Generations

Roman Vishniac
Grandfather and Granddaughter, Warsaw
ca. 1935
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Hans Thoma
Grandmother telling Fairy Stories
1877
oil on panel
Von der Heydt Museum, Wuppertal

Lovis Corinth
Grandmother and Granddaughter
1919
oil on canvas
Landesmuseum, Hannover

Imogen Cunningham
With Grandchildren at the Fun House
1955
gelatin silver print
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Christian Krohg
A Farewell
1876
oil on canvas
Göteborgs Konstmuseum, Sweden

Eugène Delacroix
Old Shepherd addressing Young Shepherd
ca. 1858-62
drawing
Musée du Louvre

François-André Vincent
Allegory of the Liberation of French and Italian Prisoners in Algiers
1806
oil on canvas
Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel

Anonymous German Artist
Allegory of Transience
1547
tempera and oil on panel
Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe

attributed to Michel Erhart
Allegory of Transience
(young woman, old woman, young man)
ca. 1470-80
painted lindenwood
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

 

Giovanni Battista Piazzetta
Heads of Old Man and Youth
ca. 1730-50
drawing
Royal Collection, Windsor

Johann Liss
Old Man and Young Man in a Tavern
before 1631
etching
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Auguste Raynaud
Palace Officials
1890
oil on canvas
Musée d'Art et d'Histoire de Narbonne

Marcantonio Raimondi
Old and Young Bacchantes
ca. 1520-25
engraving
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Oliviero Gatti after Guercino
Old Man, Boy and Young Woman
1619
engraving
(plate from drawing manual)
Harvard Art Museums

Edvard Munch
Albert Kollman and Sten Drewsen
1902
oil on canvas
Hamburger Kunsthalle

August Sander
Studien der Mensch
(Grandmother and Child)
ca. 1919
gelatin silver print
Tate Gallery

Chorus of Furies:

Men's conceit of themselves, however proud while under the bright sky,

dwindles and melts away into worthlessness when beneath the earth,

thanks to our black garbed assaults

and the angry dancing of our feet;

for I give a great leap

and then bring down my foot

from above with a heavy crash,

a leg to trip even a runner

at full stretch and cause unendurable ruin.

But when he falls, he does not know this, because the injury has taken away his wits:

such is the dark cloud of pollution that hovers over the man,

and a voice full of grieving

speaks of a murky mist over his house.

It stands fast: resourceful,

effective, remembering 

wrongs, awesome,

unappeasable by mortals,

we carry out our despised function,

far away from the gods, in the sunless slime,

making a rough and rocky path for the seeing

and the eyeless alike.  

What mortal, then, is not in awe
and fear of this,
when he hears from me of this charter,
ordained by Destiny and accepted
by the gods? I have
an ancient privilege, nor am I without honour,
even though I have my assigned station beneath the earth
in the sunless darkness. 

– Aeschylus, from Eumenides (458 BC), translated by Alan H. Sommerstein (2008)