Showing posts with label Art. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Art. Show all posts

Friday, February 2, 2024

Blog Mirror: Norman Rockwell and his Dam Painting

 

Norman Rockwell and his Dam Painting

Saturday, February 2, 1924. Wilson lingers, gun battle at Lysite.

Wilson's lingering passing was the major headline, but the gun battle at Lysite caught my eye.


Gun battle at Lysite?

Lysite and Lost Cabin

Lysite and Lost Cabin, in the distance.

Well, why not?

Locals schools were about to be named for Presidents, including one that I went to.

Wilson did fall into a coma that evening.

Albert B. Fall, 2/2/24.


Fall refused to testify.


Alexei Rykov took over for the dead Lenin as Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union, and Felix Dzerzhinsky became the Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the National Economy.

And, yes, Rykov fell from grace under Stalin, was arrested in 1938, and killed in 1941.


Dzerzhinsky, a Pole, would save Stalin the trouble by dying of a heart attack in 1926.  He got to remain a Soviet hero that way.

Weekly magazines were out.


Three generations of an Irish family posed for a photographer beside their lodgings at Alexander Street, Waterford.



Monday, January 15, 2024

Saturday, January 15, 1944. The San Juan Earthquake.

Proving that natural disasters do not take time out for war, the San Juan earthquake in Argentina killed 10,000 people and left 1/3d of San Juan's province's residents homeless.

Injured housed outdoors due to collapse of hospital.

The II Corps captured Monte Trecchio.  Part of the offensive operations resulting in the capture were designed as a diversion for upcoming landings at Anzio.

Heavy fighting occurs north and sought of Leningrad as the Red Army begins to reverse a 900 day siege.

Australian forces on the Huon Peninsula of New Guinea take Sio.

Swordfish bill imbedded in a 2’ piece of sub-chaser hull.  January 15, 1944.

The U-377 disappeared, probably sunk by the HMS Wanderer on January 17.


Actress Irene Dunne christened the SS Carole Lombard as Clark Gable, back from Army Air Force service, and Louis B. Mayer looked on. She was honored with the name, posthumously, due to her record-breaking war bond work prior to her tragic death.


Stars and Stripes, January 15, 1944.

Friday, December 22, 2023

Saturday, December 22, 1923. Reversal at Puebla.

It was a Saturday, so the Saturday news magazines were out, featuring Christmas themes, as to be expected.


The news did not have the Holiday Spirit.


The news reported the Rebel failure to take Puebla.

Georg Luger, inventor of the iconic handgun, died on this day.  He was an Austrian by birth, but had spent much of his early life in Italy.   Multi talented, he was trained as an accountant.

Monday, November 27, 2023

Saturday, November 27, 1923. Cairo Declaration, Australian advances, Poignant art.

It was a Saturday, and all the Saturday magazines were out. As we're dealing with 1943, they're still protected by copyright.  They all featured Thanksgiving themes, but the most recalled is that of the Saturday Evening Post, which featured a Rockwell with a picture of an Italian girl praying near rubble, wearing the wool mackinaw of an American Army 1st Sergeant.

The US, China, and UK agreed to the release of the Cairo Declaration.  It stated:

The several military missions have agreed upon future military operations against Japan. The Three Great Allies expressed their resolve to bring unrelenting pressure against their brutal enemies by sea, land, and air. This pressure is already rising.

The Three Great Allies are fighting this war to restrain and punish the aggression of Japan. They covet no gain for themselves and have no thought of territorial expansion. It is their purpose that Japan shall be stripped of all the islands in the Pacific which she has seized or occupied since the beginning of the first World War in 1914, and that all the territories Japan has stolen from the Chinese, such as Manchuria, Formosa, and The Pescadores, shall be restored to the Republic of China. Japan will also be expelled from all other territories which she has taken by violence and greed. The aforesaid three great powers, mindful of the enslavement of the people of Korea, are determined that in due course Korea shall become free and independent.

With these objects in view the three Allies, in harmony with those of the United Nations at war with Japan, will continue to persevere in the serious and prolonged operations necessary to procure the unconditional surrender of Japan.

Included in the "rising pressure" that declaration referenced were actions on New Guinea, where on this day the Australians, who didn't get a seat at the table in the Cairo Conference, began an armored supported advance at Wareo.


The Australian Army was using the Matilda tank, which had been a disappointment elsewhere, to great effect in New Guinea.  Its use took the Japanese by surprise.

The campaign in New Guinea, one of the major ones of the war against Japan, which was heavily borne by the Australian Army, went on until the Japanese surrender.  It was like the Marine action at Bougainville, albeit on a much larger scale, that way.

The Army-Navy Game was played at West Point.  Navy beat Army 13 to 0.

