Secrets From The Vault

The Complicated Case of the Renaissance in France: Notes from a Study Day

Submitted by Jamie Kwan on Tue, 06/01/2021 - 2:00pm

Figure of Faith is one of the Drawing Department’s more enigmatic works. Rendered in soft black chalk with highlights in opaque white added with a brush, it features a seated woman covered in delicate, classical drapery. Upon closer inspection, you can see that strangely, the figure’s head has been cut out and pasted onto the sheet and that the figure was drawn on a sheet that has been trimmed in the shape of an arch and pasted onto a matching sheet of paper.

The Little Prince Turns 75: Reflections by Adrian Arturo Peña

Submitted by Christine Nelson on Fri, 04/06/2018 - 10:29am

The Little Prince, a story of an intergalactic traveler in search of meaningful connection, was published in New York seventy-five years ago today—on April 6, 1943. This guest post is by Adrian Arturo Peña, a student in CUNY’s Language Immersion Program (CLIP), whose class recently visited the Morgan with instructor Gretchen Irwin-Harada to view and discuss Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s draft manuscript and watercolor drawings for The Little Prince.

The mystery of a “spurious Dickens letter”

Submitted by Declan Kiely on Fri, 04/29/2011 - 11:53am

Last month, browsing the Bonhams auction catalogue Papers & Portraits: The Roy Davids Collection Part II, I came across a description of a three-page manuscript short story by Charles Thomas Clement James (1858–1905), a prolific author whose name and work were completely unknown to me. The story bears the Dickensian title “Concerning the Sinkingsop and Slush Railway” and the footnote accompanying the lot description is amusingly arch: “This manuscript is a fine example, the only one seen commercially, of the remarkable similarity in the handwritings of Charles Dickens and Charles James.

The Origins of Morgan Reference Collection Classification

Submitted by Peter Gammie on Thu, 03/14/2024 - 11:00am

When the Pierpont Morgan Library (today the Morgan Library & Museum) opened to the public on October 1, 1928, the largest part of its Reference Collection was shelved in its Reading Room, which occupied the east side of the newly constructed Annex. In 1929, according to Belle da Costa Greene, the Morgan’s first librarian and director, the room contained more than 8,000 books.

The Owl and the Pussey cat went to sea

Submitted by Rebecca Filner on Thu, 09/16/2010 - 11:35am

Edward Lear, British landscape painter and writer, wrote many limericks and "nonsenses" (as he called them) for children. One of his most famous nonsense poems is "The Owl and the Pussy-Cat," shown here in his hand.

Lear ends this copy of his humorous poem with a note that he "meant to have illustrated it, but there ain't time."

Although The Morgan does not have Lear's illustration of his poem, we do have a sketch of the poem by Beatrix Potter. In an 1897 letter to a young boy named Noel Moore, Potter draws him a "picture of the owl and the pussy cat after they were married."

The Spiritualist Reverend

Submitted by Erica Ciallela on Mon, 08/05/2024 - 1:00pm

Reform movements took root as the Second Great Awakening swept across the United States. From abolition and temperance to labor and women’s rights, there was a call for the nation to be remade. By the 1840s, the political landscape was shifting and innovations in science were reinvigorating American culture.

The Titan and the Lion Dog

Submitted by Cynthia Volk on Mon, 10/24/2022 - 12:00pm

A pair of mythical beings, “Titan” and “Lion Dog,” offers an apt entry point to explore the connection between J. P. Morgan and his favorite Pekingese dog, Shun. The great financier’s legendary accomplishments frequently inspire outsized adjectives, and the fabled origins of the diminutive Pekingese conferred a mystical aura.

The Writings of a Temperance Poet

Submitted by Erica Ciallela on Mon, 07/15/2024 - 3:00pm

In 1920, the Eighteenth Amendment prohibited the sale and transport of alcohol. Repealed in 1933, this brief period in American history, known as Prohibition, created a cultural movement that defined a decade and was known for its speakeasies, mob runners, and bootlegging. The roots of Prohibition can be traced to 1826, and the founding of the American Temperance Society.