3. Titanic: Lost Art And The Death Of Millet – 1912
Evidence suggests that there was important art lost with the sinking of the Titanic. Among the known lost work was a desperately valuable painting by Blondel called ‘La Circassienene au Bain’. We know about this one since its owner, Haken Bjornstrom-Steffansen (not on board), claimed $100,000 insurance money for the work. Similarly, Emilio Portaluppi claimed $3,000 for an autographed portrait of Garibaldi said to have been lost. And, besides the objet d’art, there was a further loss to art in the form of famous American painter Francis Davis Millet. A close friend and colleague of John Singer Sargent, Millet was one of the highest profile passengers to go down at sea but his name has faded with time and little recognition is accorded to his legacy. Nonetheless, he was contemporaneously internationally feted for his murals at the Boston public library and for a series of salon-style paintings.