F.O. Matthiessen was one of the foremost scholars of American literature of the 20th century. His mother, Lucy Orne Matthiessen, was originally from Springfield. Russell Cheney was a well-known painter in the 1920s and 1930s in the Boston and New York art worlds. After a chance meeting aboard the ocean liner Paris in 1924 the two men remained a couple – a marriage in everything but name and legal rights – up until Cheney’s death in 1945.
Scott Bane’s talk introduces Matthiessen and Cheney and their respective family backgrounds, their professional achievements, their life together in Maine, and the background to researching and writing his book, A Union Like Ours: The Love Story of F.O. Matthiessen and Russell Cheney.
Presented by Scott Bane, Program Officer, The John A. Hartford Foundation
Image: F.O. Matthiessen 1923 Graduation Photo from Yale; Russell Cheney 1904 Graduation Photo from Yale
Join us in-person or online!
If you plan to attend in person at the Museums, tickets are available on the day of the lecture in the Welcome Center.
Members: FREE
Springfield residents: FREE
Nonmembers: $4
To attend via ZOOM, please register in advance.
Free admission to the Museums a la Carte lectures for all museum members made possible by the National Endowment for the Humanities through the #SHARP program.