The phenomenon of late fame
Here’s an interesting piece on the phenomenon of late fame. Robert Graboyes concentrates on music:
Johann Sebastian Bach is one of history’s three greatest composers (along with Beethoven and Mozart), but his fame didn’t really blossom until the mid-19th century—75 or 80 years after his death. That fact contains both sadness (that he never enjoyed the fame he deserved) and joy (that his name rings out around the world and across the centuries). … I’ll share the stories of a handful of mid-20th century folk/pop musicians whose fame (in selected circles) was similarly deferred—along with some clips of their music.
That started me thinking about other arenas and other examples of late fame. I think the quintessential one is Van Gogh, who struggled tremendously in his life (from some unspecified and episodic mental illness, among other things like poverty) and sold very few paintings, although more than the one painting of legend:
We don’t know exactly how many paintings Van Gogh sold during this lifetime, but in any case, it was more than a couple. Vincent’s first commission was from his uncle Cor. He was an art dealer and wanted to help his nephew on his way, so he ordered 19 cityscapes of The Hague.
Vincent sold his first painting to the Parisian paint and art dealer Julien Tanguy, and his brother Theo successfully sold another work to a gallery in London. The Red Vineyard, which Vincent painted in 1888, was bought by Anna Boch, the sister of Vincent’s friend Eugène Boch.
Without the help of his brother Theo, Van Gogh would have been even worse off. But things were bad enough, and he killed himself at the age of thirty-seven in 1890. Now Van Gogh is one of the most popular artists ever, whose work fetches astronomical prices at auction.
But I think it’s somewhat of a myth that he was a complete failure in his lifetime. From his Wiki entry, I was surprised to see that he did have more recognition during his lifetime that I’d previously known, plus he was acknowledged with at least some praise and acknowledgement shortly after his death:
After Van Gogh’s first exhibitions in the late 1880s, his reputation grew steadily among artists, art critics, dealers and collectors. In 1887, André Antoine hung Van Gogh’s alongside works of Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, at the Théâtre Libre in Paris; some were acquired by Julien Tanguy. In 1889, his work was described in the journal Le Moderniste Illustré by Albert Aurier as characterised by “fire, intensity, sunshine”. Ten paintings were shown at the Société des Artistes Indépendants, in Brussels in January 1890. French president Marie François Sadi Carnot was said to have been impressed by Van Gogh’s work.
After Van Gogh’s death, memorial exhibitions were held in Brussels, Paris, The Hague and Antwerp. His work was shown in several high-profile exhibitions, including six works at Les XX; in 1891, there was a retrospective exhibition in Brussels. In 1892, Octave Mirbeau wrote that Van Gogh’s suicide was an “infinitely sadder loss for art … even though the populace has not crowded to a magnificent funeral, and poor Vincent van Gogh, whose demise means the extinction of a beautiful flame of genius, has gone to his death as obscure and neglected as he lived.”
Van Gogh’s fame and reputation started to build in the early years of the 20th century and he became quite famous in mid-century. So it did take a while for him to reach his present mega-fame.
Another example of a very different kind that comes to mind is Ignaz Semmelweis, who’s not really what you’d call a household name even now. But he was disgraced in his lifetime and rehabilitated only after death:
In 1847, he proposed hand washing with chlorinated lime solutions at Vienna General Hospital’s First Obstetrical Clinic, where doctors’ wards had thrice the mortality of midwives’ wards. The maternal mortality rate dropped from 18% to less than 2%, and he published a book of his findings, Etiology, Concept and Prophylaxis of Childbed Fever, in 1861.
Despite his research, Semmelweis’s observations conflicted with the established scientific and medical opinions of the time and his ideas were rejected by the medical community. He could offer no theoretical explanation for his findings of reduced mortality due to hand-washing, and some doctors were offended at the suggestion that they should wash their hands and mocked him for it. In 1865, the increasingly outspoken Semmelweis allegedly suffered a nervous breakdown and was committed to an asylum by his colleagues. In the asylum, he was beaten by the guards. He died 14 days later from a gangrenous wound on his right hand that may have been caused by the beating.
