Sunday, June 17, 2018

Fine Art Ambitions in Paint (1620-1955)

Peter Paul Rubens
The Union of Earth and Water
ca. 1620
oil on panel
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Anthony van Dyck
Virgin and Child
1628
oil on panel
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Jacques Courtois
A Battle
ca. 1655-70
oil on canvas
National Galleries of Scotland

Bon Vivre

Vivre, Vivre,
Don't live forever, Vivre,
Good livers don't live forever, Vivre,

Stars don't,
We don't,

Live forever, sharpen ourselves,
For a magnificent eternal occasion

And of an occasion
I saw one star fading

It bid itself, Vivre,
Candled itself, Handled itself,
For must it stay lit forever
On the eternally magnificent bitter black nights?

Anonymous German artist
Grant of Arms or of Nobility in the Holy Roman Empire
(shield-of-arms flanked by figures of Mars and Minerva)
ca. 1700-1725
pigment on vellum (fragment)
Victoria & Albert Museum

Anonymous German artist
Grant of Arms or of Nobility in the Holy Roman Empire
(shield of arms)
ca. 1675-1725
pigment on vellum (fragment)
Victoria & Albert Museum

Anonymous French artist
Alexandre et Éphestion
(from hand-painted album titled L'Histoire Universelle)
ca. 1700-1800
watercolor
British Museum

Thomas Stothard
Intemperance - Mark Antony and Cleopatra
(sketch for staircase decoration at Burghley House, Northamptonshire)
ca. 1802
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

Francis Danby
The Deluge
1840
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

Little Is To Be Said

little is to be said
Over tomorrow

little is to be said
Over today

little is to be said
Over a raindrop

little is to be said
Over a parade bearing a casket

little is to be said
        Over yesterday's particle of a parade

Jacobus van Looy
Blooming Clover
ca. 1897
oil on canvas
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Jacobus van Looy
Summer Luxuriance
ca. 1890-1910
oil on canvas
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Charles Ricketts
Don Juan and the Commander
ca. 1905
oil on canvas
National Galleries of Scotland

Natalia Goncharova
Linen
1913
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

Lakewell

I once had a mind
Like a little butterfly
That floated away in the silvery distance

Once upon a time
I wandered over to a nymph
During the stiff autumn sunshine

Still I wanted a mind
Wrapped up in a soft cocoon of hope
And never to despair

Yet and all over time
What the nymph said to me
That wove the vine of time and hush and sunshine

Yet once upon a time
I wanted to have been a butterfly
That floated away in the lake distance

Walter Sickert
High Steppers (The Plaza Tiller Girls)
ca. 1938-39
oil on canvas
National Galleries of Scotland

Joseph Beuys
Hearts of the Revolutionaries - Passage of the Planets of the Future
1955
watercolor on card
Tate Gallery

– poems are from A Dark Dreambox of Another Kind: the Poems of Alfred Starr Hamilton (Brooklyn : The Song Cave, 2013)