Eastman Johnson

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Abraham Lincoln

Caesar Chavez

I went down to the District today to the National Portrait Gallery…  I took pictures…

Eastman Johnson, American Painter, was born in Maine.  He died past eighty in New York city. We have at least four of his paintings in San Diego: One, The Cranberry Harvest hangs in the Timken Museum, and the others are in The San Diego Museum of Art.    I am moved by his paintings, but perhaps the one that moves me most hangs in the America Portrait Gallery in Washington,  It was painted, oil on canvas, soon after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed by President Lincoln.  The young Black Man in the painting reading the Bible was an expression of liberty for all citizens.  In the pre-Civil War South, teaching a Black person to read the Bible was against the law. Imagine…

The painting Cotopaxi by Frederic Edwin Church was painted around 1855.  Church made two trips to South America.  He was inspired by the writings and speeches of Alexander von Humboldt.  Humboldt explored the Andean plateau from its tropical valley floor to the alpine summits of its volcanic peaks.  Church followed Humboldt’s route and stayed in the same hacienda depicted in the painting, and from there painted Cotopaxi. .

Ferdinand Pettrich, born in Germany and died in Rome, did the sculpture of Washington resigning his commission at the end of the Revolutionary War.  He retired to Mt. Vernon but was called back into service as the first American President.  The sculpture is a reminder that war is not the answer when a nation is threatened.

Nathanael Hawthorne

John F.Kennedy

John Ford

George Washington

George Washington

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