Glazed

Christiaan Johannes Lanooy
Three Vessels
1920
glazed earthenware
Museum de Fundatie, Zwolle, Netherlands

Anonymous German Potter
Tile with Crucifixion Scene
ca. 1560-1600
lead-glazed earthenware stove tile
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Florentine Imitator of Giovanni della Robbia
Judith and Holofernes
ca. 1800-1850
maiolica
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Giovanni della Robbia
Virgin and Child with St John the Baptist and St Jerome
ca. 1525
glazed terracotta
Bode Museum, Berlin

Staffordshire Potteries
Dessert Dish
ca. 1755-65
lead-glazed earthenware
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Anonymous Potter working in Delft
Birdcage
ca. 1700-1730
tin-glazed earthenware
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Staffordshire Potteries
Medici Venus
ca. 1815-20
lead-glazed earthenware figurine
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne the Younger
Portrait of Louis XV
ca. 1745
lead-glazed earthenware (faience)
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Brislington Pottery (near Bristol)
Posset Pot
1699
tin-glazed earthenware
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Bow Porcelain Manufactory (London)
Youth as Personification of Autumn
ca. 1765-70
porcelain
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Patanazzi Family (Urbino)
Inkstand with River God
ca. 1575-1605
maiolica
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

attributed to Domenico da Venezia
Pharmacy Jar
ca. 1560-70
maiolica
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

attributed to Domenico da Venezia
Pharmacy Jar
ca. 1560-70
maiolica
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Brislington Pottery (near Bristol)
Wash-Basin as Scallop-Shell
1683
tin-glazed earthenware
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Anonymous British Potter
Game Board
1723
tin-glazed earthenware
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Anonymous Japanese Potter
Hare
18th century
porcelain
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

When old Fuseli made the famous remark that Constable's landscapes made him call for his greatcoat and umbrella, he showed he understood the kind of truth the master was aiming at.  Not the dry but the humid, not the linear but the atmospheric, not the lasting but the transient.  As Constable himself said in the preface to his published landscapes, to give "one brief moment caught from fleeting time a lasting and sober existence."  Lasting and sober.  We do well to remember these beautiful honest words before we rashly fall in with the view that Constable's finished paintings are less interesting, less artistic than his sketches.

The source of this preference is clear.  We prefer suggestions to representations, we have adjusted our expectations to enjoy the very act of guessing, of projecting.  And we rationalize this preference by fancying that the sketch must be nearer to what the artist saw and to what he felt than the finished work.  I do not deny that artists are human and sometimes spoil their works.  But I consider it a heresy to think that any painting as such records a sense impression or a feeling.  All human communication is through symbols, through the medium of a language, and the more articulate that language the greater the chance for the message to get through.  

– E.H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion: a Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation (Princeton University Press, 1960)

Contour - II

Anton Hanak
Hand
1917
watercolor on paper
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Sven Nilsson
Swedish Art Nouveau Glass,
Nationalmuseum, Stockholm
1980
lithograph (exhibition poster)
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Anonymous Artist
Decorative Tile with art nouveau Water-Lily Motif
ca. 1900
glazed earthenware
Museum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, Dortmund

Laura Gilpin
Deer, Grand Canyon, Arizona
1930
platinum print
Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Anonymous Artist
Classical Figure
ca. 1920
terracotta
Musée Saint-Remi, Reims

Max Beckmann
Midnight, Faust Asleep
ca. 1943-44
drawing
(print study for book illustration)
Goethe Haus, Frankfurt

Augustin Hirschvogel
Fantastic Jug
1543
etching
Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig

Edward von Steinle
Drapery Study
ca. 1835
drawing with added gouache
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Adolph Menzel
Man leaning on Window Ledge
ca. 1875-76
drawing
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Hans Brosamer
Drapery Study
before 1554
drawing
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Albrecht Dürer
Apostle Philip
1526
engraving
Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig

Stefano da Verona
Annunciatory Angel
ca. 1400
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Jacopo Ligozzi
Study for Epitaph Frame
ca. 1578
drawing
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Peter Behrens
The Kiss
ca. 1898
color woodblock print
Institut Mathildenhöhe, Darmstadt

Félix Bracquemond
Title Page for Eau-Forte - L'Illustration Nouvelle
ca. 1885
etching
Cabinet d'Arts Graphiques des Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

Federico Barocci
Sheet of Studies
ca. 1583-86
drawing
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

The Epidamnians, now despairing of relief from the Corcyraeans and at a stand how to proceed in their present affairs, sending to Delphi enquired at the oracle whether it were not best to deliver up their city into the hands of the Corinthians as of their founders and make trial what aid they should obtain from thence.  And when the oracle had answered that they should deliver it and take the Corinthians for their leaders, they went to Corinth and according to the advice of the oracle gave their city to them, and declared how the first founder of it was a Corinthian, and what answer the oracle had given them, entreating their help and that they would not stand by beholding their destruction.  And the Corinthians undertook their defence not only for the equity of the cause, as thinking them no less than their own the Corcyraeans' colony, but also for hatred of the Corcyraeans, as was the custom of other colonies; but being equal to the richest Grecians of their time for store of money and strongly furnished with ammunition of war, had them in contempt.  Also they sticked not sometimes to boast how much they excelled in shipping, and that Corcyra had been once inhabited by the Phaeaces who flourished in glory of naval affairs, which was also the cause why they the rather provided themselves of a navy.  And they were indeed not without power that way; for when they began this war, they had one hundred and twenty galleys.  

