1881 · Skopia

Showing 29 works across all media from 1881

Luncheon of the Boating Party

1881 · Phillips Collection, Washington, District of Columbia

Fourteen of Renoir's friends linger over the wreckage of lunch above the Seine, his future wife among them, cooing at a dog on the table.

★ 8.8

Fiction · Romance

Portrait of a Lady

Henry James

1881 · 656 pages

Isabel Archer, an American with opinions and a sudden fortune, turns down good proposals and marries badly in Italy. James stays so close inside her mind that her mistakes feel like your own.

★ 8.1

Letter

What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?

Vincent van Gogh

1881

★ 7.3

Genre painting · Impressionism

Two Sisters (On the Terrace)

Pierre Auguste Renoir

1881 · Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago

A basket of colored wool sits in the front, the Seine glitters behind, and the whole thing is about how good an afternoon can be.

★ 7.2

Fiction

The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas

Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis

1881 · 368 pages

Bras Cubas writes from beyond the grave, dedicating his memoirs to the first worm that gnawed his corpse. A rich Brazilian idler tallies a wasted life with wit, malice, and zero remorse.

★ 6.6

A purpose is the eternal condition of success. Nothing will take its place. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men of talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is a proverb... Education will not; the country is full of unsuccessful educated men... There is no road to success but through a clear, strong purpose.

Theodore T. Munger

On the Threshold · 1881

★ 5.1

Essay · Sociology

It would be hard to find a single instance of a direct assault by positive effort upon poverty, vice, and misery which has not either failed or, if it has not failed directly and entirely, has not entailed other evils greater than the one which it removed.

William Graham Sumner

Sociology · 1881

★ 4.3

Essay

Old and young, we are all on our last cruise.