Hand-Colored

Conrad Felixmüller
ABC – a Nonsense Alphabet
(colophon)
1925
hand-colored woodcut
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Conrad Felixmüller
ABC – a Nonsense Alphabet
(illustration page - A-B)
1925
hand-colored woodcut
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Conrad Felixmüller
ABC – a Nonsense Alphabet
(illustration page - E-F)
1925
hand-colored woodcut
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Conrad Felixmüller
ABC – a Nonsense Alphabet
(illustration page - G-H)
1925
hand-colored woodcut
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Conrad Felixmüller
ABC – a Nonsense Alphabet
(illustration page - K-L)
1925
hand-colored woodcut
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Conrad Felixmüller
ABC – a Nonsense Alphabet
(illustration page - U-V)
1925
hand-colored woodcut
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Kiki Smith
Pool of Tears 2
2001
hand-colored etching and aquatint
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Edvard Munch
Lovers in the Waves
1896
hand-colored lithograph
Guggenheim Museum, New York

William T. Wiley
Hornicopia
2000
hand-colored linocut
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

William T. Wiley
Burden Landscape
2000
hand-colored linocut
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Louis Portman after Jacques Kuyper
New Hollanders
1802
hand-colored engraving
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Pietro Fabris
Sir William Hamilton conducting their Sicilian Majesties to view Vesuvius by Night
1771
hand-colored etching
British Museum

Thomas Rowlandson
The Covent Garden Night-Mare
(caricature of politician Charles James Fox as Fuseli pastiche)
1784
hand-colored etching and engraving
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Philibert-Louis Debucourt
Robe en Organdis de Couleur
1800
hand-colored etching
(fashion plate)
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

George Humphrey
Vice and Profligacy extinguished by Equity
1827
hand-colored etching
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia

Ferdinand Bauer
Gymea Lily
ca. 1806-1813
hand-colored engraving
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

from Primer

A final lassitude, of snapdragons

Puckering in their plot, the air like bronze,

Ringing of bronze, even the fieriest ones

Too weary in their exile to deny

Taste of the forbidden fruit of the bare sky.

"Blessed is what is born, for it shall die"

                  *          *         * 

– The words were next to nothing, but we shook
Enhancement from them, like the childhood book
Wherein, since then, we had not thought to look:

How much we had forgotten. The first page
Bespeaks a pang no worldliness can gauge:
Once more its glimmering scripture to assuage

Calls from within us cypress and flowering thorn,
Carpets, the woman and the god each morn
Naming the creatures to their latest-born. 

– James Merrill (1951)

White Garments - III

Louis-Périn Lié
Portrait of the courtesan La Duthé
1778
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Reims

Angelica Kauffmann
Bacchante
1785
oil on canvas
Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Anatole Devosge
Study for Portrait of Young Woman
ca. 1800-1810
oil on cardboard
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon

Constance-Marie Charpentier
Melancholy
1801
oil on canvas
Musée de Picardie, Amiens

Jacques-Louis David
Alexandrine-Thérèse Nardot, comtesse Daru
1810
oil on canvas
Frick Collection, New York

Thomas Lawrence
Portrait of Lady Sarah Ingestre
ca. 1827-28
oil on canvas
Rhode Island School of Design, Providence

Narcisse Diaz de la Peña
Marquérite in Church, with Mephistopheles looming
(scene from Goethe's Faust)
ca. 1850
oil on panel (sketch)
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Reims

Amaury-Duval
Woman of Saint-Jean-de-Luz
ca. 1866
oil on canvas
Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille

Berthe Morisot
Lady with a Fan
(Portrait of Madame Marie Hubbard)
1874
oil on canvas
Ordrupgaard Art Museum, Copenhagen

Jean Béraud
In the Wings at the Paris Opéra
1889
oil on panel
Musée Carnavalet, Paris

Charles Chaplin
Le Sommeil
ca. 1890
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Reims

Édouard Vuillard
The Fitting
ca. 1892
oil on panel
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Reims

Edvard Munch
Study of Model
1893
drawing
(colored chalks on brown paper)
Guggenheim Museum, New York

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

Ottilie Roederstein
Portrait of Frau Kost
1912
oil on canvas
Von der Heydt Museum, Wuppertal

