Showing posts with label 1880s. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1880s. Show all posts

Thursday, November 23, 2023

Visual Relics (1887-1890)

Cameron Studio (London)
Johnston Forbes-Robertson
as Leontes in The Winter's Tale

1887
albumen print
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Félix Nadar
Sarah Bernhardt in Sardou's Tosca
1887
albumen silver print
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Eadweard Muybridge
Animal Locomotion, Plate 60
1887
collotypes
Minneapolis Institute of Art

Eadweard Muybridge
Animal Locomotion, Plate 160
1887
collotypes
Minneapolis Institute of Art

Eadweard Muybridge
Animal Locomotion, Plate 298
1887
collotypes
Minneapolis Institute of Art

Eadweard Muybridge
Animal Locomotion, Plate 368
1887
collotypes
Minneapolis Institute of Art

Eadweard Muybridge
Animal Locomotion, Plate 529
1887
collotypes
Minneapolis Institute of Art

Frederick H. Evans
Hedgerow Study
ca. 1888
platinum print
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia

Lyddell Sawyer
Waiting for the Boats
ca. 1889-90
photogravure
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Here is another image that purports to represent a slice of life, a journalistic narrative, with anxious women and men (a few men) on a dock, collectively awaiting the overdue return of their fishermen-kin.  In fact, Sawyer staged these tableaux with great care and some expense, hiring (in this case) seventeen local villagers, dressing them, positioning them, and stage-directing each individual attitude and gaze. The missing fishermen are, of course, fictional – if they did exist, the crowd would assuredly not present a vision at all resembling this graceful and scrupulously balanced scene.  

Evelyn Myers
Rebekah at the Well
ca. 1889-90
photogravure
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Wilhelm von Gloeden
Sicilian Youth in Classical Garb
ca. 1890
albumen print
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Wilhelm von Gloeden
Two Youths in a Landscape
ca. 1890
albumen print
Art Institute of Chicago

Étienne-Jules Marey
Model swinging a Stick
ca. 1890
collotypes
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Étienne-Jules Marey
Model pulling a Rope
ca. 1890
collotypes
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Abelardo Linares
Nuestra Señora de las Angustias,
Patroness of Granada

ca. 1890
albumen print
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Thomas Eakins
Portrait of Amelia C. Van Buren
1890
platinum print
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

from The New Boy 2

You may find at the market a casual comment swerves into
conversation that's deeply metaphysical with a young man by
produce.

He wears a white T and jeans, ordinary yet careful about his food.

"Every time I meditate, I begin in space among the stars," he says.

"Many of these things," he continues, " are not physically 3-D, so it's
frustrating to describe them."

"I have the impression their silver color comes from within."

"They look at me with tremendous love from almond-shaped eyes."

"There's not sunlight. The whole cloud structure is luminous and the
ground crystalline."

"A lot of purple and blue, like twilight." 

– Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge (2017)

Wednesday, November 22, 2023

Visual Relics (1874-1886)

Étienne Carjat
Sarah Bernhardt in Voltaire's Zaїre
1874
albumen print
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio

Étienne Carjat
Portrait of Alphonse Daudet
ca. 1876
woodburytype print
Art Institute of Chicago

Pierre Edmonds
Fontaine du Luxembourg, Paris
ca. 1875
albumen print
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia

Antonio Beato
First Cataract of the Nile
ca. 1875
albumen print
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia

Charles Bierstadt
Horseshoe Falls from the Canadian Side
ca. 1875
albumen prints (stereocard)
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia

Henri Béchard
Thebes - Temple of the Ramesseum
Interior of Hypostyle Hall

1875
albumen print
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio

Félix Bonfils
Femme Voilée
ca. 1875
albumen print
Minneapolis Institute of Art

Félix Bonfils
Parthenon Colonnade
ca. 1875
albumen print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Samuel Bourne
Untitled
ca. 1877
albumen print
Art Institute of Chicago

Felice Beato
Dacoits captured in the Ye-U Jungle, Shwebo Province, Burma
ca. 1880
albumen print
Princeton University Art Museum

