Showing posts with label France. Show all posts
Showing posts with label France. Show all posts

Monday, May 4, 2026

Salon Painting (19th Century)

Marie-Gabrielle Capet
Scene in the Studio of Madame Vincent
 (Salon of 1808)
oil on canvas
Neue Pinakothek, Munich


Jeanne-Élisabeth Chaudet
Young Woman mourning Dead Pigeon
 (Salon of 1808)
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts d'Arras

François-Joseph Heim
The Bloody Robe of Joseph brought to Jacob
(Salon of 1817)
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Pierre-Henri Révoil
Joan of Arc imprisoned in Rouen
(Salon of 1819)
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen

Eugène Delacroix
The Death of Sardanapalus
(Salon of 1828)
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Joseph-Laurent Bouvier
The Egyptian
(Salon of 1869)
oil on canvas
Musée de Grenoble

Jean-Jacques Henner
Woman on a Black Divan
(Salon of 1869)
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Mulhouse

Alphonse Eugène Félix Lecadre
Le Sommeil
(Salon of 1872)
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nantes

Alexandre Antigna
Aragonaises d'Anso
(Salon of 1872)
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Art d'Orléans

Élie Delaunay
David Triumphant
(Salon of 1874)
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nantes

Jean Lecomte du Nouÿ
Homer the Blind Wanderer
[Odyssey, left panel  right panel, Iliad]
(Salon of 1882)
oil on canvas
Musée de Grenoble

Henry Jones Thaddeus
The Wounded Poacher
(Salon of 1881)
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin

Charles Ronot
The Last Montagnards
(Salon of 1882)
oil on canvas
Musée de la Révolution Française, Vizille

Léon Comerre
Pierrot playing Mandolin
(Salon of 1884)
oil on canvas
Musée départemental des Hautes-Alpes, Gap

Paul-Emmanuel Péraire
Gust of Wind
(Salon of 1892)
oil on canvas
Musée Salies, Bagnères-de-Bigorre

Paul Gervais
Folly of Titania
(Salon of 1897)
oil on canvas
Musée des Augustins de Toulouse

Poem

About the size of an old-style dollar bill,
American or Canadian,
mostly the same whites, gray greens, and steel grays,
– this little painting (a sketch for a larger one?)
has never earned any money in its life.
Useless and free, it has spent seventy years
as a minor family relic
handed along collaterally to owners
who looked at it sometimes, or didn't bother to.

It must be Nova Scotia; only there
does one see gabled wooden houses
painted that awful shade of brown.
The other houses, the bits that show, are white.
Elm trees, low hills, a thin church steeple
– that gray-blue wisp – or is it? In the foreground
a water meadow with some tiny cows,
two brushstrokes each, but confidently cows;
two minuscule white geese in the blue water,
back-to-back, feeding, and a slanting stick.
Up closer, a wild iris, white and yellow,
fresh-squiggled from the tube.
The air is fresh and cold; cold early spring
clear as gray glass; a half inch of blue sky
below the steel-gray strom clouds.
(They were the artist's specialty.)
A specklike bird is flying to the left.
Or is it a flyspeck looking like a bird?

Heavens, I recognize the place, I know it!
It's behind – I can almost remember the farmer's name.
His barn backed on that meadow. There it is,
titanium white, one dab. The hint of steeple,
filaments of brush-hairs, barely there,
must be the Presbyterian church. 
Would that be Miss Gillespie's house?
Those particular geese and cows
are naturally before my time. 

A sketch done in an hour, "in one breath,"
once taken from a trunk and handed over. 
Would you like this? I'll probably never
have room to hang these things again.
Your Uncle George, no, mine, my Uncle George,
he'd be your great-uncle, left them all with Mother
when he went back to England.
You know, he was quite famous, an R.A.  . . .

I never knew him. We both knew this place,
apparently, this literal small backwater,
looked at it long enough to memorize it,
our years apart. How strange. And it's still loved,
or its memory is (it must have changed a lot).
Our visions coincided – "visions" is
too serious a word – our looks, two looks:
art "copying from life" and life itself,
life and the memory of it so compressed
they've turned into each other. Which is which?
Life and the memory of it cramped, 
dim, on a piece of Bristol board,
dim, but how live, how touching in detail 
– the little that we get for free,
the little of our earthly trust. Not much.
About the size of our abidance
along with theirs: the munching cows,
the iris, crisp and shivering, the water
still standing from spring freshets,
the yet-to-be-dismantled elms, the geese.