Anonymous French Maker
Nightdress
ca. 1910
silk sarcenet and lace
Palazzo Pitti, Florence

Ce qui s'est réellement passé dans cette nuit où la chance a délié de sa ceinture sa bourse prodigue et en a sorti la possibilité des Onze, on ne le sait pas, Monsieur. Est-on même sûr que c'était la nuit? Ce qu'on sait seulement, savoir ou légende, ce sont les effets scéniques, le manteau couleur de fumée d'enfer qui passe en coup de vent, l'aplomb de quatre hommes sous des bicornes, la nef vide et les chevaux dans la nef, les cloches déposées, le tas d'or et les os embrasés des saintes: les trois personnages qui sont des types, Collot dans le rôle de Macbeth, Bourdon en Iago, Proli en Shylock; et devant ces stéréotypes Corentin éberlué entre l'or répandu et le bruit fantôme des cloches tient le rôle de saint Matthieu, qui n'est pas dans Shakespeare. On le voit ainsi. 

– Pierre Michon, from Les Onze (Verdier, 2009)

Hand-Colored

Robert Vance
Portrait of miner George Tom, San Francisco
1855
hand-colored daguerreotype
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

 

Arturo Terry
Portrait of a Chilean Woman
ca. 1854
hand-colored daguerreotype
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

G. Redfern
Portrait of Young Woman
ca. 1880
hand-colored albumen silver print
(carte de visite)
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

G. Redfern
Portrait of Young Woman
ca. 1880
hand-colored albumen silver print
(carte de visite)
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Oskar Nerlinger
The Grater
ca. 1928
hand-colored gelatin silver print (photogram)
Art Institute of Chicago

Ellen Gallagher
Abu Simbel
2005-2006
hand-colored photogravure, etching, aquatint and drypoint
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Nathaniel Jaquith
Mother and Child
ca. 1860
hand-colored daguerreotype
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Antoine Claudet
Two Sisters
ca. 1847
hand-colored daguerreotype
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

Gilbert and George
Beard Review
2016
hand-colored photomontage
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Gilbert and George
Waking
1984
hand-colored photomontage
Guggenheim Museum, New York

Gilbert and George
Dream
1984
hand-colored photomontage
Guggenheim Museum, New York

Anonymous Photographer
Crimean War Soldier
ca. 1855
hand-colored ambrotype
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia

Anonymous Photographer
Four Young Siblings
ca. 1855
hand-colored daguerreotype
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia

Antoine Claudet
Mother and Daughter
ca. 1855
hand-colored daguerreotype (stereograph)
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Antoine Claudet
Two Brothers
ca. 1855
hand-colored daguerreotype (stereograph)
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Susanna Briselli
Still Life
ca. 1985
hand-colored gelatin silver print
Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami

Allan Chasanoff
839-10.F+Bg 2-4
1983
hand-colored C-print
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia

Thomas Bock
Two Boys
ca. 1848-50
hand-colored daguerreotype
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

The Peacock

I speak to the unbeautiful of this bird

        That, celestially bored,

On feet too little under willows trails

Too much of itself, like Proust, a long brocade

Along, not seen but felt; that's never spared,

        Most mortal of its trials,

    Lifting this burden up in pride.

The spreading tail is pallid seen from the back

        But it's worthwhile to look

At what strenuous midribs make the plumage stretch:

Then, while it teeters in the light wind, ah

It turns, black, green and gold, that zodiac

        Of eyes – not these so much

     As idiot mouths repeating: I.

Consider other birds: the murderous swan

        And dodo now undone,

The appalling dove, hens' petulant sisterhood;

And then the peacock that no cry alarms,

Tense with idlesse, as though already on

        A terrace in boxwood

    Or graven in a coat of arms. 

In all these there's the common wound of nature

        No natural hand can suture,

A lessening – whether by want of shape they fail,

Of song, or will to live, or something else. 

How comforting to think blest any creature

        This short of beautiful!

    But some have known such comfort false.

A beatitude of trees which shall inherit

        Whoever's poor in spirit

Receives the peacock in their cumbersome shade.

Some who have perfect beauty shall not grieve,

As I, for diminution; they know merit

        In body, word and deed,

    Lone angels round each human grave.

– James Merrill (1951)