Schroeder & Cie. (Lausanne)
Karnak
ca. 1880
albumen print
Princeton University Art Museum

Thomas Eakins
Male Figure in Classical Costume
1883
albumen silver print
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Wilhelm von Gloeden
Wrestlers
ca. 1885
modern gelatin silver print from glass plate negative
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Wilhelm von Gloeden
Youths among Rocks
ca. 1885
modern gelatin silver print from glass plate negative
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Pascal Sébah
Interior, Abu Simbel Temple, Egypt
before 1886
albumen print
Minneapolis Institute of Art

Spencer and Company (Santiago, Chile)
Composite Portrait of 59 Women
ca. 1875
albumen print
Princeton University Art Museum

"This composite photograph assembles fifty-nine women, all wearing the Chilean manto, a veil similar to the Spanish mantilla, traditionally worn on Sundays. As was common practice at the time, the publisher of this image took negatives from separate carte-de-visite portrait sessions and combined the images of the women into one picture. From various negatives of individuals that held value only for those depicted and those who knew them, the photographer produced an image with typological interest that could appeal to a wide array of customers. The women appear to belong together based on their visual similarities, but one wonders what they might have thought of this artificial conglomeration." 

– curator's notes from Princeton University Art Museum

Wednesday, March 11, 2020

Narrative and Allegorical Painting - Late Nineteenth Century

Edwin Austin Abbey
O Mistress Mine, Where Are You Roaming?
1899
oil on canvas
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

Harry Windsor-Fry
The Glory of Young Men
ca. 1898
oil on canvas
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

Glory

Pindar, poet of the victories, fitted names
And legends into verses for the chorus to sing:
Names recalled now only in the poems of Pindar:

O nearly unpronounceable immortals,
In the dash, Oionos was champion:
Oionos, Likmynios's son, who came from Midea.
In wrestling, Echemos won – the name
Of his home city, Tegea, proclaimed to the crowds.
Doryklos of Tiryns won the prize in boxing,
And the record for a four-horse team was set
By Samos from Mantinea, Halirothios's son.

And Pindar, poet of the Olympian and Isthmian
and Pythian games, wrote also of the boundless
And forgetful savannas of time. What is someone?
The chorus sing in a victory ode – What is a nobody?

Creatures of a day, they chant in answer, Creatures
Of a day. So where is the godgiven glory Pindar says
Settles on mortals? – Bright as gold among the substances,
Say the chorus, paramount as water among the elements.

Not in the victory itself, pretty or great,
Of rich young Greeks contending in games.
Not in the poetry itself, with its forgotten dances
And Pindar spinning among tiresome or stirring
Myths and genealogies, the chanted names
Of cities and invoked gods and dignitaries –

Striving, O nearly unpronounceable athletes,
To animate the air with dancing feet raising
A golden pollen of dust: a pervasive blur
Of seedlets in the sunlight, whirling – beyond mere
Victory or applause or performance,
As victory is beyond defeat.

The one who threw the javelin furthest
Sang the chorus, chanting Pindar's incantation
Against envy and oblivion, was Phrastor.
And when Nikeus grunting whirled the stone
Into the air and it flew past the marks
Of all the competitors, Nikeus's countrymen
Shouted his name after it, Nikeus,
Nikeus, and the syllables so say the lines Pindar
Composed for the sweating chorus to chant – radiated
For a spell like the silvery mirror of the moon.

– Robert Pinsky (2003)

John Collier
Queen Guinevere's Maying
ca. 1897
oil on canvas
Cartwright Hall Art Gallery, Bradford, Yorkshire

John William Waterhouse
Hylas and the Nymphs
1896
oil on canvas
Manchester Art Gallery

Arthur Hacker
The Cloister or The World?
1896
oil on canvas
Cartwright Hall Art Gallery, Bradford, Yorkshire

Guillaume Dubufe
La Fuite en Egypte
1894
oil on canvas
Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh

John Gilbert
Venetian Council of War
1891-92
oil on canvas
Manchester Art Gallery

