Chifflart - Gillray - Craig - Feint

François-Nicolas Chifflart
Persée
1867
etching
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

François-Nicolas Chifflart
Salvator Rosa amongst the Brigands
1863
etching
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

François-Nicolas Chifflart
The Surprise
1865
etching
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

François-Nicolas Chifflart
Triumph of Truth and Justice
1866
etching
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

James Gillray
The Apotheosis of Hoche
(anti-Jacobin satire)
1798
hand-colored etching
Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas

James Gillray
Pylades & Orestes
(Boswell and Johnson)
1797
hand-colored engraving
Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami

James Gillray
The Great South Sea Caterpillar
transformed into a Bath Butterfly
(satire on the Prince Regent)
1795
hand-colored etching
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

James Gillray
Uncorking Old Sherry
(satire on British politicians)
1805
hand-colored engraving
Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami

Sybil Craig
Study of a Cast of the Dancing Faun
ca. 1924
drawing
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Sybil Craig
Interior
ca. 1935
gouache and ink on paper
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Sybil Craig
Protea Flower Piece
1965
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Sybil Craig
Flowers
ca. 1942
linocut
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Adrian Feint
Flower Piece
1940
oil on canvass
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Adrian Feint
Ex Libris - Edward, Prince of Wales
1934
wood-engraving
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Adrian Feint
Strange Shore
1948
watercolor on paper
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Adrian Feint
The Green Hen
1931
oil on canvas
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

from In Memory of Sigmund Freud 

Only Hate was happy, hoping to augment
his practice now, and his dingy clientele
          who think they can be cured by killing
     and covering the gardens with ashes.

They are still alive, but in a world he changed
simply by looking back with no false regrets,
          all he did was to remember
     like the old and be honest like children.

He wasn't clever at all: he merely told
the unhappy Present to recite the Past
          like a poetry lesson till sooner
     or later it faltered at the line where

long ago the accusations had begun,
and suddenly knew by whom it had been judged,
          how rich life had been and how silly,
     and was life-forgiven and more humble,

able to approach the Future as a friend
without a wardrobe of excuses, without
          a set mask of rectitude or an
     embarrassing over-familiar gesture.

No wonder the ancient cultures of conceit
in his technique of unsettlement foresaw
           the fall of princes, the collapse of
     their lucrative patterns of frustration:

if he succeeded, why, the Generalised Life
would become impossible, the monolith
          of State be broken and prevented
     the co-operation of avengers.

– W.H. Auden (1939)

Biblical Figures

Francesco del Cossa
St John the Baptist
ca. 1470-73
tempera on panel
(altarpiece fragment)
Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan

Master of the Griselda Legend
Joseph in Egypt
ca. 1490-95
oil on panel, transferred to canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Donato Bramante
Christ at the Column
ca. 1490-95
oil on panel
Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan

Bernardino Luini
The Drunkenness of Noah
ca. 1510-15
oil on panel
Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan

Matthias Grünewald
The Small Crucifixion
ca. 1511-20
oil on panel
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Andrea del Sarto
St John the Baptist
ca. 1517
oil on panel, transferred to canvas
Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, Massachusetts

Cornelis van Haarlem
Susanna and the Elders
ca. 1599
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

Jan Lievens
Job
1631
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

Pietro Antonio de Pietri
Study for the Resurrection of Christ
ca. 1695
drawing
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia

Anonymous Austrian Artist
Mourning Virgin
ca. 1710-40
carved and painted stone
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio

Anton Raphael Mengs
Young St John the Baptist in the Wilderness
1753-54
oil on panel
Museo del Prado, Madrid

Franz Ignaz Günther
Christ at the Column
1754
carved and painted lindenwood
Detroit Institute of Arts

Pierre Puvis de Chavannes
Salome
at the Beheading of John the Baptist
1856
oil on panel
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

Theodore Clement Steele
Study of Model posed for the Crucifixion
1881
drawing
Indianapolis Museum of Art

George Frederic Watts
Adam and Eve before the Temptation
1896
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

Lovis Corinth
The Crucifixion
1921-22
drypoint
(study for altarpiece painting)
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh

Arroyo Seco

A piano, so long untuned

it sounded like a guitar
was playing Für Elise:

the church was locked: graves
on which the only flowers
were the wild ones
except for the everlasting
plastic wreaths and roses,
the bleached dust making
them gaudier than they were
and they were gaudy:

          SILVIANO

        we loved him
           LUCERO

and equal eloquence in
the quotation, twisted and

cut across two pages
in the statuary book:

         THY | LIFE
       WILL | BE
           DO | NE
 

– Charles Tomlinson (1966)

Made in 1963

Henry Talbot
Fashion Shot for Australian Wool Board Awards
1963
gelatin silver print
(the composition echoes Last Year at Marienbad, released 1961)
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Rod Shaw
10th Sydney Film Festival
1963
screenprint (poster)
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Joyce Allen
The Conspirators
1963
linocut
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Henryk Tomaszewski
History of Simone Machard
(Polish production of drama by Bertolt Brecht)
1963
lithograph (poster)
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Kevin Connor
Haymarket Face
1963
oil on board
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

