Hummel - Hardy - Houbraken - Holbein

Johann Erdmann Hummel
Granite Basin in the Lustgarten, Berlin
1831
oil on canvas
Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Johann Erdmann Hummel
Portrait of Luise Mila
ca. 1810-15
oil on canvas
Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Johann Erdmann Hummel
Blasted Tree
ca. 1795
oil on paper
Morgan Library, New York

Johann Erdmann Hummel
In the Park of Buch Castle
1836
oil on canvas
Von der Heydt Museum, Wuppertal

Dudley Hardy
An Encampment on the Nile
1917
watercolor on paper
Wellcome Collection, London

Dudley Hardy
Sarah Bernhardt
1889
oil on panel
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Dudley Hardy
Cinderella, Drury Lane
1896
lithograph (poster)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Dudley Hardy
A Gaiety Girl
1894
lithograph (poster)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Jacobus Houbraken
Mary Queen of Scots
1738
engraving
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Jacobus Houbraken
Portraits of artists
Jan de Bisschop and Johannes Voorhout
ca. 1718-21
engraving
Teylers Museum, Haarlem

Jacobus Houbraken
Sir Walter Raleigh
1739
engraving
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

Jacobus Houbraken
William Shakespeare
1747
engraving
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Hans Holbein the Younger
Erasmus of Rotterdam
ca. 1520-25
woodcut
Art Institute of Chicago

Hans Holbein the Younger
Portrait of a Young Man
ca. 1520-30
oil on panel
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Hans Holbein the Younger
Portrait of Thomas Godsalve and his son John
1528
oil on panel
Gemäldegalerie, Alte Meister, Dresden

Hans Holbein the Younger
Portrait of Duke Anton the Good of Lorraine
1543
oil on panel
Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

The Mountain

My students look at me expectantly.

I explain to them that the life of art is a life
of endless labor. Their expressions

hardly change; they need to know

a little more about endless labor. 

So I tell them the story of Sisyphus,

how he was doomed to push

a rock up a mountain, knowing nothing

would come of this effort

but that he would repeat it

indefinitely. I tell them

there is joy in this, in the artist's life,

that one eludes

judgment, and as I speak

I am secretly pushing a rock myself,

slyly pushing it up the steep

face of a mountain. Why do I lie

to these children? They aren't listening,

they aren't deceived, their fingers

tapping at the wooden desks –
So I retract

the myth; I tell them it occurs

in hell, and that the artist lies

because he is obsessed with attainment,

that he perceives the summit

as that place where he will live forever,

a place about to be 

transformed by his burden: with every breath,

I am standing at the top of the mountain.

Both my hands are free. And the rock has added

height to the mountain. 

– Louise Glück (1985)