File:Hugues Merle - The Scarlet Letter - Walters 37172.jpg

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Summary

Hugues Merle: The Scarlet Letter

Artist



Alternative names	Hugues Georges Merle; Georges Merle; Merle; H Merle; merle hugues; H. merle; Merle Hughes
Description	French painter father of Georges-Jean-Adrien Merle
Date of birth/death	28 February 1822	16 March 1881
Location of birth/death	La Sône	Paris
Work location	Paris
Authority file	: Q5934744 VIAF: 63146825016907631234 ISNI: 0000000066583967 ULAN: 500026439 LCCN: nr2001021401 GND: 1062678060 WorldCat

Title

The Scarlet Letter

Object type

painting

Description

English: Nathaniel Hawthorne, author of "The Scarlet Letter" (1850), regarded this painting, which William Walters commissioned from Merle in 1859, as the finest illustration of his novel. Set in Puritan Boston, the novel relates how Hester Prynne was publicly disgraced and condemned to wear a scarlet letter "A" for adultery. Arthur Dimmesdale, the minister who fathered her child, and Roger Chillingworth, Hester's elderly husband, appear in the background. Merle's canvas reflects some of the same 19th-century historical interest in the Puritans as Hawthorne's book, a fascination that reached its peak with the establishment of Thanksgiving as a national holiday in 1863. By depicting Hester and her daughter, Pearl, in a pose that recalls that of the Madonna and Child, Merle underlines "The Scarlet Letter"'s themes of sin and redemption.

Date

1861

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

height: 99.9 cm (39.3 in); width: 81.1 cm (31.9 in); Framed height: 129.5 cm (50.9 in); width: 106.7 cm (42 in); depth: 7.6 cm (2.9 in)

Collection

Walters Art Museum

	Native name	Walters Art Museum
	Location	Baltimore, United States of America
	Coordinates	39° 17′ 48″ N, 76° 36′ 58″ W
	Established	1934
	Website	thewalters.org
	Authority file	: Q210081 VIAF: 128918374 ISNI: 000000040373611X ULAN: 500279110 LCCN: no00096900 GND: 16029354-6 WorldCat

Accession number

37.172

Place of creation

France

Object history

William T. Walters, Baltimore, March 9, 1861, by commission [George A. Lucas as agent, commissioned from the artist, on November 1, 1859]
1894: inherited by Henry Walters, Baltimore
1931: bequeathed to Walters Art Museum by Henry Walters

Exhibition history

The Second Empire 1852-1870: Art in France under Napoleon III. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia; The Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit; Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Paris. 1978-1979. A Magnificent Age: Masterpieces from the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City; Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte; The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore. 2002-2004.

Credit line

Commissioned by William T. Walters, 1859

Inscriptions

[Signature] At lower right: HUGUES MERLE

References

Source

Walters Art Museum:

Home page

Info about artwork

Permission
(Reusing this file)

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Licensing

This file was provided to Wikimedia Commons by the Walters Art Museum as part of a cooperation project. All artworks in the photographs are in public domain due to age. The photographs of two-dimensional objects are also in the public domain. Photographs of three-dimensional objects and all descriptions have been released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License and the GNU Free Documentation License.

In the case of the text descriptions, copyright restrictions only apply to longer descriptions which cross the threshold of originality.

This is a faithful photographic reproduction of an original two-dimensional work of art. The work of art itself is in the public domain for the following reason:

	This work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 100 years or fewer. You must also include a United States public domain tag to indicate why this work is in the public domain in the United States.
	This file has been identified as being free of known restrictions under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights.

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Walters Art Museum grants anyone the right to use this work for any purpose, without any conditions, unless such conditions are required by law.

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File history

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	Date/Time	Dimensions	User	Comment
current	21:23, 27 September 2014	1,433 × 1,768 (2.29 MB)	Brianadams02910	I removed unnecessary borders from the image.
	20:22, 27 September 2014	1,456 × 1,800 (1.74 MB)	Brianadams02910	This file is clearer and of a higher resolution than the previous file.
	06:51, 20 March 2012	836 × 1,024 (55 KB)	File Upload Bot (Kaldari)	== {{int:filedesc}} == {{Walters Art Museum artwork \|artist = {{Creator:Hugues Merle}} \|title = ''The Scarlet Letter'' \|description = {{en\|Nathaniel Hawthorne, author of "The Scarlet Letter" (1850), regarded this painting, whi...