"A portrait is a picture in which there is just a tiny little something not quite right about the mouth." -- John Singer Sargent

Monday, July 4, 2016

Margaret Fuller



This 1848 portrait of Sarah Margaret Fuller Ossoli (1810-1850) by Thomas Hicks hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC.
"Drowned in a shipwreck, Margaret Fuller is the tragic heroine of the Transcendentalist movement -- an idealistic American literary and philosophical movement that stressed the unity of all creation -- and the first major woman intellectual in American history. Eccentric, beguiling, and at times maddeningly erratic, Fuller had an electric impact on her mostly male colleagues, not least because she was a talented editor and writer on contemporary culture. She edited the Transcendental journal The Dial with Ralph Waldo Emerson and George Ripley and became a critic for Horace Greeley's New York Tribune. In 1839, she began a conversation group among Boston's women that led to the treatise "Woman in the Nineteenth Century" (1845). While traveling in Europe, where she assisted in the cause of Italian nationalism, she married an Italian marchese. She and her family died on their return voyage to the United States." -- National Portrait Gallery
This engraving of Hicks' painting by M. Heider appeared in The Century Magazine in 1893.

 Sarah Margaret Fuller, Marchioness Ossoli

This illustration appeared in  Margaret Fuller Ossoli, 1884 by Thomas Wentworth Higginson.


The National Portrait Gallery has this 1846 sixth-plate daguerreotype by John Plumbe. Showing Fuller in the same pose.

Widely acknowledged as America’s first major woman intellectual, Margaret Fuller was a talented editor and writer as well as an influential feminist. In 1839, Fuller accepted the editorship of The Dial, the principal journal of the Transcendentalist movement. She also launched her “Conversations,” a forum for women (and some men) to discuss topics such as women’s role in society. In 1844, Fuller became a columnist for Horace Greeley’s New-York Tribune, and a year later, she published her feminist treatise Woman in the Nineteenth Century. After Serving as a foreign correspondent in Europe (1846-50), Fuller perished in a shipwreck on the voyage home. -- NPG
The Ossoli Memorial in Auburn Cemetery in Cambridgeport was illustrated in A Handbook for Passengers over the Cambridge Railroad with a Description of Mount Auburn Cemetery 1858 by W. V. Spencer.

In Memory of
Margaret Fuller Ossoli
Born in Cambridge, Mass., May 23, 1810
By Birth a Child of New England
By Adoption A Citizen of Rome
By Genius Belonging to the World
In Youth
An Insatiate Student Seeking the Highest Culture
In Riper Years
Teacher, Writer, Critic of Literature And Art
In Mature Age
Companion and Helper of Many
Ernest Reformer in America and Europe
And of her Husband
Giovanni Angelo, Marquis Ossoli
He Gave up Rank, Station And Home
For the Roman Public
And For His Wife and Child
And of That Child
Angelo Eugene Philip Ossoli
Born in Rieti, Italy Sept 5, 1848
Whose Dust Reposes at the Foot
of This Stone
They Passed From This Life Together
By Shipwreck July 19, 1850
“United in Life the Merciful
Father Took Them Together and in
Death They Were Not Divided”



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