Classic Travel Tales

04/08/2025

Taking you to another place, another time. Click to read Classic Travel Tales, a Substack publication.

31/07/2025

𝘈 𝘝𝘪𝘦𝘸 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘔𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘪𝘯 𝘗𝘢𝘴𝘴 𝘊𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘕𝘰𝘵𝘤𝘩 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘞𝘩𝘪𝘵𝘦 𝘔𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘪𝘯𝘴 (𝘊𝘳𝘢𝘸𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘥 𝘕𝘰𝘵𝘤𝘩) by Thomas Cole, 1839, National Gallery of Art, public domain

From the National Gallery of Art: Crawford Notch, a deep valley in New Hampshire’s White Mountains, gained notoriety in 1826 when nine lives were lost in a catastrophic avalanche nearby. Cole’s painting depicts the site of an earlier landslide whose destruction prompted the victims—Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Willey and their five children, along with two farmhands—to immediately leave their home in Crawford Notch and construct what they thought would be a safe haven close by. Instead, they ran into the very path of disaster—the next night’s avalanche struck their temporary refuge. A rescue party arriving the next day searched feverishly for the family. The bodies of Mr. and Mrs. Willey, two children, and the farmhands were eventually located, but no trace of the other three children was ever found.

𝘊𝘳𝘢𝘸𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘥 𝘕𝘰𝘵𝘤𝘩 is thought to allude to this dramatic and tragic episode as emblematic of man’s frailty in the face of the vast and unpredictable forces of nature—a theme Cole often explored in his landscapes. Amid this seemingly idyllic autumnal setting, the painting’s diminutive human figures appear oblivious to the possibility of tragedy. A man on a black horse rides along a path zig-zagging through the picture space; two figures and a dog stand outside the well-known Notch House Inn, and in the distance a stagecoach is about to pass through the notch. Yet evidence of nature’s destructive potential is everywhere apparent: the twisted trees of the foreground, the skeletal, gesturing dead trees of the middle distance, the V-shape form of the notch (seemingly riven by some supernatural process), and the dark, sweeping storm clouds at the upper left.

For Cole, ever fascinated by the multiplicity of meanings embedded in landscape, Crawford Notch was a subject rich with possibilities: a family’s harrowing misfortune, the power of natural forces, the passing of time. In Crawford Notch the artist successfully integrated these various threads of content into a richly textured whole. At once vibrant, vital, and beautiful, the painting is also provocatively expressive of instability, change, and uncertainty.

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30/07/2025

𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘔𝘦𝘹𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘔𝘢𝘫𝘰𝘳 by Frederic Re*****on, 1889, Art Institute of Chicago, public domain

From the Art Institute of Chicago: Frederic Re*****on was greatly impressed by the Mexican army, which he observed during a six-week visit to Mexico in 1889 in preparation for an article in 𝘏𝘢𝘳𝘱𝘦𝘳’𝘴 𝘞𝘦𝘦𝘬𝘭𝘺 magazine. 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘔𝘦𝘹𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘔𝘢𝘫𝘰𝘳 is an elaborate, multifigural composition, designed to convey the professionalism, discipline, and “immensely picturesque” appearance of the officer and his regiment. Re*****on enjoyed the soldiers’ ornate costumes, and he emphasized these through the use of rhythmic, flashing colors and the depiction of brilliant light. The line of horsemen stretches off into the far distance—a sign of honor, strength, and dignity.

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29/07/2025

𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘊𝘳𝘺𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘭 𝘗𝘢𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘦 by Camille Pissarro, 1871, Art Institute of Chicago, public domain

From the Art Institute of Chicago: Camille Pissarro and his family left France in 1870–71 to escape the Prussian invasion and subsequent civil uprising (known as the Commune). They spent these years in Lower Norwood, outside London. In the neighboring town of Sydenham, Pissarro painted the glass-and-iron Crystal Palace, which was originally designed by Joseph Paxton in 1851 for London’s Hyde Park. Although it was immediately acclaimed for its modern architecture, only two years later the building was dismantled and reassembled in Sydenham. (It was destroyed by fire in 1936.) In this small oil painting, Pissarro relegated what was considered the world’s largest building to the left side of the canvas, as if to give equal space to the “modern-life” scene of families and carriages parading by Sydenham’s more recently constructed middle-class homes.

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28/07/2025

"If the barber were fanatically disposed, he might think that it would be doing a good deed ... to cut the throat of the unbeliever."

27/07/2025

“He had a whole heaven and horizon to himself, and the sun seemed to be journeying over his clearing only the livelong day. Here we concluded to spend the night, and wait for the Indians, as there was no stopping-place so convenient above.”