William Bell Scott
Trial of Sir William Wallace at Westminster
before 1890
oil on canvas
Guildhall Art Gallery, London

Henri Fantin-Latour
Immortality
1889
oil on canvas
National Museum Cardiff, Wales

Frederic Leighton
Last Watch of Hero
1887
oil on canvas
Manchester Art Gallery

Walter Crane
The Apotheosis of Italian Art
1885-86
watercolor and gouache on paper
Manchester Art Gallery

Ford Madox Brown
The Romans Building Manchester
1879-80
oil on canvas
Aberdeen Art Gallery, Scotland

Lawrence Alma-Tadema
Poetry
1879
oil on panel
National Museum Cardiff, Wales

Henry Scott Tuke
The Good Samaritan
1879
oil on canvas
Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society, Falmouth

Robert Bateman
The Pool of Bethesda
1877
oil on canvas
Yale Center for British Art

Wednesday, January 29, 2020

Human and/or Divine Figures in Paint (1880-1890)

Isabel Dacre
Italian Women in Church
ca. 1880
oil on canvas
Manchester Art Gallery

John Roddam Spencer Stanhope
The Rescue
ca. 1880
oil on canvas
National Trust, Wightwick Manor, Wolverhampton

Anonymous Artist
Académie
ca. 1880
oil on paper, mounted on panel
Edinburgh College of Art

Robert Payton Reid
Académie
ca. 1880
oil on canvas
Royal Scottish Academy of Art & Architecture, Edinburgh

George Frederic Watts
The Court of Death
1881
oil on canvas
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

Edward Burne-Jones
The Tree of Forgiveness
1882
oil on canvas
Lady Lever Art Gallery, Liverpool

A Country Incident

Absorbed in planting bulbs, that work of hope,
I was startled by a loud human voice,
"Do go on working while I talk. Don't stop!"
And I was caught upon the difficult choice –
To yield the last half hour of precious light,
Or to stay on my knees, absurd and rude;
I willed her to be gone with all my might,
This kindly neighbor who destroyed my mood;
I could not think of next spring any more,
I had to re-assess the way I live.
Long after I went in and closed the door,
I pondered on the crude imperative.

What it is to be caught up in each day
Like a child fighting imaginary wars,
Converting work into this passionate play,
A rounded whole made up of different chores
Which one might name haphazard meditation.
And yet an unexpected call destroys
Or puts to rout my primitive elation:
Why be so serious about mere joys?
Is this where some outmoded madness lies,
Poet as recluse? No, what comes to me
Is how my father looked out of his eyes,
And how he fought for his own passionate play.

He could tear up unread and throw away
Communications from officialdom,
And, courteous in every other way,
Would not brook anything that kept him from
Those lively dialogues with man's whole past
That were his intimate and fruitful pleasure.
Impetuous, impatient to the last,
"Be adamant, keep clear, strike for your treasure!"
I hear the youthful ardor in his voice
(And so I must forgive a self in labor).
I feel his unrepentant smiling choice,
(And so I ask forgiveness of my neighbor).

– May Sarton (1961)

Alfred Edward Emslie
Dinner at Haddo House, 1884
(Prime Minister Gladstone at the Hostess's right)
1884
oil on canvas
National Portrait Gallery, London

James McNeill Whistler
Harmony in Red: Lamplight
ca. 1884-86
oil on canvas
Hunterian Art Gallery, University of Glasgow

Luke Fildes
Venetians
1885
oil on canvas
Manchester Art Gallery

William Blake Richmond
Orpheus returning from the Shades
1885
oil on canvas
Royal Academy of Arts, London

George Denholm Armour
Académie
ca. 1886
oil on canvas
Edinburgh College of Art

George Denholm Armour
Académie
ca. 1886
oil on canvas
Royal Scottish Academy of Art & Architecture, Edinburgh

Pascal Blanchard
Samson and Delilah
1886
oil on canvas
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

William Skeoch Cumming
Académie
1889
oil on paper
Edinburgh College of Art

Charles Napier Kennedy
Neptune
1889
oil on canvas
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool