Friday, July 6, 2018

French Landscape Paintings (now in Stockholm)

François Boucher
View of Tivoli with the Temple of Vesta
ca. 1725-30
 oil on canvas
Nationalmuseum, Stockholm

Jean-Baptiste Pater
A Company bathing in a Park
before 1736
 oil on canvas
Nationalmuseum, Stockholm

Philippe-Jacques de Loutherbourg
Landscape with Waterfall, Castle and Peasants
1767
 oil on canvas
Nationalmuseum, Stockholm

Jean-Joseph-Xavier Bidauld
Gorge at Cività Castellana
1787
oil on paper, mounted on canvas
Nationalmuseum, Stockholm

By Day and By Night

Shadow, index of the sun,
Who knows him as you know him,
Who have never turned to look at him since the beginning?

In the court of his brilliance
You set up his absence like a camp.
And his fire only confirms you. And his death is your freedom.

– W.S. Merwin (1962)

Auguste-Xavier Leprince
At Barrière de la Villette, Paris
ca. 1820
 oil on canvas
Nationalmuseum, Stockholm

Eugène Delacroix
The Lion Hunt
1855
 oil on canvas
Nationalmuseum, Stockholm

A Divine Image

Cruelty has a Human Heart,
And Jealousy a Human Face;
Terror the Human Form Divine,
And Secrecy, the Human Dress.

The Human Dress, is forgèd Iron,
The Human Form, a fiery Forge.
The Human Face, a Furnace seal'd,
The Human Heart, its hungry Gorge.

– William Blake (1794)

Eugène Delacroix
Erminia and the Shepherds
1859
 oil on canvas
Nationalmuseum, Stockholm

Jean-François Millet
The Coast at Gréville
before 1875
 oil on canvas
Nationalmuseum, Stockholm

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
Ennery near Auvers
before 1875
 oil on canvas
Nationalmuseum, Stockholm

from Oenone

There lies a vale in Ida, lovelier
Than all the valleys of Ionian hills.
The swimming vapour slopes athwart the glen,
Puts forth an arm, and creeps from pine to pine,
And loiters, slowly drawn.

– Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1829)

Auguste Renoir
La Grenouillère
1869
oil on canvas
Nationalmuseum, Stockholm

Camille Pissarro
Landscape at Pontoise
1874
 oil on canvas
Nationalmuseum, Stockholm

Claude Monet
View over the Sea
1882
 oil on canvas
Nationalmuseum, Stockholm

Georges Seurat
The Bridge at Bineau
before 1891
 oil on canvas
Nationalmuseum, Stockholm

Alfred Sisley
On the Shores of Loing
1896
 oil on canvas
Nationalmuseum, Stockholm

from The Book of the Dead: The Dam

This is a perfect fluid, having no age nor hours,
surviving scarless, unaltered, loving rest,
willing to run forever to find its peace
in equal seas in currents of still glass.
Effects of friction : to fight and pass again,
learning its power, conquering boundaries,
able to rise blind in revolts of tide,
broken and sacrificed to flow resumed.

– Muriel Rukeyser (1936)