Creative History

  This painting is entitled Easter Snow.   It is from the year 1915.  It is a peaceful, idyllic; almost Norman Rockwell-esque painting in the simplistic Americana that it depicts--the seeming innocence and simplicity of ordinary families trudging unexpectedly through surprising snow drifts on their way to a springtime Easter church service. Though this painting by famed realist American artist George Wesley Bellows is iconic and serene, the historical event that Bellows depicted with his rich brush-strokes in this image, was in reality, anything but peaceful and serene. To those on the east coast of the United States who lived through the great Easter Blizzard, sometimes referred to as the Easter Nor’easter of April 3-4, 1915 the singular storm that Bellows iconically depicted in his painting was both shocking and terrifying. The forecast for Saturday, April 3, 1915 printed in Friday’s edition of the Philadelphia Enquirer said only that there would be, “[P]eriods of...

  Manchester Square is a small garden landscape in the center of London.  Constructed in the year 1776 within the affluent neighborhood of Marylebone in the West End. The streets around Manchester Square are home to examples of some of London’s most stately 18th century Georgian architecture, and to this very day, the community around Manchester Square is one of affluence and influence. Late in the year 1814, when the Georgian mansions lining Manchester Square were less than a half century old, and the streets of Marylebone were still covered by cobbles, something very bizarre took place in this upper class neighborhood.  Strange stories of the existence of a wealthy woman with a pig’s face began to circulate in the press, and reports of this woman walking the streets around Manchester Square spread across London like wildfire causing a near panic among the residents of the city. Manchester Square The Pig-faced Lady of Manchester Square was said to be the daughter o...