In 1846 Henry David Thoreau made the first of three trips into the Maine wilderness, this with the aim to climb Ktaadn (today known as Mount Katahdin), Maine’s highest peak.

26/07/2025

𝘌𝘢𝘳𝘭𝘺 𝘔𝘰𝘳𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨, 𝘛𝘢𝘳𝘱𝘰𝘯 𝘚𝘱𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴 by George Inness, 1892, Art Institute of Chicago, public domain

From the Art Institute of Chicago: In the course of his lengthy career, Inness increasingly eschewed precision of detail in his paintings, conveying mood and emotion through richness of tone and broadness of handling. He first visited Florida about 1890, and he subsequently established a house and studio in Tarpon Springs, where he executed this painting. In a pink-and-blue morning light, a lone man studies a cluster of buildings in the middle distance. Through blurred outlines and delicate, subtle tonalities, as well as the solitary presence of the figure, Inness masterfully evoked the brightening day and peaceful mood of this moment.

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24/07/2025

𝘊𝘭𝘪𝘧𝘧𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘎𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘙𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘳 by Thomas Moran, 1874, Amon Carter Museum of American Art, public domain

From Amon Carter Museum: In 1871, Moran accompanied a United States Geological Survey expedition to explore the area currently known as Yellowstone National Park. Long a gathering place for the Crow, Blackfoot, Shoshone, and other peoples, this region was still largely unknown to U.S. settlers. On his way to join the Yellowstone expedition, Moran traveled by rail to Green River, Wyoming, where he found himself drawn to the multicolored, sedimentary bluffs rising above the town. These geological landmarks became one of his favorite subjects, repeated in more than 40 canvases over the next 30 years, including this 1874 rendering. Green River was already a major rail crossroads by the time Moran first visited, but it always remained in his mind’s eye a landscape untouched by colonization and industry.

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24/07/2025

On his thousand-mile walk to the Gulf of Mexico in 1867, two years after the end of the Civil War, 29-year-old John Muir seeks overnight accommodations with a wealthy Georgia planter.

"He tells me that labor costs him less now than it did before the emancipation of the negroes."

23/07/2025

“She then called her husband, a blacksmith, who was at work at his forge. He came out, hammer in hand, bare-breasted, sweaty, begrimed, and covered with shaggy black hair.”

"She then called her husband, a blacksmith, who was at work at his forge. He came out, hammer in hand, bare-breasted, sweaty, begrimed, and covered with shaggy black hair."

21/07/2025

𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘉𝘢𝘺 𝘰𝘧 𝘔𝘢𝘳𝘴𝘦𝘪𝘭𝘭𝘦, 𝘚𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘓’𝘌𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘲𝘶𝘦 by Paul Cezanne, circa 1885, Art Institute of Chicago, public domain

From the Art Institute of Chicago: In a letter to his friend and teacher Camille Pissarro, Paul Cézanne compared the view of the sea from L’Estaque to a playing card, with its simple shapes and colors. The landscape’s configuration and color fascinated him. This painting is one of more than a dozen such vistas created by the artist during the 1880s. Cézanne divided the canvas into four zones—architecture, water, mountain, and sky. Although these four elements are seen repeatedly in Impressionist paintings, Cézanne’s work is very different from that of his fellow artists. Whereas their primary purpose was to record the transient effects of light, Cézanne was interested in the underlying structure and composition of the views he painted. Filling the canvas with shapes defined by strong, contrasting colors and a complex grid of horizontal, vertical, and diagonal lines, he created a highly compact, dynamic pattern of water, sky, land, and village that at once refers back to traditionally structured landscape paintings and looks forward to the innovations of Cubism. Using blocklike brushstrokes to build the space, Cézanne created a composition that seems both two- and three-dimensional. Not locked tightly in place, his forms appear to touch and shift continually, creating a sense of volume and space that strengthens the composition and brings it to life.

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20/07/2025

𝘕𝘰 𝘵𝘦 𝘢𝘩𝘢 𝘰𝘦 𝘳𝘪𝘳𝘪 (𝘞𝘩𝘺 𝘈𝘳𝘦 𝘠𝘰𝘶 𝘈𝘯𝘨𝘳𝘺?) by Paul Gauguin, 1896, Art Institute of Chicago, public domain

From the Art Institute of Chicago: In this large-scale canvas, one of several Paul Gauguin sent back to France in 1897, women of varying ages appear to go about daily life within a colorful, stylized outdoor environment. Like much of the artist’s work, this painting combines observed detail with artistic fantasy to create a dreamlike scene whose narrative resists simple interpretation. The work’s deliberately provocative title enhances this effect, leaving us to wonder if the “you” refers to someone in the painting or to the viewer.

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