Monday, November 24, 2025

Ornamental

Gerard David
Portrait of a Goldsmith
ca. 1505-1510
oil on panel
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna


Ambrosius Holbein
Island of Utopia
(illustration to Thomas More's Utopia)
1518
woodcut
British Museum

Albrecht Dürer
Constructed Figure (Male)
1526
drawing
British Museum

Albrecht Dürer
Constructed Figure (Male)
1526
drawing
British Museum

attributed to Jean de Court
Minerva with Attendants
ca. 1560-80
enamel on copper
British Museum

Juan van der Hamen
Bodegón
ca. 1620-30
oil on canvas
Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels

Lambert Doomer
Fountain at Cleves
1663
drawing
British Museum

Jan van Huysum
Flowers in a Terracotta Vase
1725
oil on panel
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

George Dance
Couple dancing on Rooftop
ca. 1770
drawing
British Museum

John Sell Cotman
Mount St Michel in Normandy
ca. 1820
watercolor on paper
British Museum

Richard Cosway
Ceres searching for Proserpine
before 1821
drawing
British Museum

William Michael Harnett
The Old Cupboard Door
1889
oil on canvas
Museums Sheffield, South Yorkshire

Kenyon Cox
Drapery Study for painting The Pursuit of the Ideal
1891
oil on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

George Hurrell
Douglas Fairbanks Junior
1933
gelatin silver print
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Carl Robert Holty
Orange and Gold
1942
oil on board
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Scott Hyde
Untitled (Street Scene)
ca. 1970
lithograph
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Robert Cottingham
Cold Beer
1982
hand-colored lithograph
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

from On the Great Frost (1634)

Show me the flames you brag of, you that be
Armed with those two fires, wine and poetry:
You're now benumbed, spite of your gods and verse,
And may your metaphors for prayers rehearse,
Whiles you that called snow 'fleece' and 'feathers' do
Wish for true fleeces, and true feathers too.
    Waters have bound themselves, and cannot run,
Suffering what Xerxes' fetters would have done;
Our rivers are one crystal; shores are fit
Mirrors, being now not like to glass, but it;
Our ships stand all as planted: we may swear
They are not borne up only, but grow there.
Whiles waters thus are pavements, firm as stone,
And without faith are each day walked upon:
What parables called folly heretofore
Were wisdom now, To build upon the shore.
There's no one dines among us with washed hands:
Water's as scarce here as in Africk sands,
And we expect it not but from some god
Opening a fountain, or some prophet's rod 
Who need not seek out where he may unlock
A stream: whate'er he strook would be true rock. 

– William Cartwright (published 1651)