Showing posts with label abstraction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label abstraction. Show all posts

Sunday, August 4, 2019

Keith Vaughan (1912-1977) - Landscapes (Nineteen Fifties)

Keith Vaughan
Gardens at Night
1951
oil on panel
Pallant House Gallery, Chichester

Keith Vaughan
Landscape with a Green Church
1951
oil on panel
Hatton Gallery, Newcastle-upon-Tyne

Keith Vaughan
Coast above Berwick I
1952
oil on panel
Manchester Art Gallery

Keith Vaughan
Demolished Houses in St John's Wood, No. 2
1953
gouache on paper
Tate Gallery

Keith Vaughan
Landscape
1953
oil on panel
Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester

Keith Vaughan
Berkshire Landscape
ca. 1953
oil on canvas
Kirklees Museums and Galleries, Huddersfield (Yorkshire)

Keith Vaughan
Landscape in Belsize Park, London
1954
oil on canvas
Museums Sheffield (Yorkshire)

Keith Vaughan
Village in Ireland
1954
oil on panel
Government Art Collection, London

Keith Vaughan
Black Rocks and Beach Huts, Whitby Bay
1955
oil on panel
Pallant House Gallery, Chichester

Keith Vaughan
Untitled
1955
oil on canvas
Norfolk Museums (England)

In a landscape of having to repeat.
Noticing that she does, that he does and so on.
The underlying cause is as absent as rain.
Yet one remembers rain even in its absence and an attendant quiet.
If illusion descends or the very word you've been looking for.
He remembers looking at the photograph,
green and grey squares, undefined.
How perfectly ordinary someone says looking at the same thing, or
I'd like to get to the bottom of that one.
When it is raining it is raining for all time and then it isn't
and when she looked at him, as he remembers it, the landscape moved closer
than ever and she did and now he can hardly remember what it was like.

– Martha Ronk (2004)

Keith Vaughan
Vertical Tree Forms
1956
oil on canvas
New Walk Museum and Art Gallery, Leicester

Keith Vaughan
Farm in Berkshire
1956
oil on panel
Phillips Collection, Washington DC

Keith Vaughan
Farm in Berkshire
1957
oil on canvas
Girton College, University of Cambridge

Keith Vaughan
Road through a Village
1957
oil on panel
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Wednesday, July 17, 2019

Cleopatra & Antony

Tommaso Costa
Cleopatra greeting Antony
1773
watercolor
British Museum

Charles-Joseph Natoire
Meeting of Antony and Cleopatra
ca. 1753-57
wash drawing
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Claude Vignon
Banquet of Antony and Cleopatra
ca. 1630
oil on panel
Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut

Francesco Trevisani
Banquet of Cleopatra and Antony
ca. 1702
oil on canvas
Galleria Spada, Rome

Giacinto Gimignani
Cleopatra drops a pearl into a goblet of wine before Marc Antony
1647
etching
British Museum

Leandro Bassano
Feast of Antony and Cleopatra
ca. 1590
oil on canvas
Nationalmuseum, Stockholm

Jan de Bray
Banquet of Cleopatra
(costume portrait of the artist and his family)
1652
oil on canvas
Royal Collection, Great Britain

René-Antoine Houasse
Antony and Cleopatra
1680
oil on plaster ceiling
Château de Versailles

Jacob Jordaens
Cleopatra's Feast
1653
oil on canvas
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Anonymous Flemish Makers
Feast of Cleopatra
ca. 1650-1700
tapestry (silk and wool)
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

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

Antony and Cleopatra

On Egypt sleeping under sky of brass
The twain gazed wistfully from terrace high,
And watched the Flood, through Delta rolling nigh,
Toward Sais or Bubastis slowly pass.

The Roman felt beneath his thick cuirass
Like captive soldier stilling infant's cry,
On his triumphant bosom swooning lie
Her form voluptuous in his close embrace.

Turning her pallid head between his arms
Toward him made mad by perfume's conquering charms,
She raised her mouth and crystalline, fond eye;

And o'er her bent, the Chieftain did behold
In her great orbs, starry with dots of gold,
Only a boundless sea where galleys fly.

– Edward Robeson Taylor (1897), translating the sonnet below


Tous deux ils regardaient, de la haute terrasse,
L'Egypte s'endormir sous un ciel étouffant
Et le Fleuve, à travers le Delta noir qu'il fend,
Vers Bubaste ou Saїs rouler son onde grasse.

Et le Romain sentait sous la lourde cuirasse,
Soldat captif berçant le sommeil d'un enfant,
Ployer et défaillir sur son coeur triomphant
Le corps voluptueux que son étreinte embrasse.

