Alma-Tadema - Bridges - Zingg - Winterhalter

Lawrence Alma-Tadema
An Old Story
1883
watercolor on paper
British Museum

Lawrence Alma-Tadema
The Garden Studio
ca. 1886-87
watercolor on paper
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Lawrence Alma-Tadema
Study of Hands
1903
drawing
(inscribed with names of the hand models)
British Museum

Lawrence Alma-Tadema
Sketch of Villa Borghese gardens in Rome
1876
oil on canvas
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

George Wilson Bridges
Temple of Wingless Victory, lately Restored
(Temple of Athena Nike on the Acropolis)
1848
salted paper print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

George Wilson Bridges
Temple of Wingless Victory, lately Restored
(Temple of Athena Nike on the Acropolis)
1848
paper negative
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

George Wilson Bridges
Colosseum, Rome
ca. 1850-60
salted paper print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

George Wilson Bridges
Basso-Relievo of Wingless Victory, lately Found
(relief of Athena Nike on the Acropolis)
1848
paper negative
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Adrian Zingg
Hohnstein Castle, Switzerland
1790
watercolor on paper
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden

Adrian Zingg
Meadow Plants
ca. 1760-70
drawing (print study)
British Museum

Adrian Zingg
Roman Aqueduct near Freiberg
ca. 1780
drawing
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden

Adrian Zingg
Amselfall near Rathen
ca. 1780
drawing
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden

Franz Xaver Winterhalter
Portrait Study of a Man
before 1873
drawing
British Museum

Franz Xaver Winterhalter
Portrait of Zofia Odescalchi
ca. 1850-60
oil on canvas
National Museum, Warsaw

Franz Xaver Winterhalter
Helena de Mecklenburg-Schwerin, duchesse d'Orléans
with her son, the comte de Paris
1839
oil on canvas
Château de Versailles

Franz Xaver Winterhalter
Crown Princess Olga of Württemberg
1856
oil on canvas
Landesmuseum, Württemberg

from Letter to Lord Byron

I'm writing this in pencil on my knee,

     Using my other hand to stop me yawning,

Upon a primitive, unsheltered quay
     In the small hours of a Wednesday morning:

     I cannot add the summer day is dawning;

In Seythisfjördur every schoolboy knows

That daylight in the summer never goes.

To get to sleep in latitudes called upper
     Is difficult at first for Englishmen.

It's like being sent to bed before your supper

     For playing darts with father's fountain-pen,

     Or like returning after orgies, when

Your breath's like luggage and you realise

You've been more confidential than was wise. 

I've done my duty, taken many notes

     Upon the almost total lack of greenery,

The roads, the illegitimates, the goats:

     To use a rhyme of yours, there's handsome scenery
     But little agricultural machinery;

And with the help of Sunlight Soap the Geysir

Affords to visitors le plus grand plaisir.

The North, though, never was your cup of tea,

     "Moral" you thought it so you kept away.

And what I'm sure you're wanting now from me

     Is news about the England of the day,

     What sort of things La Jeunesse do and say.

Is Brighton still as proud of her pavilion,

And is it safe for girls to travel pillion?

I'll clear my throat and take a Rover's breath
     And skip a century of hope and sin –
For far too much has happened since your death.
     Crying went out and the cold bath came in,
     With drains, bananas, bicycles, and tin,
And Europe saw from Ireland to Albania
The Gothic revival and the Railway Mania.

We're entering now the Eotechnic Phase

     Thanks to the Grid and all those new alloys,
That is, at least, what Lewis Mumford says.
     A world of Aertex underwear for boys,

     Huge plate-glass windows, walls absorbing noise,
Where the smoke nuisance is utterly abated
And all the furniture is chromium-plated.

– W.H. Auden (1936)