Havana '59 Exhibition and Sale at Eastern University - Opening - November 11, 2011

Presented by Eastern University, Friends of the Library, and Pennsylvania Trust to benefit the David R. Black Academic Enrichment Fund. Click here to for tickets to the November 11,2011 Grand Opening at the Bolingbroke Mansion in Radnor

Sponsers (to date): (click on link to view sponsors websites) Pennsylvania Trust, Corporate Dimensions, LTD., Handelok Bag Company, Edmar Abrasive Company, Franklin Mint Federal Credit Union, Newman & Saunders Galleries

Hemingway Slept Here

22" x 28" Acrylic on Canvas
George H. Rothacker, 2010©
SOLD
Owned by Eastern University
Prints are also available.

Please contact george@rothackeradv.com


Ernest Hemingway, circa 1953
The Old Man and the Sea is a story by Ernest Hemingway, written in Cuba in 1951 and published in 1952. It was the last major work of fiction to be produced by Hemingway and published in his lifetime. One of his most famous works, it centers upon Santiago, an aging Cuban fisherman who struggles with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream.

This novella received the Pulitzer Prize in May of 1952 and was specifically sited when Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954.

When asked about the symbolism and interpretations of the work, Hemingway emphasized that, "No good book has ever been written that has in it symbols arrived at beforehand and stuck in. ... I tried to make a real old man, a real boy, a real sea and a real fish and real sharks. But if I made them good and true enough they would mean many things.

While visiting Cuba, my wife, our friends and I visited Hemingway's home. It had recently been restored with the assistance of the Hemingway Preservation Foundation. Since Hemingway was forced to leave the home in 1960, it had been looked after by the Cubans, but was decaying. His boat, the Pilar, which is also at the site, was used between 1944 and 1944, and had been armed by Hemingway with machine guns, automatic rifles and grenades for the mission of chasing German U-boats.

The painting, "Hemingway Slept Here" is of his living room as it is today, with him surrounded by his trophies, paintings and prints, books and his table of libations.