Friday, October 4, 2024

Armstrong - Eakins - Heimbach - Guardi

Maitland Armstrong
Memorial to Charles Frederick Crocker
1891
stained-glass window
Episcopal Church of St-Mary-in-Tuxedo,
Orange County, New York

Maitland Armstrong
Adoration of the Magi
ca. 1905
stained-glass window
Faith Chapel, Jekyll Island, Georgia

Maitland Armstrong
Purgatory Chasm
ca. 1875
oil on canvas
Newport Mansions Preservation Society,
Rhode Island

Anonymous Studio Photographer
Maitland and Helen Armstrong
in Renaissance Costume, Rome

1871
albumen silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Thomas Eakins
Model in the Studio
ca. 1889
platinum print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Thomas Eakins
Students in Ancient Greek Dress
at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts

1883
platinum print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Thomas Eakins
Thomas Eakins and John Laurie Wallace
at Waterside in Artistic Poses

ca. 1883
platinum print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Thomas Eakins
Thomas Eakins posing as Pipe Player
ca. 1883
platinum print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Wolfgang Heimbach
Return of the Holy Family from Egypt
1657
oil on canvas
Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, Oldenburg

Wolfgang Heimbach
Baptism of Christ
1679
oil on canvas
Stadtmuseum, Coesfeld

Wolfgang Heimbach
Kitchen Interior
1648
oil on canvas
Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg

Wolfgang Heimbach
Evening Meal
1647
oil on panel
Kunsthalle zu Kiel

Francesco Guardi
Gateway of the Arsenal, Venice
ca. 1780-90
drawing
British Museum

Francesco Guardi
Regatta on the Grand Canal
ca. 1770-75
drawing
British Museum

Francesco Guardi
Santa Maria della Salute and the Dogana
ca. 1783
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Francesco Guardi
Cannaregio Canal, Venice
ca. 1775-80
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

     Her bedroom was cold, being over the garage, with windows on three sides. Otherwise it was pleasant. Over the bed hung framed photographs of Greek skies and ruins, taken by Dr. Henshawe herself on her Mediterranean trip.
     She was writing an essay on Yeats's plays. In one of the plays a young bride is lured away by the fairies from her sensible unbearable marriage. 
     "Come away, O human child . . ." Rose read, and her eyes filled up with tears for herself, as if she was that shy elusive virgin, too fine for the bewildered peasants who have entrapped her. In actual fact she was the peasant, shocking high-minded Patrick, but he did not look for escape.
     She took down one of those Greek photographs and defaced the wallpaper, writing the start of a poem which had come to her while she ate chocolate bars in bed and the wind from Gibbons Park banged at the garage walls.

                                                        Heedless in my dark womb
                                                        I bear a madman's child . . .

She never wrote any more of it, and wondered sometimes if she had meant headless. She never tried to rub it out, either. 

– Alice Munro, from The Beggar Maid (1978)