The first is William Forsby Halsall’s The Mayflower on her Arrival in Plymouth Harbor. Halsall has chosen the Mayflower as the main subject of his painting with the first group of pilgrims rowing to shore to begin their new lives. Halsall was born in 1841 in England and studied art in Boston. He specialized in fresco painting until he joined the Navy during the Civil War and fell in love with painting seascapes. This painting was completed in 1881.
In Henry A. Bacon’s Landing of the Pilgrims you can see the Mayflower in the distance as a few of its passengers unload from a lifeboat onto Plymouth Rock. Bacon was born in 1840 in Massachusetts and fought for the north in the Civil War. He studied art in Paris and went on to produce many paintings designed to tell a story, like this one painted in 1877. Notice the girl who is preparing to step from the boat. She is 15 year old Mary Chilton, said to have been the first pilgrim to set foot in the Massachusetts.
These two seem to be very accurate paintings of this historical event but there are others which do not follow the accounts we have of the landing. Henry Sargent’s Landing of the Pilgrims is one such painting. Here you see the Native Americans greeting (or confronting) the pilgrims as they land. This did not happen. It was about three months after the pilgrims landed when the Native Americans approached them for the first time.
Next week: paintings of the first Thanksgiving, plus Thanksgiving craft projects!Return to main page.
My Current NaNoWriMo Word Count:
So close to being caught up!
2 comments:
Always interesting reading and learning here!! (Thanks for the link to my blog! Not so entirely art as yours, but anyhow...!)
A comment! How exciting! Thanks for the kind words.
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