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| Francisco Goya Portrait of a man in a brown coat ca. 1790 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Thomas Lawrence Portrait of William Lock of Norbury 1790 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Joshua Reynolds Portrait of a Lady, possibly Mrs Pigott of Chetwynd before 1792 oil on canvas Nationalmuseum, Stockholm |
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| Joshua Reynolds Mrs Richard Hoare holding her child ca. 1763 oil on canvas (unfinished) Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Thomas Gainsborough Portrait of Maria, Lady Eardley before 1788 oil on canvas Nationalmuseum, Stockholm |
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| Thomas Gainsborough Portrait of John Eld of Seighford Hall, Stafford ca. 1775 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
Landscapeople
Long desired, the journey is begun. The suppliants
Climb aboard the damaged carrousel:
Some have been hacked to death, one has learned
Some new thing, and all are touched
With the same blight, like a snowfall
Of moments as they are read back to the monitor
Which only projects.
Some can decipher it,
The outlines of an eddy that traced itself
Before moving on, yet its place had to be,
Such was the appetite of those times. A ring
Of places existed around the central one,
And of course these died away eventually.
Everything has turned out for the best,
The "eggs of the sun" have been returned anonymously,
And the new ways are as simple as the old ones,
Only more firmly anchored to the spectacle
Of the madness of the seasons as it unfolds
With iron-clad rigidity, filling the sky with light.
We began in an anonymous sensuality
And lived most of it out before the difference
Of time got in the way, filling up the margins of the days
With pictures of fruit, light, colors, music, and vines,
Until it ceases to be a problem.
– John Ashbery, from As We Know (Viking Press, 1979)
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| Thomas Gainsborough Portrait of Mrs Thomas Mathews ca. 1772 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Thomas Gainsborough Portrait of Mrs Edmund Morton Pleydell ca. 1765 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Adolf Ulric Wertmüller Portrait of the sculptor Jean-Jacques Caffieri 1784 oil on canvas (Salon reception piece) Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
Choice of Prides
To tell the truth, it would have its points
(Since fall we must) to do it proud:
To ride for your fall on a good mount
Hung with honors and looped garlands,
Moved by the crowd's flattering sounds,
Or to advance with brash din, banners,
Flights of arrows leaping like hounds.
But from a choice of prides I would pick
(Or so I hope) the bare cheek
To amble out, innocent of arms
And alone, under the cocked guns
Or what missiles might be in season,
And this in the pure brass of the act
Attired, and in no other armor.
Considering that, of every species
(I should reason) mine is most naked,
For all its draperies enacting
As a pink beast its honest nature,
I will take in this raw condition
What pride I can, not have my boast
In glad rags, my bravery plated.
And I should think myself twice lucky
(Stuck with my choice) if I could be sure
That I had been egged on by nothing
But neat pride, and not (as is common)
Brought to it by the veiled promptings
Of vanity, or by poverty
Or the fecklessness of despair.
– W.S. Merwin, from The Drunk in the Furnace (Macmillan, 1960)
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| George Romney Mrs Billington as Saint Cecilia 1787-88 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| George Romney Portrait of Miss Matilda Lockwood ca. 1784-86 oil on canvas Walters Art Museum, Baltimore |
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| George Romney Portrait of Two Girls (Misses Cumberland) ca. 1772-73 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| John Singleton Copley Portrait of Mrs Richard Skinner (Dorothy Wendell) 1772 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| John Singleton Copley Portrait of Mrs Timothy Rogers (Lucy Boylston) 1766-67 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| John Singleton Copley Portrait of Nathaniel Sparhawk 1764 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |