Dance Artifacts

Anonymous Photographer
Les Papillons
(Covent Garden Russian Ballet Production)
1938
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Anonymous Photographer
Les Sylphides
(Irina Baronova and Serge Grigoriev)
1938
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Anonymous Photographer
Les Sylphides
(Tania Riabouchinskaya)
1938
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Anonymous Photographer
Le Coq d'Or
(Tania Riabouchinskaya)
1938
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Anonymous Photographer
Le Coq d'Or
(Tania Riabouchinskaya)
1938
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Auguste Bert
Vaslav Nijinsky as The Bluebird
1909
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Auguste Bert
Vaslav Nijinsky in Le Spectre de la Rose
1913
photogravure
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Auguste Bert
Vaslav Nijinsky in Scheherazade
1910
photogravure
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Edward Calvert
The Cider Feast
ca. 1830
wood-engraving
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

Antonio Canova
Dancer
ca. 1818-22
marble statue (second version)
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

Clodion
Bacchante with Infant Satyr
1774
terracotta relief
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Francisco Iturrino
Women dancing in a Ring
ca. 1916-18
oil on canvas
Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao

Laura Knight
Grecian Dancer no. 1 (Pavlova)
1923
etching and aquatint
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

Carlo Leonetti
Anna Pavlova
1924
gelatin silver print
Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington

Justin McCarthy
Rachmaninoff Concerto - Ice Capades
1962-63
oil on panel
Art Museums of Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia

Anonymous French Maker
Pointe Shoes
ca. 1830
satin, leather, linen
Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

from The Garden

The garden admires you.

For your sake it smears itself with green pigment,

the ecstatic reds of the roses,

so that you will come to it with your lovers. 

And the willows –

see how it has shaped these green

tents of silence. Yet

there is still something you need,

your body so soft, so alive, among the stone animals.

Admit that it is terrible to be like them,

beyond harm.

– Louise Glück (1980)

Modernist Self Portraits

Helene Schjerfbeck
Self Portrait
1912
oil on canvas
Ateneum Art Museum, Helsinki

Helene Schjerfbeck
Self Portrait
1915
oil on canvas
Ateneum Art Museum, Helsinki

Mikhail Matyushin
Crystal Self Portrait
1917
oil on canvas
Museum Ludwig, Cologne

Max Beckmann
Self Portrait
1934
oil on canvas
Museum Ludwig, Cologne

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
The Drinker (Self Portrait)
1914
oil on canvas
Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg

Marianne von Werefkin
Self Portrait
ca. 1910
tempera and lacquer on paper
Lenbachhaus, Munich

Ferdinand Hodler
Self Portrait
1916
oil on canvas
Musée d'Art et d'Histoire de Genève

Marta Hoepffner
Self Portrait
1938
gelatin silver print
Museum Ludwig, Cologne

Conrad Felixmüller
Self Portrait
1915
drypoint
Milwaukee Art Museum

Aglaia Papas
Self Portrait
ca. 1932
oil on canvas
National Gallery, Athens

Jankel Adler
Self Portrait
ca. 1946
oil on canvas
Museum Ludwig, Cologne

Paula Modersohn-Becker
Self Portrait with Blue Background
1906
oil on cardboard
Museum Ludwig, Cologne

Otto Dix
Self Portrait
1931
tempera and oil on panel
Museum Ludwig, Cologne

Anita Rée
Self Portrait
ca. 1911
oil on panel
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Max Slevogt
Self Portrait
1908
oil on canvas
Lenbachhaus, Munich

Lovis Corinth
Self Portrait
1914
oil on canvas
Hamburger Kunsthalle

The Moods

Time drops in decay,
Like a candle burnt out,
And the mountains and woods

Have their day, have their day;
What one in the rout

Of the fire-born moods
Has fallen away?

