Reviews

The Art world is very fortunate to receive this brilliant, faceted history,
Beyond a Gilded Cage, an auto-biography by the Artist Laura Marquand Walker (1857-1951), adapted by Fern Meyers. As a bonus therein, the reader gets a biography of Laura's husband Henry Oliver Walker and an inside view of the creation of the famous Cornish Art Colony of New Hampshire.

Broken into six parts, it is obvious from part one that this tale will weave the myriad connections of 19th century Art and Society where parentages and paths weave closely and usually cross. What today would be a great coincidence to meet a particular person was then nearly inevitable. Family and acquaintances offered a possible great life for those bright or
beautiful.

Part one of the book is Laura Marquand's early years in her Brahman universe. The story is as closely knit and interwoven as the townhouse bricks of Beacon Hill. You finish the first part aware of the tedium of such close quarters. Although there is no literary charm here, it does show how Laura was given great latitude amongst her family and friends to develop into a charming and independent young woman.

The second part of the book continues with the anecdotes of the web of her
family life, but they are freer and contain lush descriptions of the landscape and environs of Newburyport. Laura composes her visual history less restrictively than her early years in Boston. She is adept this way at showing her transition and maturation towards a powerful personality.

What is by far the most fruitful of Laura's chapters, the third, is her trip to California in 1883. Here is where Laura Marquand truly struts in her own style and independence. She pushes permissible activities to the edge while in the wilds of the lesser civilized west coast. Laura writes in a sophisticated perspective of personal critique and passion with which it is easy and pleasing to connect.

Then comes marriage and babies in the carriage.

In chapter four, the appearance and commitment to Henry Oliver Walker along with starting a family in the last quarter of the 19th century is a tale
that brings more of Laura Marquand's past social connections to bear amongst the travails of NYC and its art community. The tales are painfully personal and show elements of suffering and joy that could not have been told this way until the 20th century. That Laura would open her life like this
veritably shows the perpetual superior nature of her spirit.

As if birthing children were not enough, helping to bear a whole Art Colony
in Cornish is a further chapter full of blessings and beastly problems. Here again in chapter five it is shown how Laura well understood the ups and downs of life, and how she had difficulty like us all in coping with them and meaningfully expressing them. Life with her husband and two children, one handicapped, creeps into your soul like the morning mountain mist. Kudos again to her openness.

Laura Marquand sews up the book in chapter six with compliments to her
husband's credits in the Art world. She subrogates her own great talent
throughout her life in every chapter to the greater or, one might today say,
lesser pressures of the 19th century feminine lifestyle. But if one reads closely in these five chapters of life's efforts, Laura humbly shows that she was able to maintain her artistic production. of which I would love to see more. And please, let's not forget her talent for writing.

7 January, 2006
John Curuby, President
The Boston Art Club

New Hampshire's Cornish Colony

Reviewer: Joan Huber, Senior Vice President and Provost Emeritus, the Ohio State University (Columbus, Ohio) - See all my reviews In the late nineteenth century, an American cultural center that arose in New Hampshire Village became known as the Cornish Colony. A summer retreat of the famous sculptor Augustus St. Gaudens, the Colony became the center of an American renaissance that lured notables in the arts, literature, music, and theatre such as Maxfield Parish, Paul Manship, Witter Bynner, Walter Damrosch, Isadora Duncan, Marie Dressler -- and even President Woodrow Wilson. From the 1880s to the 1920s, the Colony comprised an elite center of cultural communication but in the remainder of the twentieth century it was largely ignored by cultural historians. Fortunately, especially for lovers of the arts and history who live far from New England, Fern Meyers and James Atkinson have collected a stunning set of photographs that evoke the ambiance of a community of artists inspired by a setting in the high hills alongside the broad Connecticut River. Their detailed comments encapsulate the history and ethnography of the Colony with an intimate view of residents' personalities and activities at work and play. Men and women artists are given equal time, and even children get a share in the description of their pageants and plays, one of them directed by Ethel Barrymore. A delightful collection of photographs depicts a remarkable group of talented individuals and families in "the Gilded Age" of American culture. Highly recommended for cultural historians, critics, and all lovers of the arts.

America’s Musical Pioneers and the Cornish Colony

I just wanted to let you know how thoroughly I enjoyed your new book. It gave such an inspiring picture, not only of the lively cultural gatherings and friendships within the Cornish Colony; but also of the extraordinarily rich and varied musical life in the Boston and New York societies of the time.

            Readers (should) be fascinated by the details of the lives of these important musicians and composers, who could read in the ambitious collaborative efforts, the mutual support among artists, and the optimism for the American culture that pervaded their work, a blueprint for enlivening the culture today. (MO)

What a good job you’ve done in gathering all kinds of relevant information and anecdotes and putting them together in between two very readable covers. (JA)

This book provides a critical “missing link” in American music history. Due to the rapid changes in taste and variety of available cultural activities in the 20th century, early 20th century American music has been all but forgotten or written off. Ms Meyers gives these “pioneer” composers their long overdue credit. Without her intensive research and writing, this chapter of American music history would be lost to all of us. (RR)