Angelo Bertelli was awarded the Heisman Trophy for his performance as Notre Dame's quarterback.  He was in Marine Corps bootcamp at the time.

Photo of eleven collegic football players, including Bertelli, who had joined the Marine Corps.

Badly wounded as a Marine Corps officer on Iwo Jima, his football career in the NFL was short after the war, ending in 1948.  His Marine Corps career lasted longer, as he remained in the reserves until 1957.  He died of brain cancer at age 78 in 1999.

As playing for Notre Dame would indicate at the time, Bertelli was Catholic and the child of Italian immigrants.

Friday, November 17, 2023

Saturday, November 17, 1923. The Lost Pearls

  


Sigh. . . I wish.

The Saturday Evening Post had a more urban illustration.


The German steamer Kronos, Greek for "Time", hit a mine off of Saaremaa and sank with the loss of all 17 hands.

Friday, November 10, 2023

Saturday, November 10, 1923. The loyal dog Hachikō (ハチ公).


Hachikō (ハチ公) an Akita, was born. The dog would return daily to wait for his deceased owner to return from work for over nine years, living to be eleven years old.

The Saturday magazines were on the stand.

Former President Woodrow Wilson condemned the U.S. isolationist policy as "cowardly and dishonorable" in a radio address.

Crown Prince Wilhelm of German returned to Germany from the Netherlands.


Ludendorff was released on parole, demonstrating one of the problems Weimar Germany had with suppressing anti-democratic uprisings. . . the tendency to let those on the right, go.

Friday, September 1, 2023

Painted Bricks: Don Juan's Mexican Restaurant, Casper Wyoming

Painted Bricks: Don Juan's Mexican Restaurant, Casper Wyoming:

Don Juan's Mexican Restaurant, Casper Wyoming




Casper has seen some murals enter its downtown space recently and this is a nice example.  Don Juan's Mexican Restaurant, which has been in this location now long enough to be regarded as a Casper staple, had this very nice mural depicting scenes of Mexican rural life painted.







This mural is just across the street from the Women of Wyoming mural added last yeaer, which depicts a contemporary Native American woman, and just down the block from Jacob Reeb mural, so some of the diversity of Wyoming is being added through these depictions.

Friday, August 25, 2023

Saturday, August 25, 1923. Involuntary population exchanges.

The Greek government ratified the Convention Concerning the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations, following the Turkish ratification two days prior.

1.5 million Orthodox Christians from Turkey were accordingly involuntarily sent to Greece and 500,000 Greek Muslims involuntarily sent to Turkey.

Violence broke out in Carnegie Pennsylvania when 10,000 Ku Klux Klansman held a rally on a nearby hill and moved towards the heavily Catholic town.  Town residents threw rocks and ultimately a Klansman was shot dead.

Sometimes missed, the Klan was not only racist, but nativist, and anti-Catholic.

Memories of Klan violence still echo in Carnegie today


Germany put workers on the gold basis rate in an attempt to stem inflation.

The government was trying to stave off coal labor problems again.


And a lecturer declared Woodrow Wilson's idealism too advanced for the world.

Friday, July 21, 2023

Saturday, July 21, 1923. Villa's body was being viewed, Maughan was waiting for directions, Harding wasn't going to call Congress into Session, ERA text changed.

 

I'm certain that the cover of The Saturday Evening Post would be condemned in many quarters today, even if you still see things like this.

Of course, this scene has been taken over by everyone, male and female, checking their cell phones.

The Country Gentleman simply featured a fine bovine.

The Saturday Casper paper noted the important events of the day.



Villa's body was being viewed, Maughan was waiting for directions, Harding wasn't going to call Congress into Session, and there was discussion of adjusting reparations.

The National Women's Party was meeting in Seneca Falls, New York


The NWP had proposed an Equal Rights Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1921. At this convention, it changed the text of the draft to more closely match the text that was ultimately submitted to Congress and the States.

The first regular radio broadcast in the Netherlands commenced.

The KKK paraded in Topeka in defiance of an order issued by the Attorney General of Kansas, but which the Mayor of Kansas stated he would not enforce.

Friday, July 7, 2023

Saturday, July 7, 1923. Things maritime.


It was Saturday, so the weekly magazines hit the newsstands.

The White House announced that President Harding's Voyage of Understanding was being extended by two days.  The new itinerary provided that Harding would visit Santa Catalina at Mrs. Harding's request and then travel down the Central American coast, through the Panama Canal, and back to D.C.

France ratified the Washington Naval Treaty.

Friday, June 30, 2023

Saturday, June 30, 1923. Bombing the Hochfeld Bridge.

A bomb detonated on the Hochfeld railway bridge in the German city of Duisburg, Westphalia while a Belgian troop train was crossing the bridge, killing eight Belgian soldiers and two German civilians.  Forty three others were injured.  The bomb was in a toilet of the train itself.


