Thursday, December 8, 2016

Monochrome Lithographs at the British Museum, 1890s

Edward Burne-Jones
Head of a man in profile
1890s
lithograph
British Museum

PARABLE

Christ came from a white plain to a purple city, and as He passed through the first street, He heard voices overhead, and saw a young man lying drunk upon a window-sill. 'Why do you waste your soul in drunkenness?' He said.  'Lord, I was a leper and You healed me, what else can I do?' A little further through the town He saw a young man following a harlot, and said, 'Why do you dissolve your soul in debauchery?' and the young man answered, 'Lord, I was blind, and You healed me, what else can I do?' At last in the middle of the city He saw an old man crouching, weeping upon the ground, and when He asked why he wept, the old man answered, 'Lord, I was dead, and You raised me into life, what else can I do but weep?'

 Oscar Wilde (1856-1900)

Jan Veth
The carpenter Adrianus Ravestein
1898
lithograph
British Museum

Frederic Leighton
Woman in profile
ca. 1895
lithograph
British Museum

Henri Fantin-Latour
Poet and Muse
1895
lithograph
British Museum

Odilon Redon
Old Knight (Vieux Chevalier)
1896
lithograph
British Museum

Theodoor van Hoytema
Two Bearded Vultures
ca. 1898-1900
lithograph
British Museum

Theodoor van Hoytema
Birds
ca. 1898-1900
lithograph
British Museum

John Singer Sargent
Study of a Young Man
1895
lithograph
British Museum

John Singer Sargent
Study of a Young Man
1895
lithograph
British Museum

John Singer Sargent
William Rothenstein, drawing at a lectern
1897
lithograph
British Museum

William Rothenstein
Portrait of a woman in a theatre box
1896
lithograph
British Museum

Eugène Carrière
Nelly Carrière (the artist's daughter)
1895
lithograph
British Museum

Eugène Carrière
 Le Sommeil (the artist's son)
1897
lithograph
British Museum

Marius Bauer
De Sfinx
late 19th-early 20th century
lithograph
British Museum

"The form of my poem rises out of a  past that so overwhelms the present with its worth and vision that I'm at a loss to explain my delusion that there exist any real links between that past and a future destiny worthy of it." 

 Hart Crane, in a letter to Waldo Frank, as quoted by Susan Howe in Spontaneous Particulars : the Telepathy of the Archives (New York : New Directions, 2014)

I am grateful to the British Museum for making these images available.