– W.B. Yeats (1899)

Gagnon - Försterling - Etrog - Fraser

Charles Gagnon
Painting for a Funeral Parlor
1962
oil and collage on canvas
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

Charles Gagnon
Tablets
1959
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

Charles Gagnon
Greenwich Village
1966
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

Charles Gagnon
Maine
1965
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

Otto Försterling
Singing Bird above Elbe Landscape
1877
oil on board
Städtische Galerie, Dresden

Otto Försterling
Bad Elster, Saxony
ca. 1890
watercolor on paper
(print study)
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden

Otto Försterling
Anacreon
1870
etching and engraving
British Museum

Otto Försterling
Valley in Saxon Switzerland
1888
oil on canvas
private collection

Sorel Etrog
Untitled
ca. 1970
intaglio print
Dallas Museum of Art

Sorel Etrog
Personage
ca. 1965-75
bronze
St Peter's College, Oxford

Sorel Etrog
Untitled
1969
lithograph
Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston, Ontario

Sorel Etrog
Great Bird
1974
lithograph
Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston, Ontario

Carol Hoorn Fraser
The New Winter Grave
1962
oil on canvas
Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton, New Brunswick

Carol Hoorn Fraser
The New Winter Grave
1963
 ink and oil paint on paper
Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton, New Brunswick

Carol Hoorn Fraser
The New Winter Grave
1963
ink and oil paint on paper
Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton, New Brunswick

Carol Hoorn Fraser
The Garden
1973
oil on linen
Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton, New Brunswick

The Drowned Children

You see, they have no judgment.

So it is natural that they should drown,

first the ice taking them in

and then, all winter, their wool scarves

floating behind them as they sink

until at last they are quiet.

And the pond lifts them in its manifold dark arms.

But death must come to them differently,

so close to the beginning.

As though they had always been

blind and weightless. Therefore

the rest is dreamed, the lamp,

the good white cloth that covered the table,

their bodies.

And yet they hear the names they used

like lures slipping over the pond:

What are you waiting for 

come home, come home, lost

in the waters, blue and permanent.

– Louise Glück (1980)

Vividly Costumed

Fra Angelico
The Archangel Gabriel
ca. 1450-55
tempera on panel
(altarpiece fragment)
Detroit Institute of Arts

Agnolo Bronzino
Portrait of a Lady
ca. 1533
oil on panel
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Anonymous Flemish Artist
Portrait of a Lady of the Hampden Family
ca. 1610
oil on canvas
(painted in England)
Rhode Island School of Design, Providence

Jusepe de Ribera
St James the Greater
ca. 1615-16
oil on canvas
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Anonymous Spanish Artist
Portrait of Infanta Margarita Teresa
(later Holy Roman Empress)
ca. 1662-64
oil on canvas
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Joachim Liquevet
Portrait of a Lady
1683
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon

Hyacinthe Rigaud
Portrait of Élisabeth Charlotte de Bavière,
duchesse d'Orléans, princesse Palatine du Rhin
1718
oil on canvas
Musée d'Art et d'Histoire de Genève

François-Hubert Drouais
Portrait of Denis-Paul le Pot de la Fontaine
1772
oil on canvas
Detroit Institute of Arts

Joseph Siffred Duplessis
Portrait of Charles-Claude Flahaut de la Billarderie,
comte d'Angiviller
ca. 1780-89
oil on canvas
Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen

John Singer Sargent
Dr Pozzi at Home
1881
oil on canvas
Hammer Museum, Los Angeles

Jules Chéret
Job - Papier à Cigarettes
1895
lithograph (poster)
Milwaukee Art Museum

Edvard Munch
Portrait of Hanni Esche
1905
oil on canvas
Kunsthaus Zürich

Alexei von Jawlensky
Portrait of dancer Alexander Sakharoff
1909
oil on cardboard
Lenbachhaus, Munich

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
Painter and Model
1910
oil on canvas
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Egon Schiele
Self Portrait
1914
drawing, with gouache
Národní Galerie, Prague

Franz Gertsch
Marina making up Luciano
1975
acrylic on cotton
Museum Ludwig, Cologne

from To Ireland in the Coming Time

While still I may, I write for you
The love I lived, the dream I knew.

From our birthday, until we die,
Is but the winking of an eye;

And we, our singing and our love,
What measurer Time has lit above,

And all benighted things that go

About my table to and fro,

Are passing on to where may be,

In truth's consuming ecstasy,

No place for love and dream at all;

For God goes by with white footfall.
I cast my heart into my rhymes,

That you, in the dim coming times,

May know how my heart went with them
After the red-rose-bordered hem.

– W.B. Yeats (1893)