Friday, March 13, 2026

Dressing - II

Carolus-Duran
Portrait of Leocadia Zelewska
(Madame Ernest Feydeau)

1870
oil on canvas
Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille

Édouard Manet
Nana
1877
oil on canvas
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Anders Zorn
Portrait of Jeanne and Antoinette Salomon
1888
watercolor on paper
Zornmuseet, Mora, Sweden

Adolph Friedlaender
Mlle. Polaire, Paris
ca. 1895-1905
lithograph (poster)
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Eugène Grasset
Woman with Parasol
1900
lithograph
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Karl Fischer-Köystrand
Fashionable Couple
1904
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Henry Caro-Delvaille
Portrait of Simone Le Bargy
1908
oil on canvas
Musée d'Art Moderne et Contemporain de Strasbourg

Alexei von Jawlensky
Young Woman with Peonies
1909
oil on canvas
Von der Heydt Museum, Wuppertal

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
Artist (Marzella)
1910
oil on canvas
Brücke Museum, Berlin

Anonymous German Photographer
Women in Fashionable Outerwear
ca. 1910
gelatin silver print
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Louis Oppenheim
Ludwig Schlesinger -
Chic Creations for Women

1911
lithograph (poster)
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Daniel de Losques
Mistinguett
1911
lithograph (poster)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Baron Adolf De Meyer
The Cup
1912
photogravure
Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Hugo von Habermann
Portrait of a Woman
ca. 1925
oil on canvas
Lenbachhaus, Munich

Heinrich Zernack
Fraulein Bührle
1926
oil on canvas
Lenbachhaus, Munich

Thure Eson
Kinesiskan
1935
gelatin silver print
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Have mercy on me, Athena, protectress of the city.  I, wretched Ilion, as was meet, worshipped thee in thy temple resplendent with gold. But thou hast abandoned me to the spoilers, and all for the sake of an apple hast stripped all the glory from my walls. Better had it been for the cowherd, Paris, to perish, for if he broke the law, it was not his country's crime. 

Look on the ambush that took Troy after ten years; look on the horse whose belly was big with the armed and silent Greeks. Epeius is building it and Athena is ordering the work, and all Hellas is emerging from beneath its back. Of a truth in vain did so great a host perish, if stratagem was more helpful to the Atreidae in the war than open battle. 

Who said Love was a god? We see that no work of the gods is evil, but he smiles at the blood of men. Does he not bear in his hand a sword swift to slay? Look at the incredible trophies of this deed of blood prompted by a god. The mother, with her child, lies slain, and on their bodies the man stoned by sentence of the law. This that we see is not the work of Hades or of Ares, but the work of Love. This is how the boy plays.

Three girls once drew lots for fun, who first should go to Hades. Thrice they threw the die, and the cast of all fell on one. She made mockery of the lot, which nevertheless was her true destiny. For, unhappy girl, she slipped and fell from the house-top afterwards, as none could have foreseen, and went to Hades even as the lot had lighted on her. A lot tells no falsehood when it is an evil one; but as for better chance neither the prayers of mortals nor their hands can attain it. 

I am selling the implements of the Muses, the books that have made me groan so much, now that I am taking to another profession. Farewell, ye Muses.  I bid thee good-bye, Learning, for syntax is the death of me.

I sell Callimachus and Pindar, and all the cases in the grammar, being myself a sore case of poverty. For Dorotheus has cut off the salary that supported me, sending this impious message of complaint against me. But, dear Theo, protect me, and do not let me end my days in conjunction with poverty. 

– from Book IX (Declamatory and Descriptive Epigrams) of the Greek Anthology, translated and edited by W.R. Paton (1917)