Hermits around the web – Hermitary
news, sites, and pages of interest about hermits and solitude
The magazine Mutual Art presents an essay titled “An American Solitude: Short Stories by Edward Hopper.” Early 20th century American artist Hopper has been celebrated for insightful paintings portraying solitude in an urban sitting.
URL: https://www.mutualart.com/Article/An-American-Solitude–Short-Stories-by-E/81DAD09C6423E878
ArtNews offers an entertaining and informative article on the history of the garden gnome, complementing the comprehensive 2013 book by Gordon Campbell titledl The Hermit in the Garden: From Imperial Rome to Ornamental Gnome.
URL: https://news.artnet.com/art-world/brief-history-of-hermits-in-art-2558476
Two short articles in Shanghai Daily‘s SHINE news site describe historical hermits of China.
The first article describes the book collecting work of the 14th-century hermit Sun Daoming.
URL: https://www.shine.cn/feature/district/2309138605/.
The second article is titled “Chen Jiru: the hermit scholar of Ming Dynasty,” Chen Jiru abandoned the imperial court of his era to live as a hermit on Sheshan Hill in the Songjiang District. He was a poet and painter whose impressive works inspired schools of followers.
URL: https://www.shine.cn/feature/district/2310186993/
American author John Yeoman and illustrator Quentin Blake published the juvenile book The Hermit and the Bear in 1984. Tagline: “The Hermit was delighted to have the Bear as a pupil, and very excited at the challenge of having to educate him.” An 80-minute animation (French language) was produced by the French audiovisual company Tant Mieux Prod in 2022. A minute-long teaser is available at Vimeo. Summary: “The Bear would like to be educated to become intelligent. For his part, the Hermit is bored in his cave: he opened a school but no one has ever showed up. Fortunately, they meet!”
Old Book Illustrations features “Devil Turned Hermit,” from an early 19th-century book titled Cent Proverbes.
The book describes the illustration:
“The Devil, in the guise of an old man with horns, has a female visitor shown to the door and his worldly paraphernalia swept away while he immerses himself in prayer among symbols of asceticism.” Adds the website editors: “The caption reads in the original French: Quand le Diable devient vieux, il se fait ermite.
This proverb has a loose English equivalent in The Devil was sick, the Devil a monk would be.
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