Alfred Henry Maurer

Alfred Henry Maurer
Lady in Black
ca. 1900
oil on canvas
McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas

Alfred Henry Maurer
The Model
ca. 1902
oil on canvas
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Alfred Henry Maurer
Woman in Black
ca. 1904
oil on canvas
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Alfred Henry Maurer
Tulips in a Green Vase
ca. 1910-12
oil on canvas
Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia

Alfred Henry Maurer
Landscape: Provence
1916
oil on paper, mounted on panel
Reynolda House Museum of American Art,
Winston-Salem, North Carolina

Alfred Henry Maurer
Landscape
ca. 1918-20
oil and crayon on board
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Alfred Henry Maurer
Abstract Composition
ca. 1919
gouache on paper
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia

Alfred Henry Maurer
Abstract Still Life
ca. 1919
oil on board
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Alfred Henry Maurer
Portrait of a Woman
1923
gouache on paper
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Alfred Henry Maurer
Two Sisters
ca. 1924
oil on canvas
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Alfred Henry Maurer
Girl with Auburn Hair
ca. 1924-25
gouache on paper
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Alfred Henry Maurer
Nude
ca. 1927-28
oil on board
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Anonymous Photographer
Alfred Maurer in the Studio
1928
photographic print
Archives of American Art, Washington DC

Alfred Henry Maurer
Portrait of a Man
ca. 1930
oil on canvas
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Alfred Henry Maurer
Four Heads
ca. 1930
tempera on board
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Alfred Henry Maurer
Dancers
before 1932
charcoal on paper
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Alfred Henry Maurer
White Phlox
before 1932
gouache on paper
Art Institute of Chicago

In the Dark

Come, try this exercise:

Focus a beam

Emptied of thinking, outward through shut eyes

On X, your "god" of long ago.

Wherever he is now, the photons race,

A phantom, unresisting stream,

For nothing lights up. No

Sudden amused face,

No mote, no far-out figment, to obstruct

The energy –

                             It just spends

And spends itself, and who will ever know

Unless he felt you aim at him     and ducked

Or you before the session ends

Begin to glow

– James Merrill (1985)

Elongated (Horizontally) - IV

Lucas Cranach the Elder
Melancolia
1532
oil on panel
Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres
Studies of Trumpeters
ca. 1812
drawing
(study for painting, Romulus victorious over Acron)
Musée Bonnat-Helleu, Bayonne

Édouard Vuillard
Large Interior with Six Figures
1897
oil on canvas
Kunsthaus Zürich

Gerrit Haverkamp
Wheat Field
1903
oil on canvas
Dordrechts Museum

Anselm Feuerbach
The Banquet of Plato
1869
oil on canvas
Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe

Roelant Savery
Landscape with Birds
1622
oil on panel
Národní Galerie, Prague

attributed to Benedetto Bordone
Temple of Apollo
(from the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili of Francesco Colonna
published by Aldus Manutius in Venice)
1499
woodcut
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Frank Duveneck
Study of Heads and Hands
1879
oil on canvas
Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio

Aert van den Bossche
Martyrdom of St Crispin and St Crispinian
1494
oil on panel
National Museum, Warsaw

Frederic Edwin Church
The Icebergs
1861
oil on canvas
Dallas Museum of Art

Eustache Le Sueur
Martyrdom of St Gervasius and St Protasius
ca. 1652-55
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon

Richard Bergh
Still Life
ca. 1895-1900
oil on canvas, mounted on panel
Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde, Stockholm

Anonymous Spanish Artist
Still Life with Sweetmeats
17th century
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Rosa Bonheur
Horse Fair
ca. 1852
oil on canvas
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York

Sodoma (Giovanni Antonio Bazzi)
Christ carrying the Cross
ca. 1510
oil on panel
(predella fragment)
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

Marcello Venusti
Christ on the Mount of Olives
ca. 1560-70
oil on panel
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

The garden was a very beautiful place and bore comparison with royal gardens.  It was two hundred yards long, lay on elevated ground, and was over a hundred yards wide.  You would say it was like a long plain.  It had every kind of tree – apple, myrtle, pear, pomegranate, fig, and olive.  On one side, it had a tall vine, which spread over the apple and pear trees with its darkening grapes, as if it was competing with their fruit.  These were the cultivated trees; and there were also cypresses, laurels, planes, and pines.  These were all overgrown, not by the grape but by the ivy, while the clusters of ivy berries, which were big and turning dark, looked just like bunches of grapes.  The fruit-bearing trees were on the inside, as though protected by the others.  The other trees stood around them like a man-made wall, but these were enclosed in turn by a narrow fence.  Everything was divided and separate, with each trunk at some distance from its neighbor.  But, higher up, the branches joined and intertwined their foliage.  This was the work of nature, but it also seemed to be the work of art.  There were beds of flowers too, some produced by the earth itself, and some by art.  Roses, hyacinths, and lilies were the work of human hands; violets, narcissi, and pimpernels were produced by the earth itself.  There was shade in the summer, flowers in the spring, grapes for picking in the autumn, and fruit in every season. 

