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Théodore Gericault
by Alexandre-Marie Colin, 1816

Today is the birthday of Théodore Géricault (Jean-Louis André Théodore Géricault; Rouen, Normandy; 26 September 1791 – 26 January 1824 Paris); painter and lithographer, known for The Raft of the Medusa.  Although he died young, he was one of the pioneers of the Romantic movement.

A trip to Florence, Rome, and Naples (1816–17), prompted in part by the desire to flee from a romantic entanglement with his aunt.

Gallery

Leda e il cigno

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  Bust of a Black Man, 1808 (Ajuda National Palace)

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  Wounded Cuirassier Leaving the Field of Battle, 1814

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  Horse Head, 1815

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  Riderless Racers in Rome, 1817 (The Walters Art Museum)

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  The Capture of a Wild Horse, 1817

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  Portrait of Laure Bro, 1818

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  Heroic Landscape with Fishermen, 1818

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  Portrait Study of a Youth, ca. 1818–1820

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  Horse in the Storm, 1820–1821

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  The Derby of Epsom, 1821

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  The Kiss, charcoal, sepia wash and white gouache on paper, ca. 1822

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  White Arabian Horse, before 1824

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  Nude, Musée Bonnat (Bayonne)

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  Portrait of a Kleptomaniac, 1822 (Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent)

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  The Woman with a Gambling Mania, 1822 (Louvre, Paris)

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  Man Suffering from Delusions of Military Rank, 1822 (Collection Oskar Reinhart am Römerholz, Winterthur)

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  La Monomane de l’envie (Insane Woman), 1822 (Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon)

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  A kidnapper, 1822–1823 (Museum of Fine Arts, Springfield, Massachusetts)

Today is the birthday of Albert Lynch (Alberto Fernando Lynch; Gleisweiler, Kingdom of Prussia (Germany) 26 september 1860 – 1950 Monaco); painter and illustrator of Peruvian/German ancestry.

The women of his time were his favorite subject to paint and he preferred pastel, gouache and watercolor although he occasionally worked in the oil technique. His work maintained the spirit of the Belle Époque. He illustrated such books as Lady of the Camellias by Alexandre Dumas, fils, Le Père Goriot by Honoré de Balzac and La Parisienne by Henry Becque.

Lynch moved to Monaco in 1930, where he died, survived by his wife Marie Anna Victoria Bacouel, who he had married in Paris on 28 October 1896.

Gallery

T. S. Eliot
Eliot in 1934

And today is the birthday of T. S. Eliot (Thomas Stearns Eliot; St. Louis, Missouri; 26 September 1888 – 4 January 1965 Kensington); essayist, publisher, playwright, literary and social critic and in my opinion, one of the twentieth century’s major poets.  He moved to England in 1914 at age 25, settling, working and marrying there.  He was eventually naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39, renouncing his American citizenship.

Eliot attracted widespread attention for his poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (1915), which is seen as a masterpiece of the Modernist movement.  It was followed by some of the best-known poems in the English language, including The Waste Land (1922), “The Hollow Men” (1925), “Ash Wednesday” (1930) and Four Quartets (1945).  He is also known for his seven plays, particularly Murder in the Cathedral (1935).  He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948.

Before leaving the US, Eliot had told Emily Hale that he was in love with her. He exchanged letters with her from Oxford during 1914 and 1915, but they did not meet again until 1927. In a letter to Conrad Aiken late in December 1914, Eliot, aged 26, wrote: “I am very dependent upon women (I mean female society).” Less than four months later, Thayer introduced Eliot to Vivienne Haigh-Wood, a Cambridge governess. They were married at Hampstead Register Office on 26 June 1915.

After a short visit, alone, to his family in the United States, Eliot returned to London and took several teaching jobs, such as lecturing at Birkbeck College, University of London. The philosopher Bertrand Russell took an interest in Vivienne while the newlyweds stayed in his flat. Some scholars have suggested that she and Russell had an affair, but the allegations were never confirmed.

The marriage was markedly unhappy, in part because of Vivienne’s health problems. In a letter addressed to Ezra Pound, she covers an extensive list of her symptoms, which included a habitually high temperature, fatigue, insomnia, migraines, and colitis. This, coupled with apparent mental instability, meant that she was often sent away by Eliot and her doctors for extended periods of time in the hope of improving her health. And as time went on, he became increasingly detached from her. The couple formally separated in 1933 and in 1938 Vivienne’s brother, Maurice, had her committed to a mental hospital, against her will, where she remained until her death of heart disease in 1947.

Their relationship became the subject of a 1984 play Tom & Viv, which in 1994 was adapted as a film of the same name.

In a private paper written in his sixties, Eliot confessed: “I came to persuade myself that I was in love with Vivienne simply because I wanted to burn my boats and commit myself to staying in England. And she persuaded herself (also under the influence of [Ezra] Pound) that she would save the poet by keeping him in England. To her, the marriage brought no happiness. To me, it brought the state of mind out of which came The Waste Land.”

By 1932, Eliot had been contemplating a separation from his wife for some time. When Harvard offered him the Charles Eliot Norton professorship for the 1932–1933 academic year, he accepted and left Vivienne in England. Upon his return, he arranged for a formal separation from her, avoiding all but one meeting with her between his leaving for America in 1932 and her death in 1947. Vivienne was committed to the Northumberland House mental hospital in Woodberry Down, Manor House, London, in 1938, and remained there until she died. Although Eliot was still legally her husband, he never visited her. From 1933 to 1946 Eliot had a close emotional relationship with Emily Hale. Eliot later destroyed Hale’s letters to him, but Hale donated Eliot’s to Princeton University Library where they were sealed until 2020. When Eliot heard of the donation he deposited his own account of their relationship with Harvard University to be opened whenever the Princeton letters were.

From 1938 to 1957 Eliot’s public companion was Mary Trevelyan of London University, who wanted to marry him and left a detailed memoir.

On 10 January 1957, at the age of 68, Eliot married Esmé Valerie Fletcher, who was 30. In contrast to his first marriage, Eliot knew Fletcher well, as she had been his secretary at Faber and Faber since August 1949. They kept their wedding secret; the ceremony was held in St. Barnabas’ Church, Kensington, London, at 6:15 am with virtually no one in attendance other than his wife’s parents. Eliot had no children with either of his wives. In the early 1960s, by then in failing health, Eliot worked as an editor for the Wesleyan University Press, seeking new poets in Europe for publication. After Eliot’s death, Valerie dedicated her time to preserving his legacy, by editing and annotating The Letters of T. S. Eliot and a facsimile of the draft of The Waste Land. Valerie Eliot died on 9 November 2012 at her home in London.