His findings earned widespread acceptance only years after his death, when Louis Pasteur confirmed the germ theory of disease, giving Semmelweis’s observations a theoretical and scientific explanation, and Joseph Lister, acting on Pasteur’s research, practised and operated using hygienic methods with great success.
Another extremely well-known example of the “late fame” genre is poet Emily Dickinson, reclusive and nearly unpublished in life but now considered one of the greatest American poets:
Although Dickinson was a prolific writer, only 10 of her nearly 1,800 poems were published during her lifetime.Today her poems are widely regarded as groundbreaking with their use of short acerbic lines, lean descriptions, and slant or off-rhyme. Her poetry primarily deals with nature and mortality.
One thing all three – Van Gogh, Semmelweis, and Dickinson – had in common was that their work was unconventional for the times, trailblazing even. It took the passage of time for them to be appreciated. I’ll let Dickinson have the last word:
Success is counted sweetest,
By those who ne’er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.Not one of all the purpose Host
Who took the Flag today
Can tell the definition
So clear of VictoryAs he defeated – dying –
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Burst agonized and clear!
I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there’s a pair of us!
Dont tell! they’d banish us – you know!
How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell your name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!
Jonathan Larson was a little-known musical composer with a couple of minor off-Broadway productions before he wrote “Rent” — then he died of an aortic dissection the morning of its first workshop preview performance, at age 35. It went on to become one of the most successful Broadway musicals in history.
We have visited Van Gogh’s grave. His Brother, Theo, is buried next to him. Theo did not live very long after his brothers death
Mathematician Évariste Galois, 25 October 1811 – 31 May 1832) was a French mathematician and political activist.
I never bothered to look up the whole or true story until now, but the thumbnail story I heard was that at a very young age, he had developed an amazing body of original mathematical work that was unpublished. He then got himself into duel over a woman. Realizing that he had all this work that could be lost should he die, he stayed up all night writing it up. The next day he went to his duel exhausted and was killed.
A dramatic story that is mostly true, though there are a number of other details.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evariste_Galois
The web link has an accented letter E in it, which this system doesn’t accept. (Or something)
The whole wiki is rather involved and interesting. I have an in-law who as a kid junior high and high was something of a math savant. He quickly came up with correct answer to math problems, but like Galois couldn’t or wouldn’t explain a chain of reasoning. I believe he gave up on academic pursuits not long after
Apologies for the above errors. The editing timed out on me.
Gregor Johann Mendel, 20 July 1822[4] – 6 January 1884) was an Austrian[5][6] biologist, meteorologist,[7] mathematician, Augustinian friar and abbot of St. Thomas’ Abbey in Brno (Brünn), Margraviate of Moravia. Mendel was born in a German-speaking family in the Silesian part of the Austrian Empire (today’s Czech Republic) and gained posthumous recognition as the founder of the modern science of genetics.
The profound significance of Mendel’s work was not recognized until the turn of the 20th century (more than three decades later) with the rediscovery of his laws.
The Ignaz Semmelweis story reminds me of the docu-drama Death By Lightning about the presidency of Garfield and his assassination. He most likely died because the doctor attending his gunshot wounds did not follow any sanitary procedures, in spite of another doctor admonishing him to do so.
Ötzi the Iceman is (probably) a lot more famous now than he was in his day.
A commenter from Neo’s link lists a few more of the almost-forgotten:
David Hand
Some scientists have also suffered from recognition coming very late in life, or even after their deaths. In some cases, the work was not simply unrecognised, but was actively ridiculed (leading sometimes to suicide). Examples of people whose work was not appreciated at the time are Evariste Galois (group theory), Niels Henrik Abel (algebra), Gregor Mendel (genetics), Alfred Wegener (continental drift), Ludwig Boltzmann (statistical mechanics), and Ignaz Semmelweis (infection).
