A Painter's Tragedy and Triumph Revealed With the recent surge of the American painter's popularity, Elizabeth Sparhawk-Jones: The Artist Who Lived Twice captivates readers by revealing little-known details about the journey of a woman (1885-1968) almost forgotten by the art world if not for an accidental discovery. As a golden girl of the art world-christened by New York critics as its "find of the year" in 1908, Elizabeth Sparhawk-Jones, still in her teens, sold her American impressionism-style paintings for the equivalent of about fifty thousand dollars today. From a prominent family, she won nearly every award including the highest honor of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, two years study in Europe. In her notebook, she scribbled a quote by Walt Whitman: He only wins who goes far enough...And then, she disappeared. In a time when mental illness is associated with devil possession, Sparhawk-Jones leaves behind everything she's gained from her life-long devotion to painting. Reeling from two sudden deaths and a stolen fortune-along with being caught in a changing art world, she collapsed behind the doors of a hospital for the insane for the better part of three years. Attributing to her breakdown, she suffers the harsh blow of being forced to refuse the Academy's highest honor that awards a year's travel to study art in Europe. Her parents, a Presbyterian minister and his devout wife, refuse to entertain the idea that their daughter and her Jewish romantic interest, the yet-to-be discovered Morton Schamberg, would be abroad at the same time. What may have killed others makes Elizabeth Sparhawk-Jones only fight harder to regain what she'd lost. She loves only the most unattainable, like Edwin Arlington Robinson, the enigmatic Pulitzer Prize-winning poet who offers a strange reciprocation of her love; she believes in those sometimes hardest to love, like painter Marsden Hartley, who desired her friendship for perhaps less than virtuous reasons. With her famous wit and candor, she attracted admirers as much for her temperament as her fierce loyalty. Collectors and friends included film star Claude Rains, writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, and master painter William Merritt Chase among many others. Thirty years after her breakdown, American Artist magazine would call her "a phenomenon in the world of paint," painter Marsden Hartley would write she was "a thinking painter with a rare sense of the drama of poetic and romantic incident," and her works would belong to some of the country's most prestigious museums and collections, yet her story has nearly become forgotten. Structured around her last interview given to the Smithsonian Archives of American Art in 1964, The Artist Who Lived Twice tells of Sparhawk-Jones's tumultuous journey as one of the first women to carve out a place for herself in American art. The toll may have been higher than she ever imagined, but she held no regrets. She saw God when she painted, she believed, and what more could one ask?

Scholarly essays on the achievements of female artists working in and inspired by the American South Looking back at her lengthy career just four years before her death, modernist painter Nell Blaine said, "Art is central to my life. Not being able to make or see art would be a major deprivation." The Virginia native's creative path began early, and, during the course of her life, she overcame significant barriers in her quest to make and even see art, including serious vision problems, polio, and paralysis. And then there was her gender. In 1957 Blaine was hailed by Life magazine as someone to watch, profiled alongside four other emerging painters whom the journalist praised "not as notable women artists but as notable artists who happen to be women." In Central to Their Lives, twenty-six noted art historians offer scholarly insight into the achievements of female artists working in and inspired by the American South. Spanning the decades between the late 1890s and early 1960s, this volume examines the complex challenges these artists faced in a traditionally conservative region during a period in which women's social, cultural, and political roles were being redefined and reinterpreted. The presentation—and its companion exhibition—features artists from all of the Southern states, including Dusti Bongé, Anne Goldthwaite, Anna Hyatt Huntington, Ida Kohlmeyer, Loïs Mailou Jones, Alma Thomas, and Helen Turner. These essays examine how the variables of historical gender norms, educational barriers, race, regionalism, sisterhood, suffrage, and modernism mitigated and motivated these women who were seeking expression on canvas or in clay. Whether working from studio space, in spare rooms at home, or on the world stage, these artists made remarkable contributions to the art world while fostering future generations of artists through instruction, incorporating new aesthetics into the fine arts, and challenging the status quo. Sylvia Yount, the Lawrence A. Fleischman Curator in Charge of the American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, provides a foreword to the volume. Contributors: Sara C. Arnold Daniel Belasco Lynne Blackman Carolyn J. Brown Erin R. Corrales-Diaz John A. Cuthbert Juilee Decker Nancy M. Doll Jane W. Faquin Elizabeth C. Hamilton Elizabeth S. Hawley Maia Jalenak Karen Towers Klacsmann Sandy McCain Dwight McInvaill Courtney A. McNeil Christopher C. Oliver Julie Pierotti Deborah C. Pollack Robin R. Salmon Mary Louise Soldo Schultz Martha R. Severens Evie Torrono Stephen C. Wicks Kristen Miller Zohn

Eminent art historian Charles C. Eldredge brings together top scholars to celebrate forgotten artists and create a more inclusive history of American art. Why do some artists become canonical, while others, equally respected in their time, fall into obscurity? This question is central to The Unforgettables, a vibrant collection of essays by leading experts on American art. Each contributor presents a brief for an artist deserving of new or renewed attention, including artists from the colonial era to recent years working in a wide variety of mediums. Histories of American art have traditionally highlighted the work of a familiar roster of artists, largely white and male. The achievements of their peers, notably women and artists of color, have gone uncelebrated. The essays in this volume provide a new and richer understanding of American art, expanding the canon to include many worthy talents. A number of these artists were acclaimed in their day; others, having missed that acclaim, may achieve it now. With contributions from major scholars and museum professionals, The Unforgettables rescues and revises reputations as it enhances and enriches the history of American art.

The biographical material formerly included in the directory is issued separately as Who's who in American art, 1936/37-

The best of Edwin Arlington Robinson's poetry rings with a lyrical and emotional purity and singularity that should assure his place as one of the treasured poets of his generation ... Scott Donaldson's book should help to revive appreciation for this solitary figure and the unique resonance of his work. --W.S. Merwin.

The Elenium series, which began in Diamond Throne, continues against a background of magic and adventure. Ehlana, Queen of Elenia, had been poisoned. A deep enchantment sustained her life, but only while the Knights aiding it still lived—and already they were dying, one each month. Then Sparhawk, Knight and Queen’s Champion, learned that the cure for the poison was the Bhellion, the great jewel lost when Sarak of Thalesia had died in battle, five hundred years before. Sparhawk and his companions set forth to find King Sarak’s grave by raising ghosts of those who had perished in that ancient battle. The Seeker, an insectile monster spawned of the evil God Azash, hounded their every step. Still Sparkawk pressed on, driven by desperate need. They had to find Bhellion before his queen could perish. They must not fail!