Monday, May 19, 2025

Narrative Tendencies (1884-1935)

Ilya Repin
The Unexpected Homecoming
1884
oil on canvas
State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

Jean-Léon Gérôme
The Grief of the Pasha
1885
oil on canvas
Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha

Harriet Backer
Bleaching Linen
1886
oil on canvas
Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo

Alexandre Cabanal
Cleopatra testing Poisons on Condemned Prisoners
1887
oil on canvas
Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp

Georges-Antoine Rochegrosse
Salome dancing before King Herod
1887
oil on canvas
Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha

Joseph Granie
The Portrait
ca. 1890
oil on canvas
Musée des Augustins de Toulouse

Georges Moreau de Tours
Les Fascinés de la Charité
1890
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Reims

Giacomo Mantegazza
Young Mozart playing for George III of England
ca. 1891
oil on canvas
Accademia Carrara, Bergamo

Adrien Barrère
Un Crime dans une Maison de Fous
Théâtre du Grand Guignol de Paris

ca. 1905
lithograph (poster)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Dora Hitz
Picking Cherries
ca. 1905
oil on canvas
Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Nikolai Astrup
Weekend
1912
oil on canvas
KODE (Art Museums Complex), Bergen, Norway

Jean-Théodore Dupas
The Archer
1917
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux

Anonymous Russian Designer
Slackers Cost Millions of Rubles
ca. 1925
lithograph (poster)
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Arvid Fougstedt
The Count of Monte Cristo
ca. 1925
watercolor on paper
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Harald Sallberg
By Lamplight
1929
etching
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Lucien Aigner
Lady of the Night on the Terrace of the Dôme
ca. 1935
gelatin silver print
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Moment in Suburban Summer

Whatever space the anonymous multitudes
of leaves or the named rows of brick
do not inhabit is thick
with the light of noon. Until the dove intrudes. 

It's not a song, a cry, or voice. It echoes
merely, revealing hollows
that roll and sound
through the packed air and weave off underground.

And all the streets turn from the crowding sun
to listen down
chasms of unbelief
weighing deep and numb between leaf and leaf.

– Ernest Sandeen, from Children and Older Strangers (1962)