A Life in Paris – January 16, 1871

One hundred and twentieth day of the siege…

Photography print available at Found View Gallery.

One hundred and twentieth day of the siege. A wet thaw, and the Saint’s day of King William of Prussia, who is said to have promised us a strong bombardment; at any rate, he is giving it us. Every minute the dead silence of Paris night, as it is now without conveyances, was broken by one or two explosions which shook your very tooth-brush in its frozen glass.

Felix M. Whitehurst

Notes:
• From My Private Diary During the Siege of Paris
• Felix M. Whitehurst kept a diary during the Prussian siege of Paris from September 1870-January 1871.

Thoughts on Paris – January 16, 1867

I have sometimes commenced in my letters trying to give an account of beautie…

Photography print available at Found View Gallery.

I have sometimes commenced in my letters trying to give an account of beautie & twice I commenced a letter to Mr Holmes about the Galleries of the Louvre & Luxembourg, but the pleasure in seeing a picture cannot be conveyed by writing & I find the attempt contemptible. I can say a sunset picture is very fine with its red & yellow clouds, & if I go into rhapsody you admire my smartness and conclude the picture is a good one, but you really receive from it not the slightest pleasure or profit. […] The most in fact I could really do would be to send on a list of the artists & size of the frames.

Comparisons however may be made. A few of our pictures in the Sanitary Fair [in Philadelphia] have never I believed been surpassed; but I see here many just as good by the same men and thousands larger & grander as compositions.

The advantages here are nevertheless much greater than in America for students, a fine daylight school, & a professor who corrects sharply when one makes a hippopotamus of himself.

There is nothing of importance going on at Paris just now. The Seine is very high & there are fears it will still rise on account of the snows.

Thomas Eakins, to his father

Notes:
• From The Paris Letters of Thomas Eakins
• Thomas Eakins was an American artist.