Alice Barber Stephens, Illustrator (Yes, Another One)

You may have noticed that I’ve been sharing the stories of women artists and illustrators over the last few months. I didn’t set out to look for them, but one woman led to another. Like women warriors, women journalists and women inventors, even women artists who were well known and successful in their time are…

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From the Archives: The Swans of Harlem

As I mentioned in a recent post,  I have been fascinated by ballet and its history for most of my life. So when I began to see notices for a book about the forgotten Black ballerinas who danced for the Dance Theatre of Harlem I was eager to get my hands on it.  It lived…

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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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