Beautifier or Destroyer: Tuberculosis in Two Paintings

Send us Fan MailWe explore two paintings, each rendering one of two different perspectives on tuberculosis (TB). We first take a close look at Alice Neel’s 1940 painting, T.B. Harlem, and focus on how it depicts the suffering and destruction TB caused, and reveals some of the social determinants of TB at the time. We then examine Thomas Lawrence’s 1794 painting, Portrait of Catherine Rebecca Grey, Lady Manners, and work through how it conveys the convergence of TB clinical manifestations with beauty ideals at the time.Links:Here are the links for the paintings we discuss:T.B. Harlem, Alice Neel, 1940, oil on canvas Portrait of Catherine Rebecca Grey, Lady Manners, Thomas Lawrence (1794), oil on canvasThe Sick Child, Edvard Munch, 1907, oil on canvas  Background sources:JAMA issue featuring cover with Alice Neel painting, T.B. Harlem, and William Barclay commentary.Russell Teagarden’s According to the Arts blog piece on T.B. Harlem.Hoban P. Alice Neel: The Art of Not Sitting Pretty. New York, St. Martin’s Press, 2010. Day, C. Consumptive Chic. London, Bloomsbury Visual Art; 2017, 189 pages.Russell Teagarden’s According to the Arts blog piece on Carolyn Day’s book, Consumptive Chic.Day C, Rauser A. Thomas Lawrence’s Consumptive Chic: Reinterpreting Lady Manners’s Hectic Flush in 1794, Eighteenth-Century Studies, vol. 49, no. 4 (2016) pp. 455–74. (Not open access)Russell Teagarden’s According to the Arts blog pieces on The Sick Child, and on Munch’s approach to his painting, and podcast episode with Øystein Ustvedt, curator and Munch expert on Munch's paintings rendering illness, suffering, and grief.Here's an image representative of the 1990s fashion trend known as “Heroin Chic” that we referred to during the podcast. Please send us comments, recommendations, and questions to: [email protected] for listening, and please subscribe to The Clinic & The Person wherever you get your podcasts.Executive producer:  Anne Bentley