Maes - Scully - Sievers - Goya

Nicolaes Maes
Portrait of Agatha Bicker
(wife of Dirck Frederiksz Alewijn)
ca. 1675
oil on panel
Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, California

Nicolaes Maes
Portrait of Dirck Frederiksz Alewijn
(husband of Agatha Bicker)
ca. 1675
oil on panel
Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, California

Nicolaes Maes
Portrait of a Woman
ca. 1680-90
oil on canvas
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide

Nicolaes Maes
Self Portrait at age 22
1656
oil on panel
Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston, Ontario

Sean Scully
Wall of Light, Peru
2000
oil on canvas
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

Sean Scully
Colored Stacked Frames
2017
painted stainless steel
New Orleans Museum of Art

Sean Scully
Doric Yellow Crimson
2020
oil on canvas
McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas

Sean Scully
Doric Brown
2009
oil on aluminum
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

Wolfgang Sievers
Match Making, Bryant and May Factory
1939
gelatin silver print
Heide Museum of Modern Art, Bulleen, Australia

Wolfgang Sievers
Advertising Image for Stockings, Berlin
1938
gelatin silver print
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide

Wolfgang Sievers
Old Cottages at Aldinga, South Australia
1976
C-print
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide

Wolfgang Sievers
Old Frankfurt-am-Main before its Destruction in the War
1937
gelatin silver print
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide

Francisco Goya
Venus and Adonis
ca. 1771
oil on canvas
Museo de Zaragoza

Francisco Goya
Portrait of Bernardo de Iriarte
1797
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Strasbourg

Francisco Goya
Portrait of Martín Zapater
(merchant and friend of Goya)
1797
oil on canvas
Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao

Francisco Goya
Penitent St Jerome
1798
oil on canvas
Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, California

from The Sea and the Mirror

[Prospero to Ariel]: 

     When I am safely home, oceans away in Milan, and
Realize once and for all I shall never see you again,
     Over there, maybe, it won't seem quite so dreadful
Not to be interesting any more, but an old man
     Just like other old men, with eyes that water
Easily in the wind, and a head that nods in the sunshine,
     Forgetful, maladroit, a little grubby,
And to like it. When the servants settle me into a chair
     In some well-sheltered corner of the garden,
And arrange my muffler and rugs, shall I ever be able
     To stop myself from telling them what I am doing, –
Sailing alone, out over seventy thousand fathoms – ?
     Yet if I speak, I shall sink without a sound
Into unmeaning abysses. Can I learn to suffer
     Without saying something ironic or funny
On suffering? I never suspected the way of truth
     Was a way of silence where affectionate chat
Is but a robbers' ambush and even good music
     In shocking taste; and you, of course, never told me.
If I peg away at it honestly every moment,
     And have luck, perhaps by the time death pounces
His stumping question, I shall just be getting to know
     The difference between moonshine and daylight . . .
I see you starting to fidget. I forgot. To you
     That doesn't matter. My dear, here comes Gonzalo
With a solemn face to fetch me. O Ariel, Ariel,
     How I shall miss you. Enjoy your element. Good-bye.

– W.H. Auden (1942-44)

Watercolor Heads

Pieter Coecke van Aelst
Study Head of Bearded Man
ca. 1525-50
watercolor and gouache
private collection

Balthasar Gerbier
Portrait of Charles I as Prince of Wales
ca. 1616
watercolor miniature on vellum
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Peter Oliver
Elizabeth of Bohemia (the Winter Queen)
ca. 1623-26
watercolor miniature on vellum
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Richard Gibson
Sir William Kingsmill
ca. 1655
watercolor miniature on vellum
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Richard Gibson
Sir William Portman
ca. 1658
watercolor miniature on vellum
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Bernard Lens
King Henry V
1732
watercolor miniature on vellum
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

George Dance
Soldier's Head, front and back
ca. 1790
watercolor
Yale Center for British Art

Domenico Bossi
Portrait of a Lady in Van Dyck Costume
ca. 1810
watercolor and gouache miniature on ivory
Sinebrychoff Art Museum, Helsinki

