File:Hugues Merle - The Scarlet Letter - Walters 37172.jpg
Original file (1,433 × 1,768 pixels, file size: 2.29 MB, MIME type: image/jpeg)
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This is a file from the Wikimedia Commons. The description on its description page there is shown below.
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Summary
Hugues Merle: The Scarlet Letter
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| Artist |
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| Title |
The Scarlet Letter |
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| Object type |
painting  |
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| Description |
English: 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. |
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| Date |
1861 |
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| Medium |
oil on canvas |
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| Dimensions |
height: 99.9 cm (39.3 in) ; width: 81.1 cm (31.9 in) |
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| Collection |
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| Accession number |
37.172 |
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| Place of creation |
France |
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| Object history |
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| Exhibition history | The Second Empire 1852-1870: Art in France under Napoleon III. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia; The Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit; Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Paris. 1978-1979. A Magnificent Age: Masterpieces from the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City; Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte; The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore. 2002-2004. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Credit line | Commissioned by William T. Walters, 1859 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Inscriptions |
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| Source |
Walters Art Museum:  Home page  Info about artwork |
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| Permission (Reusing this file) |
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Licensing
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This file was provided to Wikimedia Commons by the Walters Art Museum as part of a cooperation project. All artworks in the photographs are in public domain due to age. The photographs of two-dimensional objects are also in the public domain. Photographs of three-dimensional objects and all descriptions have been released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License and the GNU Free Documentation License.
In the case of the text descriptions, copyright restrictions only apply to longer descriptions which cross the threshold of originality.
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This is a faithful photographic reproduction of an original two-dimensional work of art. The work of art itself is in the public domain for the following reason:
This digital reproduction has been released under the following licenses:
In many jurisdictions, faithful reproductions of two-dimensional public domain works of art are not copyrightable. The Wikimedia Foundation's position is that these works are not copyrightable in the United States (see Commons:Reuse of PD-Art photographs). In these jurisdictions, this work is actually in the public domain and the requirements of the digital reproduction's license are not compulsory. | ||||||
File history
Click on a date/time to view the file as it appeared at that time.
| Date/Time | Dimensions | User | Comment | |
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| current | 13:23, 27 September 2014 | 1,433 × 1,768 (2.29 MB) | Brianadams02910 | I removed unnecessary borders from the image. |
File usage
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