Academic

Mary Eastman was married to whom?!

By Alfred Brophy

Yup--Mary Eastman, author of the important proslavery novel Aunt Phillis' Cabin (notice the parallel title to Uncle Tom's Cabin--Eastman was writing in response to Harriet Beecher Stowe) was married to Seth Eastman, who was a somewhat important landscape artist.   I know, this is really hard to believe--I didn't believe it myself at first.

The image of Seth Eastman's 1834 painting is a link to Hudson River with a Distant View of West Point, in the collection of the Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown, Ohio.  More stuff that could -- and should-- have gone into "Property and Progress: Antebellum Landscape Art and Property Law"!  (It'll go into the next iteration.)  For Eastman's post-Civil War paintings of forts, which are in the United States Senate's collection, click here.  Or here for the Boston MFA's pre-war drawing of Fort Defiance.

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on July 13, 2009 (boomark / email).