– Elizabeth Bishop (1976)

Thursday, April 9, 2026

Lyon Silks

Anonymous French Compiler
Sample Book from Lyon
1905-1906
mounted swatches of dyed silk
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum


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

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

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

Herman Elsberg (Lyon designer)
Ribbon Sample
ca. 1919
cut and voided silk velvet on satin ground
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Herman Elsberg (Lyon designer)
Fabric Panel
ca. 1919
cut and voided silk velvet on satin ground
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

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

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

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

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

Herman Elsberg (Lyon designer)
Fabric Panel
ca. 1920
alternating stripes of silk satin and silk velvet with woven pattern
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Charles Plumet for Tassinari & Chatel (Lyon)
Fabric Panel
ca. 1912
silk damask with woven pattern
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Les Petit Fils de C.J. Bonnet (Lyon)
Fabric Panel
1962
hand-cut satin jacquard
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Adrien Karbowsky for Tassinari & Chatel (Lyon)
La Musique
1911
silk and cotton upholstery fabric with woven pattern
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Yvonne Clarinval for Tassinari & Chatel (Lyon)
La Terre
1925
silk satin with woven pattern
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Yvonne Clarinval for Tassinari & Chatel (Lyon)
L'Eau
1925
silk satin with woven pattern
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Yvonne Clarinval for Tassinari & Chatel (Lyon)
Le Feu
1925
silk satin with woven pattern
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Westward on the high-hilled plains
    Where for me the world began,
Still, I think, in newer veins
    Frets the changeless blood of man. 

Now that other lads than I
    Strip to bathe on Severn shore,
They, no help, for all they try,
    Tread the mill I trod before.

There, when hueless is the west
    And the darkness hushes wide,
Where the lad lies down to rest
    Stands the troubled dream beside.

There, on thoughts that once were mine,
    Day looks down the eastern steep,
And the youth at morning shine
    Makes the vow he will not keep.

– A.E. Housman (1896)

Friday, March 27, 2026

French Patterns

Anonymous French Designer
Medallions and Bouquets
ca. 1785
block-printed wallpaper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum


Anonymous French Designer
Floral Basket
ca. 1805
block-printed wallpaper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous French Designer
Twining Garlands
ca. 1815-25
block-printed wallpaper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous French Designer
Interlocking Shapes
ca. 1820-40
block-printed wallpaper border
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous French Designer
Gothic Tracery
ca. 1840-60
block-printed wallpaper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous French Designer
Osborne
ca. 1850
block-printed wallpaper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous French Designer
Renaissance Revival Bouquet
1860
block-printed wallpaper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous French Designer
Trompe-l'oeil Blinds
ca. 1860
block-printed wallpaper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous French Designer
Masquerade Ball at the Opera House
1883
machine-printed wallpaper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous French Designer
Floral Stripes
ca. 1875-1900
block-printed and embossed wallpaper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous French Designer
Garden Scene imitating Découpage
1920
block-printed wallpaper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous French Designer
Adventure Stories
1923
block-printed wallpaper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous French Designer
Blossoms on Branches
ca. 1928-29
machine-printed wallpaper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous French Designer
Blossoms on Trellis
ca. 1928-29
machine-printed wallpaper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous French Designer
Bunches of Grapes
ca. 1928-29
embossed and airbrushed wallpaper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous French Designer
Leaves and Flowers
ca. 1928-29
machine-printed wallpaper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous French Designer
Feather Plumes
1934
block-printed wallpaper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Death's Lecture at the Funeral of a Young Gentleman.

Dear Reliques of a dislodg'd Soul, whose lack
Makes many a mourning paper put on black!
O stay a while, ere thou draw in thy head
And wind thy self up close in thy cold bed. 
Stay but a little while, untill I call
A summons worthy of thy funerall.
Come then, Youth, Beauty, & blood!
                All ye soft powres,
Whose sylken flatteryes swell a few fond howres
Into a false æternity.  Come man;
Hyperbolizèd Nothing!   know thy span;
Take thine own measure here; down, down, & bow
Before thy self in thine idæa; thou
Huge emptynes! contract thy self; & shrinke
All thy Wild circle to a Point.  O sink
Lower & lower yet; till thy leane size 
Call heav'n to look on thee with narrow eyes.
Lesser & lesser yet; till thou begin
To show a face, fitt to confesse thy Kin,
Thy neighbourhood to Nothing
Proud lookes, & lofty eyliddes, here putt on
Your selves in your unfaign'd reflexion,
Here, gallant ladyes! this unpartiall glasse
(Though you be painted) showes you your true face.
These death-seal'd lippes are they dare give the ly
To the lewd Boasts of poor Mortality.
These curtain'd windows, this retired eye
Outstares the liddes of larg-look't tyranny.
This posture is the brave one, this that lyes
Thus low, stands up (me thinkes) thus & defies
The world.  All-daring dust & ashes! only you
Of all interpreters read Nature True. 

– Richard Crashaw (1652)