Thursday, June 25, 2026

Visual Preferences (20th Century: 1911)

Léon Bakst
Costume Design for Ida Rubenstein
as Saint Sebastian

1911
watercolor on paper
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

Curt Behrends
Söhnlein Rheingold
1911
lithograph (poster)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Aldo Carpi
Figure Study
1911
drawing
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Kees van Dongen
The Blue Dress
1911
oil on canvas
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

Leo Gestel
Autumn
1911
oil on canvas
Kunstmuseum, The Hague

William James Glackens
The Artist's Wife and Son
1911
oil on canvas
(sketch for more highly finished painting)
NSU Art Museum, Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Childe Hassam
The Sonata
1911
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Robert Henri
Rocks and Sea
1911
oil on panel
Portland Museum of Art, Maine

Heinrich Kühn
Portrait of a Man
1911
photogravure
Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Heinrich Kühn
Portrait of a Woman
1911
photogravure
Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Henri Le Sidaner
Le Table d'Automne
1911
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nantes

Burkhardt Mangold
Forster, Altorfer & Co. - Carpet Dealers
1911
lithograph (poster)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Gabriele Münter
Boys on Shrove Tuesday
1911
oil on panel
Kunstmuseum, The Hague

Adolf Schillinger
Winter Mist
1911
photogravure
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida
Portrait of Mary Lillian Duke
1911
oil on canvas
Nasher Museum of Art,
Durham, North Carolina

Albert Weisgerber
Notice of Relocation of J.E. Wolfensberger
(commercial printer in Zürich)
1911
lithograph (poster)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

The River of Rivers in Connecticut

There is a great river this side of Stygia,
Before one comes to the first black cataracts
And trees that lack the intelligence of trees.

In that river, far this side of Stygia,
The mere flowing of the water is a gayety,
Flashing and flashing in the sun. On its banks,

No shadow walks. The river is fateful,
Like the last one. But there is no ferryman.
He could not bend against its propelling force.

It is not to be seen beneath the appearances
That tell of it. The steeple at Farmington
Stands glistening and Haddam shines and sways.

It is the third commonness with light and air,
A curriculum, a vigor, a local abstraction . . .
Call it, once more, a river, an unnamed flowing,

Space-filled, reflecting the seasons, the folk-lore
Of each of the senses; call it, again and again,
The river that flows nowhere, like a sea.

– Wallace Stevens (1954)