Fragments

Anonymous Italian Artist
Classical Architectural Fragments in Landscape
ca. 1700
drawing (bound into album)
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Alex Katz
Pansies
1967
oil on panel
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh

Sèvres Manufactory
Vase with Flower Bouquet
1755
porcelain
Musée du Louvre

John Singer Sargent
Alligators
1917
watercolor on paper
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Anonymous Italian Artist
Angel conducting Habakkuk
to succour Daniel in the Lions' Den
ca. 1715
drawing
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Alex Katz
Green Shadow #2
1998
oil on panel
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh

Sèvres Manufactory
Wall Lights
ca. 1760
porcelain and gilt bronze
(made for Madame de Pompadour)
Musée du Louvre

John Singer Sargent
Paul Helleu lying in a Field
1889
pastel on paper
British Museum

Anonymous Italian Artist
Arms of Pope Alexander VII Chigi
ca. 1655
charcoal and watercolor on album page 
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Alex Katz
Lilies against Yellow House
1983
oil on panel
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh

Sèvres Manufactory
Vases à oreilles
1758
porcelain
Musée du Louvre

John Singer Sargent
En route pour la pêche
1878
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Anonymous Italian Artist after Luca Cambiaso
Holy Family with young St John the Baptist
18th century
drawing
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Alex Katz
Tulips
1969
oil on panel
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh

Sèvres Manufactory
Pot pourri à vaisseau
1760
porcelain
(made for Madame de Pompadour)
Musée du Louvre

John Singer Sargent
Madame Gautreau drinking a Toast
ca. 1883-84
oil on canvas
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

Anonymous Italian Artist after Girolamo Mazzola Bedoli
Head of a Woman
16th century
drawing
British Museum

from The Prisoner of Chillon

It might be months, or years, or days,

    I kept no count, I took no note,

I had no hope my eyes to raise,

    And clear them of their dreary mote;

At last men came to set me free;

    I asked not why, and recked not where;

It was at length the same to me,

Fettered or fetterless to be,

    I learned to love despair.

And thus when they appeared at last,

And all my bonds aside were cast,

These heavy walls to me had grown

A hermitage – and all my own!

And half I felt as they were come

To tear me from a second home:

With spiders I had friendship made,

And watched them in their sullen trade,

Had seen the mice by moonlight play,

And why should I feel less than they?

We were all inmates of one place,

And I, the monarch of each race,

Had power to kill – yet, strange to tell!

In quiet we had learned to dwell;

My very chains and I grew friends,

So much a long communion tends

To make us what we are – even I

Regained my freedom with a sigh.

– George Gordon, Lord Byron (1816)