Foursomes

Odoardo Fialetti
Lower Legs
(plate from drawing manual)
1608
etching
Kupferstichkabinett, Hamburger Kunsthalle

Anonymous Italian Maker
Border Fragment
ca. 1620
linen (needle lace)
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Meissen Manufactory (Dresden)
Allegory of the Four Continents
ca. 1720
porcelain
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Giovanni Domenico Ferretti (Giandomenico d'Imola)
Figures of the Commedia dell'Arte
before 1768
drawing
British Museum

Pierre Trémaux
View of a Monument constructed from Greek Ruins
(expired beauty transformed - presto! - into fresh-faced ugliness)
ca. 1862-68
photolithograph
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

Thomas Eakins
Young Women dancing in a Ring
ca. 1880-82
platinum print
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

William Latimer
Clara, Lily, Annie and Bessie in Paris
ca. 1885
albumen print
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

John Tinney McCutcheon
On the Border-land of Crime
ca. 1896
drawing (magazine illustration)
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Herman Elsberg (designer)
Fabric Sample
ca. 1919
silk satin with floral pattern, woven in Lyon
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

PaJaMa (Paul Cadmus, Jared French, Margaret French)
Jared French, Monroe Wheeler, Paul Cadmus and George Tooker on Fire Island
1945
gelatin silver print
Archives of American Art, Washington DC

Jerome Liebling
Women at Parade
1947
gelatin silver print
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Justin McCarthy
Moviestars
ca. 1961-64
watercolor and ink on paper
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Mary Pinchot Meyer
Half-Light
1964
acrylic on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Anonymous Printmaker
Richard Nixon with the Watergate Complex
1972
offset-lithograph imitating U.S. postage stamps
(17672 printed in margin is the date of the Watergate break-in)
National Museum of American History, Washington DC

Kiki Smith
Pink Bosoms
1990
screenprint
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Jaume Plensa
SIDA - Yo, Tu, El, Nosotros
ca. 1995
screenprint (produced in Paris)
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Therman Statom
Cuatro Reyes
2008
vitreograph print
New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut

Keith Mayerson
My Family
2013
oil on linen
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

from Upon the Duke of Yorke his Birth: A Panegyricke.

Brittaine, the mighty Oceans lovely Bride,

Now stretch thy self (faire Ile) and grow, spread wide

Thy bosome and make roome; Thou art opprest

With thine owne Gloryes: and art strangely blest

Byond thy selfe: for lo! the Gods, the Gods

Come fast upon thee, and those glorious ods

Swell thy full gloryes to a pitch so high

As sits above thy best capacitye.

    Are they not ods? and glorious? that to thee

Those mighty Genii throng, which well might bee

Each one an Ages labour, that thy dayes 

Are guilded with the Union of those Rayes,

Whose each divided Beame would be a Sun,

To glad the Spheare of any Nation.

O if for these thou mean'st to find a seat,

Th'ast need ô Brittaine to be truly Great.

And so thou art, their presence makes thee so.

They are thy Greatnesse; Gods where e're they go

Bring their Heaven with them, their great footsteps place

An everlasting smile upon the face

Of the glad Earth they tread on. While with thee

Those Beames that ampliate Mortalitie,

And teach it to expatiate, and swell

To Majesty, and fulnesse, deigne to dwell;

Thou by thy selfe maist sit, (blest Isle) and see

How thy Great Mother Nature doats on thee:

Thee therefore from the rest apart she hurl'd,

And seem'd to make an Isle, but made a world. 

– Richard Crashaw, The Delights of the Muses (1646)