an intricate plot, elaborate descriptions, and...