Art of Nancy Drew

I just needed to share that I went to the Peabody Essex Museum today in Salem, MA. I live in the area (literally was born in Salem), so I’ve been to the PEM a LOT. Like a lot a lot. Like my family were members for the majority of my childhood a lot.

ANYWAYS they have this exhibit going on until February about Spiritualism, and I had to share some photos! I knew there would be references to Houdini, but there was so much more there that reminded me of the games!

What card am I looking at ??

I know that face

Harry Houdini was so big in Salem!

Bonus picture! The ORIGINAL Cottingley Fairies photo!!! I freaked out when I saw this.

Pls enjoy! And visit the exhibit if you’re in the area!

The Final Scene showcases a performance by Harry Houdini and his wife Bess, in which they switch places on stage while in suspended cages. The Houdini Transformation was inspired by Metamorphosis, an illusion the Houdinis featured while on the road in 1894 and which helped secure their first big tour with the Welsh Brothers Circus in 1895. The in-game poster even shares similar design aspects with a poster for the original performance.

According to TheGreatHarryHoudini.com, the illusion was performed as follows:

In this trick, Houdini’s hands would be fastened behind his back as he was placed inside a large bag which was knotted closed. He was then placed inside a large box, which was locked and strapped closed. The box is then placed inside a cabinet. Mrs. Houdini would then draw the curtain closed and clap three times. At the third clap, Houdini himself would draw open the curtain and Mrs. Houdini would be gone. When the box is opened, Mrs. Houdini is found inside the bag with the knots and seals unbroken and her hands secured in exactly the same way as her husband’s.

The answer to this trick begins with the binding of Houdini’s wrists. He was an expert at freeing himself from ropes and ties, especially those in which the knots could be slipped and tightened later. He would simply free himself from the ropes as the bag was being raised above his head. The audience could not see this, as his hands were purposefully bound behind his back. The rope used to secure the sack itself ran through a series of metal eyelets around the upper edge of the bag, so the rope would be both inside and outside of the bag. Houdini merely needed to pull on the rope from the inside of the bag to open the sack. The box or trunk was over-sized, allowing for more freedom of movement. It had a rear panel opening inward with a release on the inside. Having gotten himself free from both the rope and the sack, Houdini would wait for the curtain to drop. As the curtain falls, he simply uses the release and trap panel to exit the box. Contrary to the audience’s assumption, it was Houdini himself who was doing the clapping, as Bessie got inside the box through the open back panel.

Harry would then appear from behind the curtain. When Harry opened the curtain, Bessie was already inside the box. Once inside, she closed the panel, slid into the wrist restraints, left slack by Harry and pulled the sack over her. Inside the sack, she would use the inner loop system to pull the knot tight at the top of the bag. All of this work was performed as Harry went through the motions of unlocking the box.

 The Houdini Transformation in the game adds more complexity to the illusion with the addition of a third person, but all in all both performances are very similar! I love the historical aspects of the games, and was fascinated by Houdini and illusion the more I read about him.

Winged Nike of Samothrace; marble, ca. 190 BCE

The winged goddess of Victory standing on the prow of a ship overlooked the Sanctuary of the Great Gods on the island of Samothrace. This monument was probably an ex-voto offered by the people of Rhodes in commemoration of a naval victory in the early second century BC. The theatrical stance, vigorous movement, and billowing drapery of this Hellenistic sculpture are combined with references to the Classical period-prefiguring the baroque aestheticism of the Pergamene sculptors. [x]  

Hope you don’t mind, but I’ve decided to go through all the posts on this blog and post the screenshots of the art in-game next to the in-real-life art. (To avoid spamming I put all of them in my queue so that I’d only reblog the art once a week on Thursdays). In any case, this is a seriously awesome blog. (Also, someone please correct me if I’m wrong, but this statue also looks like Nike?) It’s down below due to spoilers for Labyrinth of Lies.

Today, I learned about the guy who made this, Alphonse Mucha. He was a believer in independence for Slavic countries and Czechia and had made many works of art for the country. Eventually, because of that, he was arrested and interrogated by the Nazis during the rise of Hitler before WWII. After this, he was so weak that after contracting pneumonia, he died. I can only imagine how many artists this happened to, and how many works of art were destroyed.

Idk. For me this just solidifies how important art is in culture and for the world, and how it can last longer than the facism and war and evil. That scares oppressors and dictators.

Sure, we know this artwork from a Nancy Drew game, but the history behind the artist is so interesting.

