To love a painting is to feel that this presence is… not an object but a voice.
~ Andre Malraux ~
Landing of the Pilgrims
by
Henry Sargent
Happy Thanksgiving! This is the first painting hung in Americas oldest continuous museum, Pilgrim Hall, in Plymouth Massachusetts.
“The Pilgrims were not met by a Native American when they disembarked from the Mayflower in 1620. It was not until March of 1621 that Samoset greeted the colonist.
The painting is not historically accurate. It does however capture what the artist thought was important about the Pilgrim experience – the meeting of the two cultures and two continents.
Sargent first painted the “landing” around 1815. The original painting was damaged. Sargent painted this new version after 1818. The painting was loaned to Pilgrim Hall for the 1824 opening of the Hall. In 1835 Sargent gave the painting to Pilgrim Hall.”
“Pilgrim Trivia”
(From The Pilgrim Hall Museum)
- The Pilgrims lived in the Dutch city of Leiden for 11 years before coming to America.
- The Mayflower (1620), Fortune (1621), Anne (1623), and Little James (1623) were the first four ships to arrive in Plymouth.
- In 1863, President Lincoln began the annual national tradition of Thanksgiving.
- The Pilgrims never lived in log cabins.
- Josiah Winslow, son of Mayflower Pilgrims Susanna White and Edward Winslow was the first native-born Governor of Plymouth Colony.
Art can never exist without naked beauty displaced.
~ William Blake ~