The mayor of Hochfeld and twelve others were arrested as suspects.

A new bridge would be built nearby, using parts of the old bridge structure, being completed in 1927.  It was rendered inoperable on May 22, 1944, by an Allied aerial bomb.  The Germans in turn would blow the bridge again on May 4, 1945, but the American Army built a temporary structure to repair it on May 8, 1945, which was dubbed the "Victory Bridge".

\
A new bridge span was completed in 1949.  It still uses parts of the original structure.

The Country Gentleman had an illustration of a Civil War veteran Zouave cleaning his Civil War era rifle, a bittersweet illustration as the war was now some sixty years in the past and Civil War veterans were disappearing daily.


The Saturday Evening Post featured a Leyendecker of a corpulent British soldier saluting a child patriot.

Sometimes the news from a century ago reads an awful lot like today's.


Harding was in Gardiner, Montana and Yellowstone National Park on his Voyage of Understanding.

Monday, June 26, 2023

Saturday, June 26, 1943. Mutiny in Norway, Choosing Normandy, and Willie Gillis.

Today in World War II History—June 26, 1943: Allied commanders choose Normandy for invasion of France in 1944 and appoint Air Chief Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory to prepare air plans for D-day.

Sarah Sundin, on her blog.

The crews of six U-boats based in Norway mutinied, refusing to put out to sea in light of high German submarine losses.  They were arrested and placed in Akershus Prison in Oslo.  The collapse of Imperial Germany began, of course, with sailor revolts in 1918.

Fritz Schmidt, age 39, the German Commissioner-General for Political Affairs and Propaganda in the occupied Netherlands died when he "fell, jumped, or was pushed out of a train".

"USS Newell (DE-322), launches sideways at Houston, Texas, June 26, 1943. The ship was named in honor of Naval Aviator Lieutenant Commander Byron Bruce Newell who was killed while serving onboard USS Hornet (CV-8) during the Battle of Santa Cruz Islands, October 26, 1942. Ship’s Sponsor was the widow. Photographed August 12, 1943. Official U.S. Navy photograph."

A famous Norman Rockwell illustration appeared on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post, depicting his everyman soldier figure, Willie Gillis,  showing the "cat's cradle" string trick to an Indian snake charmer.

Friday, June 23, 2023

Wednesday, June 23, 1943. Arrests in France, Elections in Ireland.

The "Prosper" network of SOE agents in France, including French woman Andrée Borrel, Francis Suttill, and Gilbert were arrested by the Gestapo after being betrayed by an informer.

Borrel.
 

They'd be executed on July 6, 1944.  Execution would have been legal under the norms of war of the day, as they were spies, but the method was bizarre in that they were rendered unconscious through injection and then burned alive.

As previously noted, the SOE, which frankly was quite amateurish in Europe, had been penetrated by the Germans.

Sarah Sundin reports:

Today in World War II History—June 23, 1943: President Roosevelt establishes American Commission for the Protection and Salvage of Artistic and Historic Monuments in War Areas (“Monuments Men”).

She also notes that the coal strike in Appalachia was settled, but that President Roosevelt threatened to conscript the miners if it occurred again. 

In Ireland's general election t Fianna Fáil, led by Éamon de Valera, failed to gain a majority but was able to form a minority government.

Saturday, June 21, 1923. Somewhere West of Laramie and somewhere near Hutchinson, Kansas.

Earlier this week, we noted this:

Thursday, June 21, 1923. Dawn of the advertising age. Somewhere West Of Laramie.

The modern advertising age dawned on this day in 1921 with an ad for the Jordan Playboy automobile:

Today In Wyoming's History: June 211923   This advertisement first ran in the Saturday Evening Post:


The advertisement is the most famous car ad of all time, and the ad itself revolutionized advertising.  Based on the recollection of the Jordan Motor Car Company's founder in seeing a striking mounted girl outside of Laramie, while he was traveling by train, the advertisement is all image, revealing next to nothing about the actual product.  While the Jordan Motor Car Company did not survive the Great Depression, the revolution in advertising was permanent.

Anyway you look at it, it's still a great ad.

This, by the way, is the print date.  The actual issue of the magazine would be a few days later.

On this date, the advertisement actually ran.  I've always thought that it ran in the form set out above, but there were multiple versions, and it would appear that in actuality, the version below is the one that ran.

It's similiar.


But I like the one set out at the very top better.

Sculptor Guzon Borglum began carving the Stone Mountain Memorial bas-relief.  He'd work on the Confederate memorial until 1925, and then abandon the project, blasting his carving of Robert E. Lee off the mountain.  None of his work at Stone Mountain remains.

Harding stopped in Hutchinson, Kansas.


Summer themes were the topic of illustrations on the weekly magazines.