Women
Eliza Lucas Pinckney Gets the (Indigo) Blues
Let’s get this out of the way up front: Eliza Lucas Pinckney (1722-1793) owned enslaved people, and it was her exploitation of their labor that made her achievements as an agricultural innovator possible. Eliza Lucas was born on Antigua, which was then part of the British Leeward Islands, where she grew up on one of…
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Fanny Palmer: The Norman Rockwell of the Nineteenth Century?
If you grew up in the United States, you probably are familiar with the work of artist Frances Flora (Fanny) Bond Palmer (1812-1876), even though I suspect you’ve never heard of her. Fanny Palmer was born in Leicester, England, where she received her first training in art, specifically drawing, perspective and watercolor, at Mary Linwood’s…
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Berenice Abbott takes New York’s Portrait
These days I’m hanging out a lot with Bohemians (or possibly that should be bohemians) in New York at the turn of the century: radicals, reformers, artists, and a handful of people who are just plain weird. In the process, I am coming across interesting people doing fascinating things. Case in point: photographer Berenice…
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