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| Title: | Scarlet Letter |
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| Notes: | "Nathaniel Hawthorne, author of "The Scarlet Letter" (1850), regarded this painting, which William Walters commissioned from Merle in 1859, as the finest illustration of his novel. Set in Puritan Boston, the novel relates how Hester Prynne was publicly disgraced and condemned to wear a scarlet letter "A" for adultery. Arthur Dimmesdale, the minister who fathered her child, and Roger Chillingworth, Hester's elderly husband, appear in the background. Merle's canvas reflects some of the same 19th-century historical interest in the Puritans as Hawthorne's book, a fascination that reached its peak with the establishment of Thanksgiving as a national holiday in 1863. By depicting Hester and her daughter, Pearl, in a pose that recalls that of the Madonna and Child, Merle underlines "The Scarlet Letter"'s themes of sin and redemption." -- [from Walters Art Museum] |
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| Date: | 1861 |
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| Artist: | Merle, Hugues, 1823-1881 |
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| Building: | Walters Art Museum
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| Object/Function: | Painting |
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| City/Town: | Baltimore
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| State: | MD
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| Country: | United States
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| Lectionary links: | CTDay
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| General Subject: | Thanksgiving
Adultery
Family
Puritans
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| Permalink: |
https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=55738
(Use this link to refer back to this image.)
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| Copyright Source: | http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hugues_Merle_-_The_Scarlet_Letter_-_Walters_37172.jpg |
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| Copyright Permission: | Please visit the URL in the Copyright Source field on this page for details about reusing this image. |
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| Attribution: | Merle, Hugues, 1823-1881. Scarlet Letter, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=55738 [retrieved April 27, 2024]. Original source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hugues_Merle_-_The_Scarlet_Letter_-_Walters_37172.jpg. |
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| Record Number: | 55738
Last Updated: 2021-01-13 20:31:03
Record Created: 2013-07-11 14:39:27 |
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| Institution: | Vanderbilt University
Collection: Art in the Christian Tradition |
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