Showing posts with label bridges. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bridges. Show all posts

Thursday, October 15, 2026

Built

Mark Gertler
Gilbert Canaan and his Mill
1916
oil on canvas
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford


Frances Hodgkins
Flatford Mill
1930
oil on canvas
Tate Britain

Percival Arthur Wise
Castle Mill, Corfe, Dorset
ca. 1935
oil on canvas
Poole Museum, Dorset

Robert Moskowitz
Blue Mill
1998
pastel on paper
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Richard Wyndham
Tickerage Mill
ca. 1939
oil on canvas
Brighton & Hove Museums, East Sussex

Roderic O'Conor
Bridge at Grez-sur-Loing
ca. 1889-90
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin

William Clift
View South of Blue Point from the Mid-Hudson Bridge
1986
gelatin silver print
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

Jeffry Wyatville
Design for Bridge over the Great Western Road
ca. 1795
drawing
Yale Center for British Art

André Derain 
Charing Cross Bridge, London
1905-1906
oil on canvas
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Oliver Warman
Folly Bridge
2002
oil on canvas
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Nicola Victor Ziroli
Bridges in Winter
1934
oil on canvas (WPA Project)
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Olga Rozanova
The Factory and the Bridge
1913
oil on canvas
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Johannes Theodor Baargeld
Factory
1920
drawing
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Julian Trevelyan
Bicycle Shop
1937
hand-colored etching
University of Stirling, Scotland

Frede Vidar
Construction Site
ca. 1935
watercolor and gouache on board (WPA Project)
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Bror Utter
Entrance to the First National Bank
1957
watercolor and ink on paper
Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

James McNeill Whistler
Rose and Red - The Barber's Shop, Lyme Regis
1895
oil on panel
Georgia Museum of Art, University of Georgia, Athens

"Books," he said. "You must have read a lot of books.  A strange occupation. Sitting and reading.  I often do it myself, though maybe not that often, when I think about it, at least not the sort of books that you undoubtedly read; but when, on rare occasions, I do sit down and read a book, then I quickly find myself thinking about what it is I'm doing, and I think: Jesus, are you sitting here and reading?  Don't you have anything else to do?"

                                                        *

At home they spent a lot of time in the kitchen.  Merete Sæthre liked to cook, spending a lot of time turning the simplest and cheapest ingredients into the most delicious dishes.  If this had generally been a happier, not to mention a more lighthearted book, then at the very end of the book there should have been a section with Merete Sæthre's best recipes; unfortunately that's not going to happen, for reasons that we'll soon explain. 

                                                        *

By the way, in every novel there is a big black hole, which is universal in its blackness, and now this novel has reached that point.  Surrounded by spirited young ladies, with all their sweetness, we find ourselves together with Singer in a novel that is like a big black hole.  Why is Singer the main character in this novel?  And not only the main character but the one around whom everything revolves?  

– from T Singer by Dag Solstad, translated from Norwegian by Tiina Nunnally (London: Harvill Secker, 2018)  

Saturday, May 16, 2026

Rendering Water

Francesco Marcolini (printer)
Pietro Aretino and the Siren
ca. 1540-50
chiaroscuro woodcut (key-block only)
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna


Paolo de' Matteis
Perseus and Andromeda
ca. 1690-1700
oil on canvas
Fairfield University Art Museum, Connecticut

Joseph Nickolls
The Thames at the Tower of London
ca. 1750-55
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Romolo Achille Liverani
Design for Wall Decoration, Casa Taviotti, Faenza
1831
ink and watercolor on paper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Max Liebermann
Swimmers
ca. 1875-77
oil on canvas
Dallas Museum of Art

Claude Monet
Valley of the Creuse at Sunset
1889
oil on canvas
Musée Unterlinden, Colmar

Henry Moret
Paysage de Doëlan à la voile blanche
1898
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Brest

James Wilson Morrice
Palazzo Ferro Fini, Grand Canal, Venice
ca. 1900-1905
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

Franz Marc
Bathers
1910
oil on canvas
Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, California

Henri Martin
Bridge at Labastide du Vert
ca. 1910
oil on canvas
Musée Henri Martin, Cahors

Elizabeth Olds
Fire
1940
screenprint
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Helen Levitt
Bronx NY
ca. 1940
gelatin silver print
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Bill Owens
Los Angeles Documentary Project: Pool
1980
C-print
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Claes Oldenburg
Props, Costumes and Designs from Il Corso del Coltello
1986
offset lithograph (poster) after Oldenburg watercolor
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

