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| Pierre Baquoy after Jean-Michel Moreau le jeune Atelier of an engraver 1806 etching, engraving British Museum |
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| William Heath The artist in his studio 1812 hand-colored etching British Museum |
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| Bartolommeo Pinelli An artist contemplating mortality 1818 watercolor British Museum |
Bouquet of Roses in Sunlight
Say that it is a crude effect, black reds,
Pink yellows, orange whites, too much as they are
To be anything else in the sunlight of the room,
Too much as they are to be changed by metaphor,
Too actual, things that in being real
Make any imaginings of them lesser things.
And yet this effect is a consequence of the way
We feel and, therefore, is not real, except
In our sense of it, our sense of the fertilest red,
Of yellow as first color and of white,
In which the sense lies still, as a man lies,
Enormous, in a completing of his truth.
Our sense of these things changes and they change,
Not as in metaphor, but in our sense
Of them. So sense exceeds all metaphor.
It exceeds the heavy changes of the light.
It is like a flow of meanings with no speech
And of as many meanings as of men.
We are two that use these roses as we are,
In seeing them. This is what makes them seem
So far beyond the rhetorician's touch.
– Wallace Stevens (1947)
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| Gerrit Lamberts Interior of the residence of artist Jan Hulswit ca. 1822-25 watercolor British Museum |
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| Henry Bone Artist in his studio before 1832 etching British Museum |
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| Eugen Neureuther Artist in medieval costume seated in front of easel 1840 etching British Museum |
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| John Richard Coke Smyth Studio of wealthy amateur artist ca. 1842-50 watercolor British Museum |
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| after Berthel Thorvaldsen View of (top) the new Thorvaldsen Museum in Copenhagen and (bottom) Thorvaldsen's sculpture studio in Rome 1846 wood-engravings British Museum |
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| Henri Baron Sculptors in the studio 1853 lithograph British Museum |
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| Alexandre Bida Andrea del Sarto and his model in the studio ca. 1855-65 drawing British Museum |
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| Paul Musurus Artist's studio ca. 1855-65 drawing British Museum |
The Ultimate Poem is Abstract
This day writhes with what? The lecturer
On This Beautiful World of Ours composes himself
And hems the planet rose and haws it ripe,
And red, and right. The particular question – here
The particular answer to the particular question
Is not in point – the question is in point.
If the day writhes, it is not with revelations.
One goes on asking questions. That, then, is one
Of the categories. So said, this placid space
Is changed. It is not so blue as we thought. To be blue,
There must be no questions. It is an intellect
Of windings round and dodges to and fro,
Writhings in wrong obliques and distances,
Not an intellect in which we are fleet: present
Everywhere in space at once, cloud-pole
Of communication. It would be enough
If we were ever, just once, at the middle, fixed
In This Beautiful World of Ours and not as now,
Helplessly at the edge, enough to be
Complete, because at the middle, if only in sense,
And in that enormous sense, merely enjoy.
– Wallace Stevens (1947)
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| Paul Musurus Interior of artist's studio and other studies ca. 1855-65 drawing British Museum |
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| Paul Musurus Studio of portrait painter George Richmond RA ca. 1855-65 drawing British Museum |
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| Paul Musurus Studio of portrait painter George Richmond RA ca. 1855-65 drawing British Museum |