– from The Peloponnesian War as written by Thucydides (5th century BC) and translated by Thomas Hobbes (1628) and edited by David Grene (1959)

Wild / Tame - I

Anonymous Artist
Decorative Tile with art nouveau Fish Motif
ca. 1900
glazed earthenware
Museum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, Dortmund

Anonymous Artist
Fish
ca. 1580
woodcut and letterpress
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel

Anonymous Artist
Fish
ca. 1580
woodcut and letterpress
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel

Anonymous Artist
Studies of Whale stranded in River Scheldt near Antorff
1577
hand-colored etching and engraving
Graphische Sammlung, Zentralbibliothek Zürich

Giovanni Andrea Maglioli
Sea Monster
1608
engraving
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Giovanni Andrea Maglioli
Sea Monster
1608
engraving
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Rudolf Junk
Menu Card
1905
color woodblock print
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Roger Reboussin
Two Frogs exploring a Crevice
1913
drawing
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Hans Thoma
Lizard
ca. 1905
drawing
(study for print illustration to the ABC Bilderbuch)
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Hans Thoma
Turtle
ca. 1905
drawing
(study for print illustration to the ABC Bilderbuch)
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Anonymous Artist
Pressmark of Gabriele Giolito de' Ferrari of Venice
ca. 1570
woodcut (phoenix)
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Anonymous Artist
Dead Birds
18th century
design drawing
(ornamental motif for the Wiener Porzellanmanufaktur)
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Louis Albert Schmidt
Still Life with Magpie
ca. 1875
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Pau

Édouard Traviès
Brazilian Hummingbirds
1857
lithograph
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Julius Klinger
Hermanns & Froitzheim, Haberdasher
1910
lithograph (poster)
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Natalia Goncharova
Peacocks
1912
oil on canvas
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Such then I find to have been the state of things past, hard to be believed, though one produce proof for every particular thereof.  For men receive the report of things, though of their own country if done before their own time, all alike, from one as from another, without examination.  . . .  So impatient of labour are the most men in search of truth, and embrace the things that are next to hand. 

Now he that by the arguments here adduced shall frame a judgment of the things past and not believe rather that they were such as the poets have sung or prose-writers have composed, more delightfully to the ear than conformably to the truth, as being things not to be disproved and by length of time turned for the most part into the nature of fables without credit, but shall think them here searched out by the most evident signs that can be, and sufficiently too, considering their antiquity: he, I say, shall not err.  And though men always judge the present war where in they live to be greatest, and when it is past, admire more those that were before it, yet if they consider of this war by the acts done in the same, it will manifest itself to be greater than any of those before mentioned. 

. . .  But of the acts themselves done in the war, I thought not fit to write all that I heard from all authors nor such as I myself did but think to be true, but only those whereat I was myself present and those of which with all diligence I had made particular inquiry.  And yet even of those things it was hard to know the certainty, because such as were present at every action spake not all after the same manner, but as they were affected to the parts or as they could remember.  

To hear this history rehearsed, for that there be inserted in it no fables, shall be perhaps not delightful.  But he that desires to look into the truth of things done and which (according to the condition of humanity) may be done again, or at least their like, he shall find enough herein to make him think it profitable.  And it is compiled rather for an everlasting possession than to be rehearsed for a prize.  

– from The Peloponnesian War as written by Thucydides (5th century BC) and translated by Thomas Hobbes (1628) and edited by David Grene (1959)

Solids

Gregorio di Lorenzo
(Master of the Marble Madonnas)
Portrait of a Young Woman
ca. 1460-70
stucco
Bode Museum, Berlin

Andrea della Robbia
St Ambrose
ca. 1490
glazed terracotta
Bode Museum, Berlin

Anonymous Italian Artist
Dish with Death of Nadab and Abihu
16th century
tin-glazed earthenware (maiolica)
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Anonymous French Artist after Odoardo Fialetti
Venus combing Cupid's Hair
ca. 1650
tin-glazed earthenware (faience)
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Jacob Cressant
Portrait of silk merchant David van Mollem
1740
terracotta
Centraal Museum, Utrecht

Roman Anton Boos
Hercules and the Erymanthean Boar
ca. 1779
terracotta
Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Munich

Joseph-Charles Marin
Bacchante carrying Child
ca. 1780-95
terracotta
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

Anonymous Italian Artist
Vase with Cover
18th century
tin-glazed earthenware (maiolica)
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Staffordshire Potteries
Cachepot with Triton (detail)
19th century
glazed earthenware
Newport Mansions Preservation Society, Rhode Island

Albert-Ernest Carrier-Belleuse
Portrait of a Woman
ca. 1870-75
terracotta
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

Paul Gauguin
Vase
ca. 1887-88
painted stoneware
Art Institute of Chicago

Charles Francis Annesley Voysey
Panel of Six Tiles
ca. 1900
glazed earthenware
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Rookwood Pottery (Cincinnati, Ohio)
Tile
ca. 1905
glazed earthenware
National Museum of American History, Washington DC

Betty Woodman
Vase
ca. 1989-90
glazed and painted earthenware
Phoenix Art Museum

Virgil Ortiz
St Bartholomew
2014
painted terracotta
Denver Art Museum

Koen Taselaar
Le monde entier est un cactus (Totem #1)
2016
partly-glazed earthenware and wood
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

Look not in my eyes, for fear

    They mirror true the sight I see,

And there you find your face too clear

    And love it and be lost like me.

One the long nights through must lie

    Spent in star-defeated sighs,

But why should you as well as I

    Perish? gaze not in my eyes. 

– A.E. Housman (1896)