John Pfahl
Ozone Falls, Cumberland Plateau, TN
1991
C-print
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Irving Marcus
Tsunami
2003
oil on canvas
San Jose Museum of Art, California

Maya Lin
Caspian Sea
2006
plywood
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia

from A Cold Spring

Beneath the light, against your white front door,
the smallest moths, like Chinese fans,
flatten themselves, silver and silver gilt
over pale yellow, orange, or gray.
Now, from the thick grass, the fireflies
begin to rise:
up, then down, then up again:
lit on the ascending flight,
drifting, simultaneously to the same height,
– exactly like the bubbles in champagne.
– Later on they rise much higher.
And your shadowy pastures will be able to offer
these particular glowing tributes
every evening now throughout the summer.

– Elizabeth Bishop (1955)

Thursday, May 14, 2026

Aquatic - I

Carl Kuntz
Falls of the Rhine near Schaffhausen
1793
watercolor and gouache on paper
Kunsthalle Mannheim

Anonymous Swiss Artist
Fireworks over the Rhine Falls at Schaffhausen
ca. 1890
postcard
Graphische Sammlung, Zentralbibliothek Zürich

Anonymous Swiss Artist
Fireworks over the Rhine Falls at Schaffhausen
ca. 1910
postcard
Graphische Sammlung, Zentralbibliothek Zürich

John Mix Stanley
Palouse Falls
1860
lithograph
Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Gustave Courbet
Falls of the Doubs
ca. 1855-60
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nice

Christian Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich
Waterfalls at Tivoli
1744
etching
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Lovis Corinth
Walchensee with the Slope of the Jochberg
1924
oil on canvas
Landesmuseum Hannover

Charles Cushman
Ocean Beach from Sutro Heights, San Francisco
1952
Kodachrome slide
Indiana University Library, Bloomington

Félix Vallotton
Evening View of Trouville
1910
oil on canvas
Clemens-Sels Museum, Neuss, Germany

Frits Thaulow
Behind the Mills, Montreuil-sur-Mer
1892
oil on canvas
Lillehammer Kunstmuseum, Norway

Per Christian Brown
Tiergarten
2014
C-print
KORO (Public Art Norway), Oslo

Marinus Pieter Reus
Bridge over a Ditch
ca. 1890
oil on canvas
Dordrechts Museum, Netherlands

Kalle Berggren
Bathing Platform
1976
gouache on paper
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Karl Theodor Reiffenstein
Wooden Sluice
1860
watercolor on paper
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Christian Rohlfs
The Sternbrücke, Weimar
1887
oil on canvas
Osthaus Museum, Hagen, Germany

Johan Rohde
Evening by the Karup
1889
oil on canvas
Hirschsprung Collection, Copenhagen

For the Grecians in old time, and such barbarians as in the continent lived near unto the sea or else inhabited the islands after once they began to cross over one to another in ships, became thieves and went abroad under the conduct of their most puissant men, both to enrich themselves and to fetch in maintenance for the weak, and falling upon towns unfortified and scatteringly inhabited, rifled them and made this the best means of their living, being a matter at that time nowhere in disgrace but rather carrying with it something of glory.  This is manifest by some that dwell on the continent, amongst whom, so it be performed nobly, it is still esteemed as an ornament.  The same also is proved by some of the ancient poets, who introduce men questioning of such as sail by, on all coasts alike, whether they be thieves or not, as a thing neither scorned by such as were asked nor upbraided by those that were desirous to know.  They also robbed one another within the mainland.  And much of Greece useth that old custom, as the Locrians called Ozolae, the Acarnanians, and those of the continent in that quarter, unto this day.  Moreover, the fashion of wearing iron remaineth yet with the people of that continent from their old trade of thieving. 

For once they were wont throughout all Greece to go armed because their houses were unfenced and travelling was unsafe, and accustomed themselves, like the barbarians, to the ordinary wearing of their armour.  And the nations of Greece that live so yet, do testify that the same manner of life was anciently universal to all the rest.  Amongst whom the Athenians were the first that laid by their armour and growing civil, passed into a more tender kind of life.  And such of the rich as were anything stepped into years laid away upon the same delicacy, not long after, the fashion of wearing linen coats and golden grasshoppers, which they were wont to bind up in the locks of their hair.  

– from The Peloponnesian War as written by Thucydides (5th century BC) and translated by Thomas Hobbes (1628) and edited by David Grene (1959)