Threes

Agostino Musi (Agostino Veneziano)
Holy Women at the Tomb of Christ
ca. 1510-27
engraving
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Odoardo Fialetti
Study of Arms
1608
etching
(plate from drawing manual)
Kupferstichkabinett, Hamburger Kunsthalle

Anonymous Italian Lacemaker
Border Fragment
17th century
linen (needle lace)
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Joseph Kaltner
Three Vase Designs by Different Artists
1770
engraving
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

De Porceleyne Bijl Manufactory (Delft)
Set of Vases for Mantel Garniture
ca. 1775
tin-glazed earthenware
Newport Mansions Preservation Society, Rhode Island

Southworth & Hawes
Josiah Johnson Hawes with two of his Brothers
ca. 1845-48
daguerreotype
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Anonymous Photographer
Three Women
before 1870
ambrotype
National Museum of African American History
and Culture, Washington DC

Herbert Wendell Gleason
Galax aphylla
ca. 1915
hand-colored lantern slide
Archives of American Gardens, Washington DC

Rupert Bunny
La Danse
1920
monotype
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide

Mike Disfarmer
Untitled
ca. 1930
gelatin silver print
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Mabel Dwight
Ferry Boat
1930
lithograph
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

René Magritte
Voice of Space
1931
oil on canvas
Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice

Dickson Reeder
The Dispute
ca. 1943-44
oil on canvas
Dallas Museum of Art

Wayne Thiebaud
Three Sandwiches
1961
oil on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Reinier Lucassen
Three Variations on the Theme of the Bad Art Critic
1966
acrylic and oil on canvas
Kunstmuseum, The Hague

David Hockney
Three Men
1966
drawing
Phillips Collection, Washington DC

Minna Citron
Formation
1971
lithograph
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

from Upon the Death of a Gentleman

Faithlesse and fond Mortality,

Who will ever credit thee?

Fond and faithlesse thing! that thus,

In our best hopes beguilest us.

What a reckoning hast thou made,

Of the hopes in him we laid?

For Life by volumes lengthened,

A Line or two, to speake him dead. 

For the Laurell in his verse,

The sullen Cypresse o're his Herse. 

For a silver-crowned Head,

A durty pillow in Death's Bed.

For so deare, so deep a trust,

Sad requitall, thus much dust!

– Richard Crashaw, The Delights of the Muses (1646)

Photos (Painted)

Herbert Wendell Gleason
Polemonium viscosum
ca. 1915
hand-colored lantern slide
Archives of American Gardens, Washington DC

Herbert Wendell Gleason
Rydbergia hymenoxys
ca. 1915
hand-colored lantern slide
Archives of American Gardens, Washington DC

Herbert Wendell Gleason
Calochortus luteus
ca. 1915
hand-colored lantern slide
Archives of American Gardens, Washington DC

Riley Optical Instrument Company (New York)
Rose Bouquet
ca. 1920-30
hand-colored lantern slide
Archives of American Gardens, Washington DC

Anonymous Photographer
Three Women
ca. 1865
hand-colored tintype
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Anonymous Photographer
Portrait of Couple
ca. 1860
hand-colored tintype
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Anonymous Photographer
Portrait of Couple
ca. 1865
hand-colored tintype
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Anonymous Photographer
Editor
ca. 1855
hand-colored daguerreotype
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Anonymous Photographer
Portrait of a Woman
ca. 1857
hand-colored ambrotype
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Anonymous Photographer
Portrait of a Woman
ca. 1850-60
hand-colored daguerreotype
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Platt D. Babbitt
Niagara Falls from Prospect Point
ca. 1850
hand-colored daguerreotype
(the Babbitt family in early years enjoyed a monopoly on Niagara Falls tourist photography)
National Museum of American History, Washington DC

Louis C. McClure
Pike's Peak
ca. 1890-1900
hand-colored albumen silver print
Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas

Wallace Nutting
Flowering Apple Trees
ca. 1905
hand-colored platinum print
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Wallace Nutting
The River Meadow
ca. 1910
hand-colored platinum print
National Museum of American History, Washington DC

Gail Skoff
Balinese Man
1976
hand-colored gelatin silver print
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Williams, Brown & Earle (Philadelphia)
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
1929
hand-colored lantern slide
Archives of American Gardens, Washington DC

Williams, Brown & Earle (Philadelphia)
Versailles
ca. 1912
hand-colored lantern slide
Archives of American Gardens, Washington DC

On Mr. G. Herberts booke intituled the Temple of Sacred Poems, 

sent to a Gentlewoman

Know you faire, on what you looke;

Divinest love lyes in this booke:

Expecting fire from your eyes,

To kindle this his sacrifice.

