Nineteenth Century America
Cecilia Beaux, Portrait Painter
During her lifetime, Cecelia Beaux (1855-1942) was well-known in the social circles who had their portraits painted. She was often compared to John Singer Sargent (1856-1925), whose career overlapped with Beaux’s— both for her style and for her place as one of the leading society portrait painters of her day.[1] Both blended academic realism with…
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Deja Vu All Over Again: The Fort Snelling Concentration Camp, 1862
Back in August, My Own True Love and I spent a History Nerd Holiday in the Twin Cities. I came back with a lot of stories, but I left an important one for later: the concentration camp the United States government built at Fort Snelling at the end of the U.S. -Dakota War of…
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Madame Demorest, Women’s Magazines, and Fashion
In the mid-19th century, Ellen Curtis “Madame” Demorest (1824-1898), aided by her husband William, created a fashion and media empire in New York built on the growing magazine industry and the aspirations of middle-class women who wanted to reproduce current French couture at home, something that was previously only available to the wealthy. The connection…
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