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November Rowen
While we don't know the identity of the artist, the cover painting on Cornelius Weygandt's 1941 book, November Rowen , captures many key elements of this time of the year quite well. It depicts a traveler emerging from a horse-drawn sleigh greeting friends and/or family in a landscape covered with snow. One of the book's themes is the importance of maintaining family and community connections. The long hard work of harvesting crops is over and there is more free time for visiting. "The horse knows the way to carry the sleigh through the white and drifted snow" The theme of traveling to visit is central to the song "Over the river and through the wood" published in 1844 and written by Lydia Maria Child. The book's title "November Rowen" comes from a saying one of Weygandt's neighbors in Sandwich NH would repeat as if it were the refrain of a song: "There be no hay so sweet as November Rowen." Rowen is defined as a second h...
It's About Time for a New Year
Happy New Year! We are experiencing a colder than usual winter in New England this year. I find it interesting that the calendar new year, the astronomical start of winter, and the meteorological start of winter do not match up. Sun Dec 21, was the winter solstice. It was the longest night of the year at around 15 hours of darkness and consequently the shortest day of the year with about 9 hours of sunlight. This was a more significant factor in people's lives in the past at a time when most people were involved in farming with less daylight to work. However as you can see in this painting, winter did provide snow covered roads with less friction to move logs for firewood. Here is a detail: FMI on this artwork follow this link here . Here is another artwork showing an empty sled and a pile of logs to the right. FMI on this artwork follow this link here . Here is a detail: On the left you can see a good example of marcescence. F...
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