Memento Mori
Memento Mori postcard
We lost Mike’s sister (my sister-in-law and Mina’s aunt) yesterday. No matter how few or how many people you’ve lost in your life, the fact that someone can be there one day and then the next, just be gone? It’s a strange/surreal sensation that remains nearly impossible to grasp. There is truly nothing that gives life as much meaning as death.
This is one of our mini 4x6 prints. The original painting is titled Pearl of Grief and was created by Mary Jane Peale in 1855. Mary Jane hailed from a prominent family of painters and in fact, another of our pieces, Swarm Wishes, was created using a portrait of her father, Rubens Peale, painted by her uncle, Rembrandt Peale.
Ruben’s and Rembrandt’s father was Charles Willson Peale, a prominent painter who was also a member of the continental army under the command of George Washington during the American Revolution. 25 years after that war, he founded what today is the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, the first and oldest art museum and art school in the United States, and ultimately the school his granddaughter Mary Jane would later attend.
Pearl of Grief can currently be found at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in DC.
“Our dead are never dead to us until we have forgotten them.”
