Artist & Historian
Kentucky
I've heard Kentucky called mythical more than once, in all kinds of contexts. I grew up here, and I understand its appeal. In Lexington, once known as the "Athens of the West", it's easy to feel grounded and global at the same time, so much that an outlook both homey and international is a very real part of the history and culture here. This page looks at the ways Kentuckians have contributed to global ideas, connected to international communities, and built resources. My goal is to highlight the histories that have often been overlooked while connecting these histories with global intellectual and scientific networks, including eighteenth and nineteenth century Paris, as well as contemporary ones.
Dr Robert Peter
Dr Robert Peter was born in England in 1805 but came to Kentucky in 1832 for his career in medicine, scientific research, forensic science, natural history, and geology. The University of Kentucky holds a fascinating collection of Peter's letters and chemical notebooks, which describe hundreds of tests on clays, waters, farmland, suspicious autopsy reports, and bourbons. He also went to Paris in order to build a medical teaching collection and library for Transylvania University. The collection includes many rare books of seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth century natural history. Although no evidence shows that he met Brongniart, Peter did attend lectures at the Muséum d'Histoire naturelle.
Constantine Rafinesque
Arguably Kentucky's most famous natural historian after John James Audubon, Constantine Samuel Rafinesque (1783-1840) was a prolific naturalist and polymath. Born to a French merchant in Constantinople, his life was shaped by travel and curiousity. A bit of a controversial figure, he has been said to haunt Transylvania University and maybe still the woods and forests of Central Kentucky. He corresponded with some of the most important naturalists of nineteenth century Paris, including Brongniart, and he established numerous plant and animal species, as well as fossil species.
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Joe Downing and France
Joe Downing was an artist living in France following the end of the second World War. Downing grew up in Western Kentucky and a number of his paintings were returned to Kentucky repositories after his death. You can read about his life and see some of his work here:
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Landscape and Geology
At the start of the nineteenth century, Neoclassical Architecture looked to the architecture of Greece and Rome. The style embodied the ideals of democracy and the optimism of America in its earliest decades. Kentucky was on what was still the Western Frontier and many of the cities in Central Kentucky retain monuments and homes built in this style.
Geology and terrain mattered because many of the buildings were built with local materials. Built in 1839, with no marble or cut stone available, Giddings Hall at Georgetown College had handmade brick columns. The rich red brick color came from the high iron content of the local clays.
In 1797, as an exile following the French Revolution, Louis-Philippe d'Orléans, oldest son of the executed Philippe l'Égalité, travelled the US on foot and horseback, staying in local accommodations and exploring the American wilderness. He recorded his travels in a diary, in which he described his impressions of the young country. One of the last stops on his exploratory journey was Bardstown, KY, then a prosperous city of 150 houses. His observations of Kentucky show that the state, founded only five years prior, was still largely a rough wilderness during his tour. He observed, "how little these local people know of the world."
In 1830, during the July Revolution, he became King of France, staying in power until the February Revolution of 1848. His experiences in exile led to his rule as an accessible "Citizen King".
Louis-Philippe d'Orléans in 1792,
painted by Léon Coignet in 1832
Yuko - en
Georgetown, KY was home to the first Toyota plant in the US. To welcome the new international company and the exchange it brought, a Japanese garden was constructed along the banks of the Elkhorn Creek in 2000. More photos to come, where KY vernacular architecture is blended with Japanese aesthetics.
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photo credit:By FloNight (Sydney Poore) and Russell Poore - self-made by Russell and Sydney Poore, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4082280