Louis-Bertin Parant
Portrait of artist Dominique Vivant-Denon
ca. 1810-20
watercolor miniature on ivory
Musée du Louvre

Alfred Edward Chalon
Opera House, 1823
1823
watercolor
British Museum

attributed to Edward Ward Foster
Portrait of Miss Tamplin
1834
watercolor miniature on card
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Honoré Daumier
Head of a Man
ca. 1860
watercolor
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Joan of Arc
1864
watercolor on board
Tate Gallery

Anders Zorn
In Mourning
1880
watercolor on paper
Nationalmuseum, Stockholm

Nicolaas van der Waay
Portrait of painter George Hendrik Breitner
ca. 1895
watercolor
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Édouard Vuillard
Portrait of actor Coquelin Cadet
ca. 1890-1910
watercolor on paper
Musée du Louvre

Gustaw Gwozdecki
Head
ca. 1920
watercolor
Yale University Art Gallery

Mourning 

A peacock on an olive branch looks beyond

the grove to the road, beyond the road to the sea,

blank-lit, where a sailboat anchors to a cove.

As it is morning, below deck a man is pouring water into a cup,

listening to the radio-talk of the ships: barges dead

in the calms awaiting port call, pleasure boats whose lights

hours ago went out, fishermen setting their nets for mullet,

as summer tavernas hang octopus to dry on their lines,

whisper smoke into wood ovens, sweep the terraces

clear of night, putting the music out with morning

light, and for the breath of an hour it is possible

to consider the waters of this sea wine-dark, to remember

that there was no word for blue among the ancients,

but there was the whirring sound before the oars

of the great triremes sang out of the seam of world,

through pine-sieved winds silvered by salt flats until

they were light enough to pass for breath from the heavens,

troubled enough to fell ships and darken thought –

then as now the clouds pass, roosters sleep in their huts,

the sea flattens under glass air, but there is nothing to hold us there:

not the quiet of marble nor the luff of sail, fields of thyme,

a vineyard at harvest, and the sea filled with the bones of those

in flight from wars east and south, our wars, their remains

scavenged on the seafloor and in its caves, belongings now

a flotsam washed to the rocks. Stand here and look

into the distant haze, there where the holy mountain

with its thousand monks wraps itself in shawls of rain,

then look to the west, where the rubber boats tipped

into the tough waves. Rest your eyes there, remembering the words

of Anacreon, himself a refugee of war, who appears

in the writings of Herodotus:

I love and do not love, I am mad and I am not mad.

Like you he thought himself not better,

nor worse than anyone else. 

– Carolyn Forché (2016)

Dupain - Bouguereau - Mellan - Borsche

Max Dupain
The Magnolia
1983
gelatin silver print
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

Max Dupain
Monstera deliciosa
1970
gelatin silver print
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

Max Dupain
Concrete Support Beams, Sydney Opera House
1962
gelatin silver print
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

Max Dupain
Untitled (Discus Thrower)
1938
solarised gelatin silver print
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

William-Adolphe Bouguereau
Figure of Satyr for painting, Nymphs and Satyr
ca. 1873
oil on canvas
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

William-Adolphe Bouguereau
L'Aurore
1881
oil on canvas
Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama

William-Adolphe Bouguereau
Monsieur M.
1850
oil on canvas
Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, California

William-Adolphe Bouguereau
Young Girl in Profile
1881
oil on canvas
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

Claude Mellan
Portrait of Henriette-Marie de Buade-Frontenac
1641
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Claude Mellan
Portrait of a Man
ca. 1640
drawing (print study)
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Claude Mellan
Lot and his Daughters
1629
engraving
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel

Claude Mellan
Herodias with the Head of John the Baptist
ca. 1640
oil on canvas
Musée Fabre, Montpellier

Mirko Borsche
Written on Skin
2012-13
offset print
(poster for Bayerische Staatsoper)
Art Institute of Chicago

Mirko Borsche
Lucia di Lammermoor
2015
offset print
(poster for Bayerische Staatsoper)
Art Institute of Chicago

