Saturday, August 16, 2025

Paradigms (Western)

Edvard Munch
Kneeling Nude
ca. 1920-23
oil on canvas
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC


Romaine Brooks
Portrait of arts patron Baroness Catherine d'Erlanger
ca. 1924
oil on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Matthew Smith
La Chemise Jaune
1924-25
oil on canvas
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

André Derain
Mano the Dancer
ca. 1924-28
oil on canvas
Phillips Collection, Washington DC

Georges Barbier
Le Printemps
1925
lineblock and pochoir (fashion plate)
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

John Lavery
Portrait of Lila Lancashire
ca. 1925
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Man Ray
Kiki de Montparnasse (Alice Prin)
ca. 1925
gelatin silver print
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Sybil Craig
Portrait Study of a Woman
1926
drawing
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Nickolas Muray
Judith Anderson in Behold the Bridegroom
ca. 1927
gelatin silver print
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

George Luks
The Polka-Dot Dress
1927
oil on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum,
Washington DC

Augustus John
Tallulah Bankhead
1930
oil on canvas
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Edward Steichen
Anna May Wong
1930
gelatin silver print
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Marty Mann
Portrait of photograph Barbara Ker-Seymer
ca. 1930
gelatin silver print
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

Raphael Soyer
Portrait of Rebecca
ca. 1930
oil on canvas
Portland Art Museum, Oregon

Harold Weston
The Spider
ca. 1930-31
oil on canvas
Wichita Art Museum, Kansas

Alma Lavenson
Portrait of photographer Consuelo Kanaga
1931
gelatin silver print
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Alfred J. Frueh
Katharine Cornell
1931
drawing
(caricature commissioned by the New Yorker)
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

ALLITERATION – The repetition of the same letter at the beginning or (less frequently) in the body of different words in more or less close juxtaposition to each other.  This, which appears slightly, but very slightly, in classical poetry, has always been a great feature of English.  During the Anglo-Saxon period universally, and during a later period (after an interval which almost certainly existed, but the length of which is uncertain) partially, it formed, till the sixteenth century, a substantive and structural part of English prosody.  Later, it became merely an ornament, and at times, especially in the eighteenth century, has been disapproved.  But it forms part of the very vitals of the language, and has never been more triumphantly used than in the late nineteenth century by Mr. Swinburne. 

– George Saintsbury, from Historical Manual of English Prosody (1910)