Tournant sa tête pâle entre ses cheveux bruns
Vers celui qu'enivraient d'invincibles parfums,
Elle tendit sa bouche et ses prunelles claires;

Et sur elle courbé, l'ardent Imperator
Vit dans ses larges yeux étoilés de points d'or
Toute une mer immense où fuyaient des galères.

– José-Maria de Heredia (1893)

Alessandro Turchi
Death of Cleopatra
(with corpse of Marc Antony in foreground)
ca. 1640
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Jean-Eugène-Charles Alberti
Proculeius preventing Cleopatra from stabbing herself
(with corpse of Marc Antony in background)
1810
oil on canvas
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Gillian Ayres
Antony and Cleopatra
1982
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

Wednesday, July 3, 2019

Glass

Anonymous Persian Maker
Bottle with Dropper Spout
18th century
cobalt glass
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Anonymous Chinese Maker
Bowl with Scrolls and Geometric Panels
18th century
carved red glass
Walters Art Museum, Baltimore

Roman Empire
Bowl
4th century AD
pale blue free-blown glass
Harvard Art Museums

Roman Empire
Male Figure with Head turned
1st century AD
fragment of glass relief-plaque
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Anonymous German Maker
Mug
ca. 1700
ruby glass with silver-gilt mounts
Victoria & Albert Museum

Maison Fonsèque and Olive of Paris
Brooch
ca. 1889
glass fruit mounted in gold and diamonds
Victoria & Albert Museum

Antonio Salviati
Small Rose-colored Vase
ca. 1885-90
Venetian glass
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

A Carafe, that is a Blind Glass

A kind in glass and a cousin, a spectacle and nothing strange a single hurt color and an arrangement in a system to pointing. All this and not ordinary, not unordered in not resembling. The difference is spreading.

– Gertrude Stein, from Tender Buttons (1914)

New England Glass Company
Plate
ca. 1883-88
glass
Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut

Roman Empire
Dancing Maenad
1st century AD
glass cameo
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Anonymous Italian Maker
Brooch
ca. 1820-30
glass micromosaic panel set in silver-gilt filigree
Victoria & Albert Museum

Anonymous Venetian Maker
Chandelier
18th century
Venetian glass
Palazzo dei Cerretani, Florence

after Dirck Pietersz Crabeth
Creation of Eve - The Fall of Man
ca. 1560-70
stained glass panel
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

John La Farge
Firescreen
1874
leaded opalescent glass set in brass
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Cathy de Monchaux
Wandering about in the Future, looking forward to the Past
1994
glass panels with metal fittings and velvet ribbon
Tate Gallery

Wood

Grinling Gibbons
Carved Cravat
ca. 1690
limewood
Victoria & Albert Museum

Anonymous French Maker
Winged Sphinx
ca. 1790-1800
giltwood
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

after Donato Bramante
Model of Bramante's Tempietto
(Chiesa di San Pietro in Montorio, Rome)
ca. 1830-1900
walnut and pearwood
Victoria & Albert Museum

Anonymous Russian Maker
Bust of Alexander Danilovich Menshikov
before 1704
red pine
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

after designs by Giovanni Battista Piranesi
Side Table with Rams' Heads
ca. 1760-70
giltwood, marble
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

from Huge Mirrors

This is an old apartment and therefore the mirrors are huge and ornate. They go with the high ornate ceilings. There's one such mirror in the living room and another in the bedroom. Both have intricately carved borders and a leafy crest on top. In the living room these have been painted over in white, but in the bedroom it's still the original gilt rococo. Both mirrors sit on top of fireplaces and are as big as tombs. I think the descriptive term for them is French Regency Baroque.

The mirror in the bathroom is pretty big too, and again somewhat ornate. And there are two other mirrors here as well. Not bad for a small, one-bedroom flat.

– Matthew Sweeney (2017)

Anonymous Spanish Maker
Reliquary Bust of St Francis Borgia
ca. 1624-50
painted and gilded wood
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Felipe Ydalgo Buenfiglio
Bust of Female Saint
1750s
painted wood
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Alonso Berruguete
St Mark
ca. 1560
painted and gilded wood
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

François Dieussart
William II, Prince of Orange
ca. 1650-75
painted wood
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Barbara Hepworth
Figure (Nyanga)
1959-60
elm wood
Tate Gallery

Barbara Hepworth
Tides I
1946
holly wood
Tate Gallery

Joaquín Torres-García
Wood Planes of Color
1929
painted wood
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Anonymous Japanese Maker
Guardian Animals
ca. 1250
wood
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Anonymous Japanese Maker
Elephant
ca. 1250
wood
Los Angeles County Museum of Art