Ernest Hemingway sits among the pantheon of American literary giants, with an oeuvre containing a number of the 20th Century’s most acclaimed works including The Old Man and the Sea and For Whom the Bell Tolls. Hemingway was also possessed of a huge personality to match his towering creative ability.
Hemingway with Colonel Charles “Buck” Lanham in Schweitzer, Germany, during World War II. 28 September 1944. The Ernest Hemingway Photograph Collection. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.
He stands apart from his contemporaries in respect of this larger-than-life persona; the image of the barrel-chested, big-bearded adventurer is almost as well-known as his writing.
With the first major museum exhibition of his life and work at the Morgan Library and Museum in New York, we are transported back to the author’s influential time in the Army during World War One and the inter-war years when he penned the novels, such as A Farewell to Arms, which propelled him to fame.
Hemingway lived in Paris for much of the 1920s, becoming part of a circle of the city’s ex-pat writers which included F Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce and Gertrude Stein, and his frequent and intimate correspondence with many of those friends are a fascinating addition to the exhibition. There are also draft manuscripts and inscribed editions, notebooks, photographs and personal items on loan from the Ernest Hemingway Collection.
Ernest Hemingway: Between Two Wars runs until 31 January 2016.
Ernest Hemingway’s Certificate of Identity, Issued May 1944.
The Ernest Hemingway Photograph Collection. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.
Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1926, The Carter Burden Collection of American Literature, The Morgan Library & Museum, Photography by Graham S. Haber, 2014.
Hemingway (at left) during the Fiesta of San Fermin in Pamplona, 1925. The Ernest Hemingway Photograph Collection. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.
Ernest Hemingway at the wheel of his boat, Pilar, with Carlos Gutierrez, 1934.
The Ernest Hemingway Photograph Collection. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.
F. Scott (Francis Scott) Fitzgerald (1896– 1940), Autograph letter to Ernest Hemingway, signed, On Board the S.S. Conte Biancamano, [10–23 December 1926]. The Ernest Hemingway Photograph Collection. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. By permission of Harold Ober Associates Incorporated on behalf of the Fitzgerald Trust.
Ernest Hemingway, Three Stories & Ten Poems, [Paris]: Contact Publishing Co., 1923, The Carter Burden Collection of American Literature, The Morgan Library & Museum, Photography by Graham S. Haber, 2014.
Agnes von Kurowsky and Ernest Hemingway, Milan, 1918.
The Ernest Hemingway Photograph Collection. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.
Photograph of Hemingway at the Finca Vigia, posing in front of Waldo Peirce’s 1929 oil portrait, Kid Balzac, which depicts Hemingway, 1952. The Ernest Hemingway Photograph Collection. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.
Ernest Hemingway on crutches while recovering in Milan, Italy, September 1918. The Ernest Hemingway Photograph Collection. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.
Ernest Hemingway stepping out of a canoe, Sun Valley, Idaho, October 1941.
Photograph by Robert Capa. The Ernest Hemingway Photograph Collection. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.
© International Center of Photography/Magnum Photos.
