Introspective Figures

Anonymous Austrian Artist
Mourning Virgin
ca. 1240-60
carved and painted wood
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio

Baccio Bandinelli
Figure Study
ca. 1515
drawing
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Pontormo (Jacopo Carrucci)
Figure Study
ca. 1530-40
drawing
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

Jacopo Amigoni
Narcissus
ca. 1720
etching
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

Giambattista Tiepolo
Figure Study
ca. 1752-53
drawing
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

William Etty
Figure Study
ca. 1816-18
drawing
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Bertel Thorvaldsen
Adonis
commissioned 1808, completed 1832
marble
Neue Pinakothek, Munich

Jean-François Millet
The Bather
ca. 1846-48
oil on panel
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Dante Gabriel Rossetti
The Day-Dream (Jane Morris)
ca. 1878-80
drawing (colored chalks)
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Georges Seurat
Standing Model
ca. 1879-81
drawing
Courtauld Gallery, London

Alphonse Legros
Figure Study
ca. 1880
etching
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Samuel Richards
Antique Statue of Apollo
1881
drawing
Indianapolis Museum of Art

Edward Burne-Jones
Seated Woman
ca. 1898
drawing
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Idelle Weber
Reflection
1962
acrylic paint on linen
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York

Magdalena Abakanowicz
Androgyne III
1985
burlap, resin, wood, nails and string
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

 

Anonymous British Photographer
Study of model Laurence Woodford
ca. 1920-30
photographic postcard
Wellcome Collection, London

Distinctions

The seascape shifts.

A pine-branch

Tugs at the eye: the eye

Returns to grey-blue, blue-black or indigo

Or it returns, simply,

To blue-after-the-pine-branch.

Here, there is no question of aberrations
Into pinks, golds or mauves:

This is the variation Pater indicated

But failed to prove.

Art exists at a remove.

Evocation, at two,
Discusses a blue that someone
Heard someone talking about.

– Charles Tomlinson (1960)