Here is Hope astride the world. She strains to hear the note she plucks from the one remaining string on her lyre. She wears no shoes and only a simple garment. In her darkness, she plays her instrument by the single light that illuminates the world.
Listen for the note.
“Hope is a Symbolist oil painting by the English painter George Frederic Watts, the first two versions of which were completed in 1886. … President Theodore Roosevelt displayed a copy at his Sagamore Hill home in New York; reproductions circulated worldwide; and a 1922 film depicted Watts's creation of the painting and an imagined story behind it. By this time Hope was coming to seem outdated and sentimental, and Watts was rapidly falling out of fashion. In 1938 the Tate Gallery ceased to keep their collection of Watts's works on permanent display.
Despite the decline in Watts's popularity, Hope remained influential. Martin Luther King Jr. based a 1959 sermon, now known as Shattered Dreams, on the theme of the painting, as did Jeremiah Wright in Chicago in 1990. Among the congregation for the latter was the young Barack Obama, who was deeply moved.”
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