Also, since his art is absolutely stunning, here are a few more below

Claude Alexander Conlin, aka “The Man Who Knows / The Crystal Seer”  (active ca. 1902-1924)

A magician who specialized in telepathy. It is said that he originally plagiarized an escape act of Harry Houdini into his usual routine, complete with over-the-top theatrics and showgirls. Only this routine ended one night when he couldn’t get his usual props in time for a show, prompting him to fall back on a telepathy routine as suggested by an assistant. This seeming inconvenience became the backbone of his career and sealed his name as a magician. [x]

Yu-Li-San, “The Enigmatic Medium” (active ca. the 1950s)

Yu-Li-San was a Spanish magician and medium who worked with the hypnotist Professor Alba Jr. Alba took over his father’s magic show after his death and added Yu-Li-San to the line-up, continuing its success. [x]

Another gif made for the promotion of a Halloween sale in 2016 by Little Jackalope (Calina Herman).

Two Sisters (On the Terrace) by Pierre Auguste-Renoir; oil on canvas 1881

Pierre-Auguste Renoir painted this delightful homage to springtime, youth, and beauty on the terrace of the Fournaise family’s restaurant on the Seine River at Chatou—where, six years before, he had made Lunch at the Restaurant Fournaise. The young woman in this painting wears the blue flannel dress favored by lady boaters at the time. She and the girl at her side were not actually related. [X]

Some of the artwork that can be seen throughout the castle in Treasure in the Royal Tower.

1. Portrait of Marie Antoinette by Louise Élisabeth Vigée Lebrun, 1783

2. Anne of Cleves by Hans Holbein the Younger, 1539

3. Marie Antoinette by Louise Élisabeth Vigée Lebrun, 1779

4. The Noble Slav by Rembrandt, 1632

5. State Portrait of Marie Antoinette by Louise Élisabeth Vigée Lebrun, 1788

6. A Young Patrician Lady by an unknown artist in the school of Leonardo Da Vinci

7. Marie Antoinette by Louise Élisabeth Vigée Lebrun, 1783

8. Two Sisters by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, 1881

9. Queen Marie Antoinette of France by Louise Élisabeth Vigée Lebrun, 1786

10. Man In Armour by Rembrandt, 1655

11. Sconosciuta con Mantiglia by Franz Xavier Winterhalter

the tapestry is a version of the same design as one found in TRT, though with a slightly different border. it's an 18th century design by Jean Pillement, originally produced by the Gobelins Manufactory in Paris. this particular design combines two trapestry trends: verdure ('greenery'; tapestries that emphasized plants and the natural world) and chinoiserie (french term for art or furniture of western manufacture inspired by Chinese or other Asian art/style/patterns).

the prints on either side of the tapestry are from the Activities of the Twelve Lunar Months series, painted by anonymous court artists during the Quing dynasty, probably completed in the 18th c. the ones on either side of the tapestry are the 7th month and the 9th month, and the 12th month can be found hanging above the fireplace

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now, the bird-and-flower paintings. while i was able to track down the images, I couldn't find much legitimate info or sources, boo hiss etc. I was able to find a copy of the picture on the left in a National Palace Museum article on museum labelling practices of all things! if your chinese is better than mine (mine is nonexistent) you might be able to make something of it.

the tapestry next to the bed is an example of a more traditional 'verdure' design: lotta emphasis on the natural world, lotta different tree/plant species, very very green. and... I couldn't find the original image. however since I've spent approximately a thousand hours looking tapestries I feel comfortable enough wagering a guess. based on the composition, stylization and border design it seems like it's most likely a 17th c. flemish design - for comparison see the three examples of flemish verdures from that period below.

hA. erm. slowly and also painfully, basically. I don't have an art history background but I loved when artofnancydrew and littlenancydrewthings used to put their art id posts together and wanted to see if I could figure it out myself, so it's just a lot of trial-and-error and a decent amount of patience.

unfortunately most of the in-game images are too small for google’s reverse/search-by-image thing to pick up, boo. so for paintings I generally end up at wikiart because their advanced search tool lets you filter by genre/style/date of creation. they also have a ‘tags’ feature but it isn’t all that robust - most of the artworks are not comprehensively tagged, so i mostly avoid that. honestly, I usually end up searching by by genre (ie ‘landscape’ or ‘portrait’), use the timeline thing to limit the number of results, and then just. scroll through all of what comes back.

I dearly love the RKDimages database (their TAGGING SYSTEM holy mother of dog it’s FUCKING MIRACULOUS). it’s main focus is Netherlandish art, but seriously, give this thing every gold star on the planet, it’s so damned beautiful. all other databases, get on the RKD’s level. holy frick.

other than that? we know HeR used to use the Corel image library but of course i haven’t had any luck actually finding/accessing said image library. that said, I’ve had some luck plugging the term into wikimedia commons, and then there’s this old site which seems to have significant overlap - I’ve found a few difficult-to-place pictures there. once I know the artist who created a painting I’ll look through the rest of their catalogue, see if any of their other pieces were used as well. I keep a spreadsheet of the paintings/artists I’ve found and which game their art was in. like I said at the beginning, it’s just a lot of trial-and-error.

