Friday, December 24, 2021

Eighteenth-Century Figure Studies from the Low Countries

Jacobus Johannes Lauwers
Life-Drawing Studio
ca. 1770
watercolor
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Jacobus Johannes Lauwers
Model posed as St Sebastian
ca. 1770
drawing
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Jacobus Johannes Lauwers
Académie
ca. 1770
drawing
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Jacobus Johannes Lauwers
Académie
ca. 1770
drawing
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Hendrik de Flines
Académie
ca. 1784-98
drawing
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Christiaan Welmeer
Académie
1791
drawing
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Egbert van Drielst
Académie
ca. 1775
drawing
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Egbert van Drielst
Académie
1777
drawing
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Egbert van Drielst
Académie
c1780-
drawing-
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Cornelis Joseph d'Heur
Académie
before 1762
drawing
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Cornelis Joseph d'Heur
Académie
before 1762
drawing
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Cornelis Joseph d'Heur
Académie
before 1762
drawing
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Cornelis Joseph d'Heur
Académie
before 1762
drawing
Teylers Museum, Haarlem

Cornelis Joseph d'Heur
Bound Slave
(study of a cast)
before 1762
drawing
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Cornelis Joseph d'Heur
Atalanta and Hippomenes
(study of a cast)
before 1762
drawing
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

The Flight

Just seen, running, and silver-gray
along the top tube of a fence between myrtles and me,
too slinky for a bird and even at this distance
unmistakably a quadruped and
nimble, some sort of unspoiled animal, but which?
It ran as if away
from a threat, peril was everywhere,
a footsole crunches it, it is mangled
by a tire's treads, hawk scoops it, turkey buzzard
pecks at it, no speech mitigates its pains,
even the cat fools with it, until, inedible,
it is kicked into the gutter. There she goes,
the slinky silver-gray Atalanta of reptiles
vanishes in no time, for the wind
whisks from her feet such tenuous gusts of air –
brisk now where turnpikes stretch their webs,
and not forever can an earthiness
so sweet as this propel such grace.

She'll have got to the mantis eggs by now,
at each gulp of hatchling
she slowly blinks with satisfaction.

– Christopher Middleton (2014)