The Lovers’ Chronicle 1 July – towards – art by Rhoda Delaval & Willard Metcalf

The Lovers’ Chronicle 1 July – towards – art by Rhoda Delaval & Willard Metcalf – birth of George Sand

01 July 2023 By Rhett 0 In Random

Dear Zazie, Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag. Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

a purpose, still,

ok, we can say it,

a passion

a long travail

that finally sleeps

for you

this i seek

all we are, culminates here, what we have become, in each other, so much about bein’, explorin’, creatin’ a vision

“The beauty that speaks

is the only moment.”

a purpose, shall we say
the word, a passion

this necessary vision

a long wound that rests,
never quite healin’

art, verse
for discovery
this is what we seek

we run towards
not so much
about leavin’
as it is about travelin’

do you hear

which of us does not have
some pain to distract
or some yoke to shake

Today is the birthday of Rhoda Delaval Astley (London 1 July 1725 – 1757 London); aristocrat and artist. She was married to Edward Astley, with whom she had a daughter and three sons. Lady Astley studied painting with Arthur Pond, who painted her portrait. Seaton Delaval Hall passed from the Delaval family to the Astley family through her descendants.

Gallery

Arthur Pond’s portrait Delaval

Sir Jacob Astley (1579–1651/1652), 1st Baron Astley of Reading
Later Lady Astley, and Her Brother, Sir Francis Blake Delaval (1727–1771)
Anne Hussey Delaval (1737–1812), Lady Stanhope

George Sand
George Sand at 60. Photo by Nadar, 1864.

Today is the birthday of Amantine-Lucile-Aurore Dupin (Paris 1 July 1804 – 8 June 1876 Nohant-Vic), best known by her pseudonym George Sand; novelist and memoirist. She is equally well known for her much publicized romantic affairs with a number of artists, including Polish-French composer and pianist Frédéric Chopin and the writer Alfred de Musset.

In 1822, at the age of eighteen, Sand married Casimir Dudevant (1795–1871; first name “François”). She and Dudevant had two children. In early 1831, she left her husband and entered upon a four- or five-year period of “romantic rebellion.” In 1835, she was legally separated from Dudevant and took her children with her.

Sand conducted affairs of varying duration with Jules Sandeau (1831), Prosper Mérimée, Alfred de Musset (summer 1833 – March 1835), Louis-Chrysostome Michel, Pierre-François Bocage, Félicien Mallefille, Louis Blanc, and Frédéric Chopin (1837–1847). She engaged in an intimate friendship with actress Marie Dorval, which led to widespread but unconfirmed rumours of an affair.

In Majorca one can still visit the (then-abandoned) Carthusian monastery of Valldemossa, where Sand spent the winter of 1838–1839 with Chopin and her children. This trip to Majorca was described by her in Un hiver à Majorque (A Winter in Majorca), first published in 1841.

Gallery

at 60. Photo by Nadar, 1864.

George Sand by Charles Louis Gratia (c. 1835)

Portrait of George Sand at 34, by Auguste Charpentier, 1838, Musée de la Vie romantique, Paris

Sand depicted as Mary Magdalene in a sketch by French artist Louis Boulanger

Sand sewing, by Delacroix, 1838

J’ai un but, une tâche, disons le mot, une passion. Le métier d’écrire en est une violente et presque indestructible.

La vie est une longue blessure qui s’endort rarement et ne se guérit jamais.

L’art pour l’art est un vain mot. L’art pour le vrai, l’art pour le beau et le bon, voilà la religion que je cherche….

Tous, quand nous avons un peu de loisir et d’argent, nous voyageons, ou plutôt nous fuyons, car il ne s’agit pas tant de voyager que de partir, entendez-vous? Quel est celui de nous qui n’a pas quelque douleur à distraire ou quelque joug à secouer?

La beauté qui parle aux yeux, reprit-elle, n’est que le prestige d’un moment; l’œuil du corps n’est pas toujours celui de l’âme.

Today is the birthday of Willard Metcalf (Willard Leroy Metcalf; Lowell, Massachusetts; July 1, 1858 – March 9, 1925 New York City); artist. He studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and later attended Académie Julian, Paris. After early figure-painting and illustration, he became prominent as a landscape painter. He was one of the Ten American Painters who in 1897 seceded from the Society of American Artists. For some years he was an instructor in the Womans Art School, Cooper Union, New York, and in the Art Students League, New York. In 1893 he became a member of the American Watercolor Society, New York. Generally associated with American Impressionism, he is also remembered for his New England landscapes and involvement with the Old Lyme Art Colony at Old Lyme, Connecticut and his influential years at the Cornish Art Colony.In 1899 Metcalf joined his friends Robert Reid and Edward Simmons in painting murals for a New York courthouse. Metcalf’s model for the murals was Marguerite Beaufort Hailé, a stage performer twenty years his junior, whom the artist would marry in 1903. He and Henreitte divorced in 1920, which spurred a period of drinking and decreased productivity. However, he rebounded and painted for a number of years in Vermont, possibly returning briefly to Cornish.