Action starts at Lo Spiedo at 5:30 p.m., hosted by Carl B Sure. Great happy hour specials, and a great evening to be in the shade.
I’ll be at Locust Rendezvous at 6:15 p.m. Roughly. You kids know the deal.
On to Founding Fathers at 8:30. Hopefully this week Aiming for 7th Place can behave themselves. I’m personally not going to allow them to take any shots until the Impossible Round. Speaking of 7th place, not only do we have prizes for 1st and 2nd, it’s the only bar where we have a prize for 7th. (Same questions being used from last night, so don’t play again if you played last night.) Hope to see you tonight!
Today’s art is Man With a Cat by Cecilia Beaux. Born in Philadelphia in 1855, she attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, which at the time was run by the controversial Thomas Eakins. She had some success in Philly, but moved to Paris to learn from the masters when she was 32. She was there at a time of great upheaval led by the Impressionists, but she never lost her realist style, and was best known as a portrait artist. She returned to Philly, and took lucrative jobs painting the Philadelphia elite (such as Lehigh President Henry Sturgis Drinker, above). Her paintings were hung at the Paris Salon, and influential French critic M. Henri Rochefort commented, “I am compelled to admit, not without some chagrin, that not one of our female artists…is strong enough to compete with the lady who has given us this year the portrait of Dr. Grier. Composition, flesh, texture, sound drawing—everything is there without affectation, and without seeking for effect.”
She died in 1942, and is buried in Bala Cynwyd. She has been somewhat overlooked in recent years, but among her contemporaries was one of the most famous and most respected female artists in the world.