This was my same process! Some pieces I already knew thanks to art history classes over the years and pop culture recognition (Van Gogh qualifies for the latter, imho. ND introduced me to Mucha as an artist way back when as a kid so his work was easy to spot once that info took root, for the most part. Could kick myself to play MHM for the first time in ages yesterday and spot Mucha in Abby's room the whole time) so that helped in identifying them. A lot of my posts were mostly, "Hey, I recognize that piece!" Others were the result of searching wikiart and then hoping to find a nice gallery photo to use. (I feel like wikipedia and wikiart have gotten better on quality over the years, or that awful pre-restoration Age of Innocence has scarred me, lol. She was so yellow, so flaky.)

I loved your blog! Seriously when I came across it (all the way back in 2014? 2015? yeesh I've been here forever) it was immediately one of the coolest things I'd come across on the ND side of tumblr. It wasn't until late 2021 that I decided to try any of it myself- honestly the never ending COVID lockdowns in Ontario probably had something to do with it. And then I found it so satisfying that I haven't really stopped! It's not something I'm always working on, but I do keep coming back to it :)

My process is still mostly the same, although I think I've gotten a bit more efficient, just through repetition. But I've never felt prepared to do the art history write-ups you always included - those have always felt just a bit too far outside my wheelhouse.

If I'm remembering correctly (because it has been so long, just saw a timestamp on one of my old posts and it was 2015), a lot of what I posted were sourced descriptions from the gallery pages, whatever little tid-bits caught my eye in the process of tracking things down, or that I knew from elsewhere (like Edmund Dulac's Firebird being an illustration for the Russian fairytale; I used to have the most beautiful HQ picture of it until my computer troubles hit, and the site that hosted it has pulled it, presumably because the prints were all sold. Pain, not even the WayBack saved it).

I can't necessarily say if I'll dive back into it all right now when I am still slowly catching up, both with what's been posted since my absence and replaying the games for the first time since... I can't remember when. (I say this, as if I did not spend two to three hours last night digging around for details on a Chinese scroll painting from MHM, lol. I was successful in my efforts, but I need to transcribe what I found and so on. Experience has taught me that auction listings, sale prints, and the like will not always be around for viewing online. And yes, auction websites might be the answer to tracking down the Chinese wall scrolls but even that feels like a matter of sheer luck.)

hA. erm. slowly and also painfully, basically. I don't have an art history background but I loved when artofnancydrew and littlenancydrewthings used to put their art id posts together and wanted to see if I could figure it out myself, so it's just a lot of trial-and-error and a decent amount of patience.

unfortunately most of the in-game images are too small for google’s reverse/search-by-image thing to pick up, boo. so for paintings I generally end up at wikiart because their advanced search tool lets you filter by genre/style/date of creation. they also have a ‘tags’ feature but it isn’t all that robust - most of the artworks are not comprehensively tagged, so i mostly avoid that. honestly, I usually end up searching by by genre (ie ‘landscape’ or ‘portrait’), use the timeline thing to limit the number of results, and then just. scroll through all of what comes back.

I dearly love the RKDimages database (their TAGGING SYSTEM holy mother of dog it’s FUCKING MIRACULOUS). it’s main focus is Netherlandish art, but seriously, give this thing every gold star on the planet, it’s so damned beautiful. all other databases, get on the RKD’s level. holy frick.

other than that? we know HeR used to use the Corel image library but of course i haven’t had any luck actually finding/accessing said image library. that said, I’ve had some luck plugging the term into wikimedia commons, and then there’s this old site which seems to have significant overlap - I’ve found a few difficult-to-place pictures there. once I know the artist who created a painting I’ll look through the rest of their catalogue, see if any of their other pieces were used as well. I keep a spreadsheet of the paintings/artists I’ve found and which game their art was in. like I said at the beginning, it’s just a lot of trial-and-error.

This was my same process! Some pieces I already knew thanks to art history classes over the years and pop culture recognition (Van Gogh qualifies for the latter, imho. ND introduced me to Mucha as an artist way back when as a kid so his work was easy to spot once that info took root, for the most part. Could kick myself to play MHM for the first time in ages yesterday and spot Mucha in Abby's room the whole time) so that helped in identifying them. A lot of my posts were mostly, "Hey, I recognize that piece!" Others were the result of searching wikiart and then hoping to find a nice gallery photo to use. (I feel like wikipedia and wikiart have gotten better on quality over the years, or that awful pre-restoration Age of Innocence has scarred me, lol. She was so yellow, so flaky.)