Larry Clark
Untitled
1963
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

William Scott
Ochre and Orange-Red
1963
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Lawrence Weiner
Paris
1963
gouache, ink and graphite on torn manila envelope
Phoenix Art Museum, Arizona

White Stag
Sports Blouse
(Toros en Vallauris print by Pablo Picasso)
1963
silkscreen-printed cotton
Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto

Graham Sutherland
Garden Abstraction
ca. 1963
oil on canvas
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

James Martin
About the Chair
1963
tempera on canvas
Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, British Columbia

Guy Grey-Smith
Bottles and Persimmon
1963
oil on canvas, mounted on panel
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide

Stephan von Huene
Karooooo
1963
acrylic paint and textile collage on board
Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, California

Bruno Bobak
A Walk on Hampstead Heath
1963
oil on canvas
Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, British Columbia

Ruth Bernhard
Two Forms
1963
gelatin silver print
San Jose Museum of Art, California

Anne Pare
Untitled
1963
textile collage on panel
Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec

from In Memory of Sigmund Freud 

When there are so many we shall have to mourn, 

when grief has been made so public, and exposed

          to the critique of a whole epoch

     the frailty of our conscience and anguish,

of whom shall we speak? For every day they die

among us, those who were doing us some good,

          who knew it was never enough but

     hoped to improve a little by living.

Such was this doctor: still at eighty he wished

to think of our life from whose unruliness

          so many plausible young futures

     with threats or flattery ask obedience,

but his wish was denied him: he closed his eyes

upon that last picture, common to us all, 

          of problems like relatives gathered

     puzzled and jealous about our dying.

For about him till the very end were still

those he had studied, the fauna of the night,

          and shades that still waited to enter

     the bright circle of his recognition

turned elsewhere with their disappointment as he

was taken away from his life interest

          to go back to the earth in London,

     an important Jew who died in exile.

– W.H. Auden (1939)

Literary Figures

Hans Wechtlin
Pyramus and Thisbe
(episode in Ovid's Metamorphoses)
ca. 1510
chiaroscuro woodcut
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio

Anonymous Netherlandish Artist after Pieter Brueghel the Elder
The Wild Man, or, The Masquerade of Orson and Valentine
(derived from a Carolingian romance)
1566
woodcut
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

Paolo Veronese
Leda and the Swan
(episode in Ovid's Metamorphoses)
ca. 1575
oil on canvas
Musée Fesch, Ajaccio, Corsica

Jacob Jordaens
The Satyr and the Peasant
(fable of Aesop)
ca. 1620-21
oil on canvas
Alte Pinakothek, Munich

Benjamin West
Cymon and Iphigenia
(episode in Boccaccio's Decameron)
1773
oil on canvas
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Joseph Wright of Derby
The Corinthian Maid
(legend from Pliny the Elder about the invention of drawing)
ca. 1782-84
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Jean-Baptiste Regnault
The Origin of Painting
(the Corinthian Maid legend from Pliny the Elder)
1786
oil on canvas
Château de Versailles

Tommaso Conca
The poet Homer with the Muse Calliope
ca. 1786
drawing
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Nicolai Abildgaard
Richard III
(scene from Shakespeare)
1787
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Norway, Oslo

Henry Fuseli
Satan encounters Death and Sin at the Gates of Eden
(scene from Milton's Paradise Lost)
ca. 1792-1802
oil on canvas
Neue Pinakothek, Munich

Nicolai Abildgaard
Greek poet Anacreon and his beloved Bathyllus
ca. 1808
oil on canvas
Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen

William Ewart Lockhart
Gil Blas and the Archbishop
(scene from novel by Alain-René Lesage)
ca. 1880
drawing
Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh

Edvard Munch
Portrait of writer Hans Jæger
1889
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Norway, Oslo

Sylvia Gosse
The author Edmund Gosse in his Study
ca. 1913
etching
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

James A.S. Torrance
Tammie felt the wind of Nuckelavee's clutch
(illustration to Scottish Fairy and Folk Tales)
ca. 1900
gouache on paper
Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh

Danila Vassilieff
Fairytale Study - Shipwreck
1949
gouache on paper
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Le Musée Imaginaire 

An Aztec sacrifice,

        beside the head of Pope:

                eclectic and unresolvable.
We admire the first
        for its expressiveness, the second
                because we understand it –
can re-create
        its circumstances, and share
                (if not the presuppositions)
the aura
        of the civilities surrounding it.
                The other, in point
at any rate, of violence
        touches us more nearly.
                And yet . . . it is cruel
but unaccountably so; for the temper of awe
        demanded by the occasion, escapes us:
                it is not
better than we are –
        it is merely different.
                Expressive, certainly. But of what?
Our loss is absolute, yet unfelt
        because inexact. The head
                of Alexander Pope,
stiller, attests the more tragic lack
        by remaining
                what it was meant to be;

intelligible,

        it forbids us to approach it.  

        

– Charles Tomlinson (1963)