Edward Woodward: Poet, Gunsmith, Souvenir Maker
Edward Woodward was a creative man who came to America from England in the mid-1850s seeking an opportunity to display his creativity. What he found when he and his father arrived in Baltimore was a land of simmering tensions that soon erupted into the Civil War. On April 19, 1861, a regiment of Massachusetts soldiers was transferring between railroad stations in Baltimore. To do this they had to disembark one train and march through a city filled with Confederate sympathizers to another station where they could board a train to Washington. The sympathizers attacked the soldiers, blocking the route and throwing bricks and cobblestones at the Union men. The soldiers panicked and fired into the mob, which led to a wild fight involving the soldiers, mob, and Baltimore police. When all was said and done, four soldiers and 12 civilians Read more…
How to make a whale disappear
Maybe they can change the saying, “The elephant in the room” to “The whale on the beach.” Art conservators discovered a hidden portion of a painting that when revealed changes the whole meaning of the picture. Hendrick van Anthonissen around 1641 painted “View of Scheveningen Sands” around 1641. More than 100 years later the painting was donated to the Fitzwilliam Museum. The painting at that time showed people gathered in small groups on a beach in The Hague in the Netherlands. It seemed a typical seascape. The problem was it wasn’t the painting that van Anthonissen had created, at least not entirely. Of course, no one knew that at the time. It was only when Shan Kuang, a conservation student at the University of Cambridge’s Fitzwilliam Museum, started cleaning the painting recently that the truth was uncovered…literally. “Kuang was tasked Read more…
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