When your hands unty these strings,

Thinke you have an Angell by th' wings.

One that gladly will bee nigh,

To wait upon each morning sigh;

To flutter in the balmy aire,

Of your well perfumed prayer.

These white plumes of his heele lend you,

Which every day to heaven will send you:

To take acquaintance of the spheare,

And all the smooth faced kindred there.

And though Herberts name doe owe

These devotions, fairest; know

That while I lay them on the shrine

Of your white hand, they are mine.

– Richard Crashaw, Steps to the Temple (1648)

American Models

Anonymous Photographer
Artist's Model posing as Confederate Soldier
ca. 1860-65
ambrotype
National Museum of American History, Washington DC

Kenyon Cox
Model Study
ca. 1874-76
drawing
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Kenyon Cox
Study for Allegorical Figure of Science
(mural at Iowa State Capitol)
1905
drawing
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Kenyon Cox
Seated Model
ca. 1880-84
drawing
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Thomas Eakins
Art Student as Life Model
ca. 1883
platinum print
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Thomas Eakins
Models in Classical Costumes
1883
platinum print
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Thomas Eakins
Models feigning wrestling in Eakins' Studio
ca. 1899
platinum print
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Robert Henri
Seated Model
ca. 1915-20
drawing
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Nickolas Muray
Study of Model
ca. 1930
gelatin silver print
Archives of American Art, Washington DC

Nickolas Muray
Study of Model
ca. 1930
gelatin silver print
Archives of American Art, Washington DC

Nickolas Muray
Study of Model
ca. 1930
gelatin silver print
Archives of American Art, Washington DC

Nickolas Muray
Study of Model
ca. 1930
gelatin silver print
Archives of American Art, Washington DC

Alfredo Valente
Raphael Soyer with Model
ca. 1940
gelatin silver print
Archives of American Art, Washington DC

Paul Wonner
Model drinking Coffee
1964
oil on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Patricia Monaco
Model Stephanie Caloia and other Models dancing
in painter Edward Hagedorn's Berkeley house
1981
calotype
Archives of American Art, Washington DC

Patricia Monaco
Model Stephanie Caloia descending a staircase
in painter Edward Hagedorn's Berkeley house
1981
calotype
Archives of American Art, Washington DC

from Plutus

[The God of Wealth regains his sight]

Good morrow to the morn next to my gold:

First bright Apollo, I salute thy rayes,

And next the earth, Minerva's sacred land,

Truly Cecropian soile, Athenian city. 

How my soule blushes, and with grief remembers

My miserable blindnesse! wretched Plutus,

Whose hood-winkt ignorance made thy guilty feet

Stumble into the company of Rascals,

Informers, Sequestrators, Pettifoggers,

Grave Coxcombs, Sycophants and unconscionable Coridons,

And Citizens whose fals Conscience weigh'd too light

In their own scales, claim'd by a principall Charter

The Cornucopia proper to themselves. 

When good just men, such as did venture lives

For Countries safety and the Nations honour,

Were paid with their own wounds, and made those scars

Which were accounted once the marks of honour,

The miserable priviledge of begging,

Scarce to have lodging in an Hospital.

And those whose labors suffer nightly throes

To give their teeming brains deliverance

To enrich the land with learned merchandise

Starve in their studies, and like moathes devoure

The very leaves they read, scorn'd of the Vulgar,

Nay, of the better sort too many times,

As if their knowledge were but learned wickednesse,

and every Smug could preach as well as they:

Nay, as if men were worse for Academies.

But all shall be amended. I could tell

A tale of horrour, and unmask foule actions;

Black as the night they were committed in.

I could unfold a Lerna, and with proofs

As clear as this deer light, could testifie

How I unwilling kept them company.

– Aristophanes (445-385 BC), translated by Thomas Randolph (before 1635)