Showing posts with label balloons. Show all posts
Showing posts with label balloons. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 19, 2016

Fantasies of Happiness from 18th-century Europe

Charles Joseph Flipart
Gathering in a garden
18th century
oil on canvas
Prado

"The artist painted happy lovers or small groups of friends, usually outdoors in blooming gardens, busy amusing themselves or being entertained with music. Often actors still in costume mingle with aristocrats, and are caught conversing, dancing, listening to music, and exchanging pleasantries under tall trees that function as a backdrop."

 from an essay by Daniela Tarabra on the subject of fêtes galantes in European Art of the Eighteenth Century (Getty Museum, 2008)

Johann Joachim Kändler for Meissen Manufactory
 The Thrown Kiss
ca. 1736
porcelain
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Jean-Baptiste Joseph Pater
Concert champêtre
ca. 1734
oil on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Claude-Joseph Vernet
View near Sorrento 
ca. 1745-50
oil on canvas
Prado

Antonio Carnicero-Mancio
Ascension of Montgolfier's Balloon at Aranjuez
1784
oil on canvas
Prado

Nicolas Lancret
Before the costume ball
18th century
oil on copper
Hermitage 

Louis-Jean François Lagrenée
Diana and Endymion
1768
oil on canvas
Swedish National Museum

Angelica Kauffman
Telemachus and the Nymphs of Calypso
1782
oil on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Hubert Robert
Portico of a country mansion
1773
oil on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Francisco de Goya
San Isidro Meadow with view of Madrid
1788
tapestry cartoon
Prado

attributed to Andreas Altomonte
Masked ball in Bohemia
ca. 1748
oil on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Corrado Giaquinto
Triumph of Galatea
ca. 1752
oil on canvas
Louvre

Jean-Baptiste Joseph Pater
The Golden Age 
18th century
oil on panel
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Peeter van Bloemen
Campo Vacino, Rome
1704
oil on canvas
Prado

Saturday, August 29, 2015

Monumental Polaroids


My daughter's commitment to making regular Mabel Polaroids has now maintained its steady course without interruption for five years. It has weathered the very disappearance of Polaroid film itself, which still existed when this project started. This present group covered a remarkable clutch of big events pressed into a remarkably short time  which included 1) the End of Preschool, 2) the Fifth Birthday, and 3) the Start of Kindergarten.






Polaroids accumulate, one per week, in a special box on a special shelf at Mabel's house. When six or eight or ten of them are ready, I put them into a special envelope and carry them home with me. Then I scan them and crop them and shove them up on Spencer Alley so that all the wise people who love to look at pictures of Mabel will be able to see them, and also so that my daughter can download the scans. I make high resolution scans in case either one of us wants to make paper prints, but usually we don't do that since we have the paper originals. Which I have to make a special effort to remember to return to the special box on the special shelf at Mabel's house after I have finished scanning them. My daughter uses one Polaroid (but not in any particular order) for the Monday post every week on Pippa's Cabinet, her own highly organized blog, which stands in such stark contrast to the randomness of mine. On Pippa's Cabinet each Polaroid comes with a lively story or two about the enthralling child. There will surely be future manifestations of these same Polaroids  perhaps not even imagined yet  as they become yearly more remote and more treasured and more venerable.

Saturday, August 22, 2015

Five in Public




Mabel turned five last weekend with a family party. This weekend she turned five again with a party for her friends in the park



















Tuesday, August 11, 2015

Balloon Ascent

Francesco Guardi
Balloon Ascent at Venice
18th century
Morgan Library

Giuseppe Bernardino Bison
Putti with Goat & Urn
18th century
Morgan Library

The culture and politics of Italy in the age of Rococo are now remembered mainly for cynicism and hyporcisy, even while the art of the time is remembered as lighthearted and paradoxically sincere.

Lorenzo Sacchetti
Garden Terrace
18th century
Morgan Library

Vittorio Maria Bigari
Circular Hall with Twisted Columns
18th century
Morgan Library

Giovanni Battista Piranesi
Hadrian's Villa
c. 1777
Metropolitan Museum

Canaletto
Imaginary Architectural View
18th century
Morgan Library

Sebastiano Ricci
Two Angels
c. 1734
Morgan Library

Pietro Fancelli
Oblate Roundel with Trophies
18th century
Morgan Library

Gaetano Gandolfi
Mercury & Argus
18th century
Morgan Library

Ubaldo Gandolfi
Orpheus looking back at Eurydice
18th century
Morgan Library

Pier Leone Ghezzi
Self-portrait
18th century
Morgan Library

attributed to Antonio Zucchi
Young Lady with Chaperone and Suitor
18th century
Morgan Library