Gazing - III

Per Christian Brown
Alchemical Study 1
2014
C-print
KORO (Public Art Norway), Oslo

Edgar Degas
After the Bath - Woman combing her Hair
ca. 1895-1900
pastel on paper
Ordrupgaard Art Museum, Copenhagen

Ferdinand Bol
Portrait of Catharina van der Voort and her brother Jan
1661
oil on canvas
Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp

Anonymous French Artist
Venus with a Mirror
16th century
oil on panel
Musée des Ursulines de Mâcon

Hans Rudi Erdt
Conrad Jacobsberg - Damenmoden, Königsberg
1911
lithograph (poster)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Hans Ryggen
Sunday Afternoon
1939
oil on canvas
Trondheim Kunstmuseum, Norway

Francisco de Zurbarán
St Andrew
ca. 1635-40
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

Privat-Livemont
La Réforme (newspaper)
1895
lithograph (poster)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Francisco Goya
Francisco Téllez Girón, 10th Duke of Osuna
1816
oil on canvas
Musée Bonnat Helleu, Bayonne

Christian Krohg
Braids
1888
oil on canvas
Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo

William Tylee Ranney
The Retrieve
1850
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Master FP after Parmigianino
Personification of Astrology
ca. 1530-50
etching
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Bernardo Strozzi
St John the Baptist Preaching
ca. 1644
oil on canvas
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Jean Lecomte du Nouÿ
Bird Charmer
1870
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de, Reims

Mikkel McAlinden
Milk
1984
C-print
Lillehammer Kunstmuseum, Norway

B.A. Huseby
Søren (Eye)
2015
C-print
KORO (Public Art Norway), Oslo

With that he fell from complaining into such a passion, as weeping and crying were never in so wofull a perfection, as now in him; which brought as deserved a compassion from the excellent Shepherdesse, who already had her heart so tempered with griefe, as that it was apt to take any impression that it would come to seale withall.  Yet taking a brave courage to her, shee stept unto him, kneeling downe by his side, and gently pulling him by the arme, she thus spake.

"Sir," said she, "having heard some part of your sorrowes, they have not only made me truly pitie you, but wonder at you; since if you have lost so great a treasure, you should not lie thus leaving her and your love unrevenged, suffering her murderers to live, while you lie here complaining; and if such perfections be dead in her, why make you not the Phoenix of your deeds live againe, as to new life rais'd out of the revenge you should take on them? then were her end satisfied, and you deservedly accounted worthie of her favour, if shee were so worthie as you say."  

– from The Countesse of Mountgomeries Urania, by the right honourable the Lady Mary Wroath, daughter to the right noble Robert, Earle of Leicester, and neece to the ever famous and renowned Sʳ Phillips Sidney knight, and to ye most excellant Lady Mary Countess of Pembroke, late deceased (London: John Marriott and John Grismand, 1621)

Intimate Interiors

Federico Zandomeneghi
The Awakening
1895
oil on canvas
Palazzo Ducale, Mantua

Carel Weight
Hamlet and his Mother
(Act III scene 4)
ca. 1960
oil on board
Shakespeare Birthplace Trust,
Stratford-upon-Avon

William Somerville Shanks
A Question of Colour
ca. 1910
oil on canvas
The Hepworth, Wakefield, Yorkshire

Carl Seiler
Conversation Piece
ca. 1890
oil on panel
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Carl Seiler
Count Brühl's Goat
1892
oil on panel
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Dante Gabriel Rossetti
The Annunciation
(Ecce Ancilla Domini!)
ca. 1849-50
oil on canvas
Tate Britain

Pasquale Ottino
Supper at Emmaus
ca. 1610-20
oil on canvas
Museo di Castelvecchio, Verona

Pietro Longhi
The Alchemist
1757
oil on canvas
Museo del Settecento Veneziano, Ca' Rezzonico, Venice

Alphonse Legros
Three Men around a Table
before 1911
drawing
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Leo von König
At the Breakfast Table
1907
oil on canvas
Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin

Leandro Ramón Garrido
Woman in a Kitchen
ca. 1900
oil on canvas
Pannett Art Gallery, Whitby, Yorkshire

Henry Fuseli
Blind Milton dictating to his Daughter
1794
oil on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago

Giovanni Andrea de Ferrari
Esau and Jacob
before 1669
oil on canvas
Accademia Ligustica di Belle Arti, Genoa

Donato Creti
St Peter with an Angel
visiting St Agatha in Prison
before 1749
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Frederic William Burton
Hellelil and Hildebrand:
The Meeting on the Turret Stairs
(scene from a medieval Danish ballad)
1864
watercolor and gouache on paper
National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin

Anonymous French Artist
Christ and Nicodemus by Candlelight
18th century
drawing
Musée du Louvre

"Historical painters, attaching more importance to the attitudes and physiognomy of their figures than to the other parts of their composition, attend less to small details, the faithful imitation of which is the essential merit of the painter of interiors.  Besides, the historical painter is never in a position to see the whole of the scene he would represent, while the painter of interiors, having constantly his model before him, sees it completely, as he imitates it upon the canvas.  Hence, therefore, in every small composition the colours, as well as the objects represented, must be distributed with a kind of symmetry, so as to avoid being what I can best express by the term spotty.  In fact, for want of a good distribution of objects, the canvas will not be filled in some parts, or, if it is, there will be, in many places, evident confusion; so also if the colours be not properly distributed, the picture will be spotty, because they are too far isolated from the others." 

– Eugène Chevreul, from The Laws of Contrast of Colour: and Their Application to the Arts (1839), translated by John Spanton (1859)