From there the plain was clearly visible, so you could see people grazing their flocks; the sea was visible too, and people sailing past were open to view.  This too contributed to the luxurious feel of the garden.  At the midpoint of the length and breadth of the garden was a temple and altar to Dionysus.  Ivy surrounded the altar, and vine shoots surrounded the temple.  Inside, the temple had paintings of subjects related to Dionysus: Semele giving birth, Ariadne asleep, Lycurgus in chains, Pentheus being torn apart; there were also Indians being conquered and Etruscans changing shape.  Everywhere satyrs were treading the grapes; everywhere bacchantes were dancing.  And Pan was not forgotten; he sat there too on a rock, playing the Pan-pipes himself, as though he were providing an accompaniment both for the treaders and the dancers. 

– Longus, from Daphnis and Chloe (2nd century AD), translated from Greek by Christopher Gill (1989)

Reginald Marsh

Reginald Marsh
Study of Seated Woman
1925
drawing
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Reginald Marsh
The El
ca. 1928
oil on canvas
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Reginald Marsh
Courtship
1932
lithograph
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Reginald Marsh
Star Burlesk
1933
etching
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Reginald Marsh
Subway: Three People
1934
etching
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Reginald Marsh
Coney Island Beach
ca. 1930-38
gelatin silver print
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Reginald Marsh
Coney Island Beach
1934
etching
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Gene Pyle
Reginald Marsh (standing, left) sketching on Beach at Coney Island
ca. 1930-38
gelatin silver print
Archives of American Art, Washington DC

Gene Pyle
Reginald Marsh sketching on Carousel at Coney Island
ca. 1930-38
gelatin silver print
Archives of American Art, Washington DC

Reginald Marsh
Coney Island Carousel Carriage
ca. 1930-38
gelatin silver print
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Reginald Marsh
Cover of The New Yorker - Circus Scene
1935
offset print
(after original painting)
Archives of American Art, Washington DC

Reginald Marsh
Twenty-Cent Movie
1936
oil and ink on board
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Reginald Marsh
Battery Belle
1938
etching
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Reginald Marsh
Zayda in Subway
ca. 1940
drawing
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Reginald Marsh
Untitled (New York)
ca. 1940
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

 

Reginald Marsh
Madrid
before 1954
watercolor on paper
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

from Trees Listening to Bach

Wonders who'll itemize? Why, the jade tree,

Budding collector grown

Roundshouldered from its decade in the shade,

A shut-in life. Though short on fun,

It takes note, missing none.

Some nine score pitch-pure, stone-smooth lobes

Store the Courante, the Sarabande's grave strobes.

Exact dynamics are its law, 

And juicy, time-consuming pedantry

Its lesson.  Fluke or flaw,

Dust in a groove, temptation to emote

And blot performance leaving it unswayed,

Its roc's claw grips a base that creeps clockwise. 

– James Merrill (1985)

Elongated (Horizontally) - III

Luca Giordano
Galatea and Polyphemus
ca. 1674-75
oil on canvas
Museo di Capodimonte, Naples

Ancient Greek Culture
Wrestlers
510-500 BC
marble relief
(base of funerary kouros, excavated in Athens)
National Archaeological Museum, Athens

Battista Franco (il Semolei)
Motifs from Antique Cameos
ca. 1550
engraving
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Jacob Jordaens
Moses striking Water from the Rock
ca. 1645-50
oil on canvas
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Francis Tattegrain
Mourners at Étaples
1883
oil on canvas
Musée de Picardie, Amiens

Zachar Sherman
The Beautiful Sixties
1997
oil on canvas
Museum Ludwig, Cologne

Jean Coustou
Trompe-l'oeil with Portrait Medal of the Comte de Caylus
1778
oil on canvas
(overdoor)
Musée Fabre, Montpellier

Wolfgang Heimbach
Banquet at Night
1640
oil on copper
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Théodore Géricault
Figure Study for Raft of the Medusa
1818-19
drawing
Musée Bonnat-Helleu, Bayonne

Irving Penn
Skull, Huile and Lemon
1993
platinum palladium print
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Charles Norbert Roettiers
Artemis intervening to save Iphigenia
ca. 1750
drawing
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Valentin Lefebvre
Venus with Mirror
1670
drawing
National Museum, Warsaw

Pablo Picasso
Reclining Nude with Cat
1964
oil on canvas
Von der Heydt Museum, Wuppertal

Édouard Manet
The Bullfight
1864
oil on canvas
Frick Collection, New York

attributed to Andrea Schiavone (Andrea Meldolla)
Apollo and Daphne
ca. 1550
tempera on panel
Princeton University Art Museum

Louis Fabritius Dubourg
Arcadian Landscape with Figures around a Monumental Fountain
1742
watercolor
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

Lamon had just finished his storytelling, and Philetas was praising him for telling a story sweeter than any song, when Tityrus arrived, bringing his father his pipes.  The instrument was a big one, with big reeds, and decorated with bronze where the reeds were fastened with wax.  You could have imagined it was the very instrument that Pan first put together.  Philetas got up and sat upright on a chair.  First he tried the reeds to see if he could blow through them properly.  Once he'd found that his breath ran through them unimpeded, he then blew a loud and lusty note.  You would have thought you were hearing several flutes playing together, so strong was the sound of his piping.  Gradually reducing his force, he modulated the tune to a sweeter sound and displayed every kind of skill in musical herdsmanship: he played music that fitted a herd of cows, music that suited a herd of goats, music that flocks of sheep would love.  For the sheep the tune was sweet; for the cows it was loud; for the goats it was sharp.  Altogether, that one set of pipes imitated all the pipes there are.

– Longus, from Daphnis and Chloe (2nd century AD), translated from Greek by Christopher Gill (1989)