"Call it Yaddo, Mamma. It makes poetry--Yaddo, shadow, shadow-Yaddo……Yaddo sounds like shadow but it's not going to be shadow." -Christina Trask (K. Trask, Chronicles of Vaddo)
If fortunate enough to gain entry into the private Yaddo mansion in the late 1890s, you would have noticed two large paintings in the main hall: Eastman Johnson's portrait of the Lady of Yaddo herself, Kristina Trask, staring directly across the hall at a full-length portrait of English poet and dramatist Robert Browning, painted by his son, Robert "Pen" Barrett Browning. This unexpected vis-à-vis is the central frame of this study.
Spencer and Katrina Trask were en route to Europe in December 1889 for a proposed meeting with the poet when Browning died suddenly. However, they had several encounters with his son and his American wife, Fannie Coddington Browning, who had been Katrinas girlhood friend. In Venice, the Trasks purchased two paintings from Pen that still hang at Yaddo, notably the (in) famous "Joan of Arc and the Kingfisher." This book explores the Browning-Trask connections, Pen's two paintings, and the influence of Elizabeth and Robert Browning's poetry on Katrina Trasks writings.
"The Brownings' Shadow at Yaddo is an extraordinarily rich presentation of the lives of Spencer and Katrina Trask. The author spreads before us a wonderful tapestry of Yaddo's history, ultimately focusing on the brilliant but controversial painting by Pen Browning of a naked Joan of Arc. In its daring originality, its audacious erotic tone, and in its artistic quality, this painting expresses perfectly the spirit of Yaddo, as it is exposed to us by Hédi A. Jaouad in his thorough and intimate account." -James Kettlewell, Professor Emeritus of Art History, Skidmore College