Mirko Borsche
Die Frau ohne Schatten
2013
offset print
(poster for Bayerische Staatsoper)
Art Institute of Chicago

Mirko Borsche
Simon Boccanegra
2012-13
offset print
(poster for Bayerische Staatsoper)
Art Institute of Chicago

from The Sea and the Mirror

[Prospero to Ariel]: 

Now our partnership is dissolved. I feel so peculiar
     As if I had been on a drunk since I was born
And suddenly now, and for the first time, am cold sober,
     With all my unanswered wishes and unwashed days
Stacked up all around my life; as if through the ages I had dreamed
     About some tremendous journey I was taking,
Sketching imaginary landscapes, chasms and cities,
     Cold walls, hot spaces, wild mouths, defeated backs,
Jotting down the fictional notes on secrets overheard
     In theatres and privies, banks and mountain inns,
And now, in my old age, I wake, and this journey really exists.
     And I have actually to take it, inch by inch,
Alone and on foot, without a cent in my pocket,
     Through a universe where time is not foreshortened,
No animals talk, and there is neither floating nor flying.

– W.H. Auden (1942-44)

Head Studies and Figures by Women

Pamela Coleman Smith
Sir Henry Irving as Charles I
ca. 1900
watercolor
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Laura Anning Bell
Miss Annie Horniman
ca. 1910
pastel
Tate Gallery

Marie Laurencin
Portraits
(Marie Laurencin, Cecilia de Madrazo and the dog Coco)
1915
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

Doris Lindner
Ellen Terry as Camma
in Alfred, Lord Tennyson's play The Cup
1917
plaster
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Margherita Callet Carcano
Head of a Woman
ca. 1935
woodcut
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri

Elisabeth Frink
Male Head
ca. 1955
drawing
Yale Center for British Art

Elisabeth Frink
Head I
1988
screenprint
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh

Ruth Thorne-Thomsen
Head with Ladders
ca. 1980
gelatin silver print
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri

Felicity Powell
Head in Clouds up to the Neck
2005
wax relief on mirror tile
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Felicity Powell
Thinking Tree
2005
wax relief on mirror tile
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Gwen John
Nun with a Group of Orphans
ca. 1910
watercolor and gouache
Yale Center for British Art

Lady Edna Clarke Hall
Heathcliffe supporting Catherine
ca. 1924
watercolor
Tate Gallery

Louise Dahl-Wolfe
Fashion Study
ca. 1935
gelatin silver print
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio

Edith Towner
Doll with China Head
ca. 1937
watercolor
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Mette Tronvoll
Markus Kiersztan, Petra Langhammer
1996
C-print
National Gallery of Norway, Oslo

Mette Tronvoll
Eline Mugaas, John Minh Nguyen
1996
C-print
National Gallery of Norway, Oslo

from Don Juan, canto III

The isles of Greece! the isles of Greece!
     Where burning Sappho loved and sung,
Where grew the arts of war and peace,
     Where Delos rose, and Phoebus sprung!
Eternal summer gilds them yet,
But all, except their sun, is set.

The Scian and the Teian muse,
     The hero's harp, the lover's lute,
Have found the fame your shores refuse:
     Their place of birth alone is mute
To sounds which echo further west
Than your sires' 'Islands of the Blest.'

The mountains look on Marathon 
     And Marathon looks on the sea;
And musing there an hour alone,
     I dream'd that Greece might still be free;
For standing on the Persians' grave,
I could not deem myself a slave.

A king sate on the rocky brow
     Which looks o'er sea-born Salamis;
And ships, by thousands, lay below,
     And men in nations; – all were his!
He counted them at break of day –
And when the sun set, where were they?

And where are they? and where art thou,
     My country? On thy voiceless shore
The heroic lay is tuneless now –
     The heroic bosom beats no more!
And must thy lyre, so long divine,
Degenerate into hands like mine?

'Tis something in the dearth of fame,
     Though link'd among a fetter'd race,
To feel at least a patriot's shame,
     Even as I sing, suffuse my face;
For what is left the poet here?
For Greeks a blush – for Greece a tear.

– George Gordon, Lord Byron (1819-20)