Van Gogh fans should check Leonard Nimoy’s one man show about Theo and Vincent, where he plays both brothers. There’s one shaggy dog joke in particular that’s comedy gold.
I took a look at the Substack for Robert Graboyes and found two more very interesting posts, which our eclectic bunch of Neophiles might enjoy.
The first one is a treasure trove for Trivial Pursuits minded people.
Does anyone still play that board game?
https://graboyes.substack.com/p/47-heartbeats-away-from-the-presidency
The second has a very good explanation of the topic, which is the smack down of Virginia’s recent attempt at gerrymandering, but I especially liked two of Robert’s graphics: an illustration for the maxim “It’s not rocket science!” and representations of the proposed Virginia map in the style of four very idiosyncratic artists.
https://graboyes.substack.com/p/virginia-supreme-court-ruling-made
The story of Emily Dickinson is somewhat different from the standard myth of the Lone Unknown Poet whose poetry was only discovered after she died.
It’s true that Dickinson did not seek conventional publication. She considered it improper for a woman to do so in her time. However, she did care to be read. She mailed her poems to friends, who copied her poems and mailed them to friends and so on.
Dickinson had a network of readers, just not in literary magazines.
Not on topic, but still of interest to NewNeo readers: Bee Gees Madrigal.
In addition:
Bohemian Rhapsody (SATTBB a cappella Choir) – Arranged by Philip Lawson.Suggested by a blogmate of AVI.(James..I Don’t Know But..)
I’m surprised no one has mentioned Jesus yet 🙂
Claude Shannon, not widely known is my guess. Oughta be, though.
Claude Shannon, not widely known is my guess.
There was an interview with him that is probably on YouTube. He was already pretty far gone to Alzheimer’s disease at the time, so it was hard to watch. His wife was caring for him.
Willem Dafoe’s performance of van Gogh’s last days was lauded and won nominations and awards.
–“AT ETERNITY’S GATE Trailer NEW (2018) – Willem Dafoe Vincent van Gogh Movie”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYGBMfyrd5w
Dafoe’s portrayal is incredible and van Gogh’s story is, of course, moving. The film also bears up neo’s description of van Gogh as an loner but still connected to the art world of his time.
@AesopFan:Alfred Wegener (continental drift)
The issue here was a lack of a known physical mechanism that could account for the sideways motions of continents; that rock could move up and down was already accepted. From the 1930s to the 1950s these mechanisms were proposed, and in the late 1950s the evidence of seafloor spreading and the mid-ocean ridges had clinched it, and I think by 1970 it was in all the textbooks. (I have a geology textbook that is pre-plate tectonics and it is curious reading, in hindsight.)
A competing theory was that the earth is expanding, it too has not been accepted for lack of a plausible physical mechanism. There was a geologist at the University of Tasmania who led that school of thought who died in 2002. It still has a few adherents and their day has not yet come.
@AesopFan:Ludwig Boltzmann (statistical mechanics)
Boltzmann is one of those “on the shoulders of giants” guys, both before, during, and after his own work. Statistical mechanics was worked out by many legendary physicists including Maxwell and Gibbs. The primary barrier to its acceptance was that physicists whose work was not close to chemistry were not sure that atoms and molecules were real, though chemists had been convinced of this long before. The physical evidence needed to clinch their reality wasn’t available until a few years after Boltzmann’s death.
There was a particular rabbit hole that Boltzmann spent years going down, that is known not to go where Boltzmann tried to take it, though it was valuable work that has been built on since. What connection his failure there had to do with his death is hard to say as he was not a mentally well man.
@AesopFan:a few more of the almost-forgotten:
I only went through two of them, but a common theme of the non-math people on your list, is that the slow-to-be-accepted idea they proposed rested on an assumption for which the scientific evidence was not then very strong. For Wegener, that rock would move sideways, for Boltzmann that atoms and molecules were real, for Semmelweiss that there were such things as germs.
