ENGRAVED PORTRAIT OF HESTER PRYNNE
Engraved Portrait of Hester Prynne from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter”, standing in front of a doorway, from the Illustration by George Henry Boughton, an Anglo-American painter and illustrator.
“Description of painting from advertisement for the painting cut from a periodical (in the Hawthorne Graphics Collection, Peabody Essex Museum): Hester is revealed in his [Boughton's] imaginative recreation as a figure of dignity and strength who glows in the dark and brooding world of New England Puritanism around her….She stands patiently, her bag of needlework in hand, her eyes and composed features testifying to the inner strength which has sustained her through exposure on the public pillory and the continued obloquy of the townspeople….In the background a man and boy hurry through the cold night, their cloaks held to their mouths to protect them from both the frosty air and the evil vapors their imagination conceives as emanating from the scorned adulteress, yet with their eyes drawn furtively to her loveliness.”
Courtesy of Peabody Essex Museum
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