Mendel is the exception here, I think it really was just his obscurity. Others had seen the phenomena he’d studied and were asking questions, they just didn’t know Mendel had an answer. Once someone dug it up it was a matter of months before the others were off to the races with it.
Eva Cassidy.
Peerless.
Nightlline’s 2001 tribute.
She can change your life.
Re: Eva Cassidy
Le Not Juste:
Nice shot!
Eva was a serious musician who didn’t shy away from exposure, but she didn’t catch fire until, thanks to Terry Wogan in the UK, after her early death from melanoma.
And yes, she can change your life. A few nights ago I listened to this wonderful reaction video to Eva’s immortal cover of “Over the Rainbow.”
–The Charismatic Voice, “Eva Cassidy “Over the Rainbow” REACTION & ANALYSIS by Vocal Coach / Opera Singer”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iK3kU4_JfaU
I’ve been listening to her since 1999. She is the purist singer I’ve ever heard.
RIP Eva Cassidy (1963-1996)
Poet Frank O’Hara didn’t go from relatively unknown to an indispensable American poet as Emily Dickinson did.
But he is the only American poet from the 50s/60s I can think of who is more famous and influential today than when he died in 1966.
Then he was an assistant curator at the Museum of Modern Art. He was known as a charismatic, life of the party, guy in all the arty circles of New York City. He wrote poetry on the side and published a couple thin volumes, but he wasn’t taken seriously as a poet.
But after he died, his “Collected Poems” came out and people realized the depth, breadth, accessibility and intelligence of his hundreds of poems. O’Hara has been gaining fans ever since.
During the “Mad Men” show I noticed that at a couple of crucial junctures, O’Hara’s collection “Meditations in an Emergency” appeared. O’Hara pops up in current culture a lot more often than his peers.
RIP Frank O’Hara (1926-1966)
“Nothing is said about Jesus in non-religious historical records from the exact years he was alive. There are no surviving contemporary diaries, official Roman court transcripts, census data, or political letters from his lifetime that mention him.”
Well, that’s what Google says.
Mercha:
No videos, live streams, or photographs either! Gospel of Google. (Sarc x11)
Alan Turing
— Mercha
Flavius Josephus made mention of Jesus. There is debate about whether the account is embellished, but the3 consensus is that it’s at least partly real.
Google is not a trust worthy source or search engine. I don’t know that any of them are fully trustworthy, but Google is infamous for incorporating agenda into their searches and products.
That said, it isn’t surprising that there would not be a lot of correspondence or references to it, because from the Roman POV, at the time, it was a small matter in a distant part of the empire. It just wouldn’t have seemed that important to the Romans at the time.
Nor was there anything like the volume of interaction and communication then that we’re used to today. Sending a letter across the empire was expensive, likewise making records. (Papyrus was not free.)
It’s true that the Romans were big record keepers, but they didn’t record any thing like as much fine detail as we do, and the Jesus affair would not have seemed like a big deal wot them at the time.
— Niketas Choniates
“The scientific consensus changes one funeral at a time”. That’s true of many fields.
@HC68:“The scientific consensus changes one funeral at a time”.
Didn’t take funerals, in that case. It took evidence. The people in the early 1950s who didn’t believe in continental drift didn’t all die off by 1967, they changed their minds because the needed evidence was produced.
Before the 1950s, it wasn’t clear that continents could move sideways, and they had other mechanisms that did have good evidence for existing that fit the observations that continental drift was invoked to explain.
But the evidence from the seafloor that began to emerge in 1947 was too convincing by 1967. It took time to be collected and time to make sense of it.
Magnetic anonmoly detection in the oceans directly tied to anti submarine warfare and magnetic influence fuzes on WWII torpedos that didn’t work. Office of Naval Research (USN) IIRC.