Trains

Anonymous Swiss Artist
Woman standing between Drapes
ca. 1914
lithograph
(draft poster before lettering)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Ludwig Hohlwein
Tanz Palast - Blumen Säle
1913
lithograph (poster)
Kunstbibliothek,
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Max Slevogt
Portrait of dancer Marietta di Rigardo
1904
oil on canvas
Galerie Neue Meister (Albertinum), Dresden

Aubrey Beardsley
Woman among Trees
(illustration for Malory's Morte d'Arthur)
ca. 1893
drawing
Rhode Island School of Design, Providence

Jean-Louis Forain
La Sortie du Théâtre
ca. 1885
watercolor and gouache on paper
Morgan Library, New York

James Tissot
Seaside (July: Specimen of a Portrait)
1878
oil on canvas
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio

Claude Monet
Camille Monet in Japanese Costume
1876
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Carolus-Duran
Portrait of Madame Goldschmidt
1874
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Marseille

Eugène-Louis Lami
Entrance to a Drawing Room at Marlborough House
1871
watercolor and gouache on paper
Princeton University Art Museum

Alfred-Émile-Léopold Stevens
The Visit
before 1869
oil on canvas
Dallas Museum of Art

Eugène Isabey
Courtiers in an Interior
1864
oil on panel
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Hendrik Jacobus Scholten
Morning Walk
ca. 1860-70
oil on panel
Teylers Museum, Haarlem

Eduard Pistorius
Woman with a Mirror
1827
oil on panel
Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Joshua Reynolds
Portrait of Lady Sunderlin
1786
oil on canvas
Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Anthony van Dyck
Portrait of a Genoese Noblewoman
ca. 1625-27
oil on canvas
Frick Collection, New York

Master FP
Woman pouring from Vessels
ca. 1530-50
etching
Hamburger Kunsthalle

"If you bee resolv'd," said the daintie Urania, "folly it were to offer to perswade you from so resolute a determination; yet being so brave a Prince, stored with all vertuous parts, discretion and judgement, mee thinks, should not suffer you to burie them in the poore grave of Loves passion, the poorest of all other: these invite mee, as from your selfe, to speake to your selfe; Leave these teares, and woman-like complaints, no way befitting the valiant Perissus, but like a brave Prince, if you know shee bee dead, revenge her death on her murderers; and after, if you will celebrate her funeralls with your owne life giving, that will bee a famous act: so may you gaine perpetuall glorie, and repay the honor to her dead, which could not bee but touched by her untimely end."

                                             *                         *                       *

These wordes wrought so farre in the noble heart of Perissus, as rising from his leavie Cabine, then thus said hee, "Is Perissus the second time conquer'd?  I must obey that reason which abounds in you; and to you, shall the glory of this attempt belong: now will I againe put on those habites which of late I abandoned, you having gained the victorie over my vowe.  But I beseech you, tell me who my Counsellor is, for too much judgement I finde in you, to be directly, as you seeme, a meere Shepherdesse, nor is that beauty sutable to that apparell."

– from The Countesse of Mountgomeries Urania, by the right honourable the Lady Mary Wroath, daughter to the right noble Robert, Earle of Leicester, and neece to the ever famous and renowned Sʳ Phillips Sidney knight, and to ye most excellant Lady Mary Countess of Pembroke, late deceased (London: John Marriott and John Grismand, 1621)

Pastel Portraits at the Louvre (18th Century)

Joseph Boze
Self Portrait
ca. 1785
pastel on paper
Musée du Louvre

Joseph Boze
Portrait of Jeanne Louise Henriette Campan, née Genet
1786
pastel on paper
Musée du Louvre

Jean-Baptiste Perronneau
Portrait of Jean Couturier de Flotte
1756
pastel on paper
Musée du Louvre

Rosalba Carriera
Portrait of Anne Henry,
épouse de Jacques-Vincent Languet de Gergy
ca. 1720
pastel on paper
Musée du Louvre

Maurice Quentin de La Tour
Self Portrait
ca. 1755-60
pastel on paper
Musée du Louvre

Maurice Quentin de La Tour
Portrait of Madame Louise as a Carmelite
(daughter of Louis XV)
ca. 1775
pastel on paper
Musée du Louvre

Maurice Quentin de La Tour
Portrait of sculptor René Frémin
ca. 1743
pastel on paper
Musée du Louvre

Jean-Étienne Liotard
Portrait of Madame Jean Tronchin
1758
pastel on vellum
Musée du Louvre

Jean-Marc Nattier
Portrait of a Young Woman
1744
pastel on paper
Musée du Louvre

John Russell
Portrait of Mrs Thomas Jeans and her Sons
1797
pastel on paper
Musée du Louvre

John Russell
Portrait of painter Francesco Bartolozzi
1789
pastel on paper
Musée du Louvre

Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun
Portrait of a Young Man
ca. 1792-95
pastel on paper
Musée du Louvre

Jean Valade
Portrait of Théodore Lacroix
1774
pastel on paper
Musée du Louvre

Jean Valade
Portrait of Madame Théodore Lacroix with her Daughter
1775
pastel on paper
Musée du Louvre

Claude Bornet
Portrait of violinist Jacques Gosseaume
1763
pastel on paper
Musée du Louvre

Claude Bornet
Portrait of Madame Jean-Charles Gosseaume
(mother of Jacques Gosseaume)
1763
pastel on paper
Musée du Louvre

"Everyone has a crayon in his hand – as with all that is fashionable, the public has embraced it with a frenzy," Étienne La Font de Saint-Yenne wrote in August 1746 in a review of the Salon paintings on display at the Musée du Louvre in Paris.  Indeed, by the mid-eighteenth century pastel had reached an unprecedented level of acclaim as an artistic medium.  It was appreciated for its stylistic diversity, the naturalism it evoked, its strength of color, and its suitability for informal portraits, the subject matter for which it was most frequently employed.  Many material and practical factors also contributed to this resounding reception: the distinctive surface light and brilliant, nonyellowing colors of pastel portraits, the simplicity of the tools they required, the relative speed with which they could be executed, and their agreeable scale all underlay the ubiquitous demand for these likenesses.  And each of these features was inseparably tied to the dustlike nature of pastel – powdered pigment formed into small sticks of opaque dry color – which in turn dictated the distinctive palette and techniques of the medium as well as the supports on which the fragile material was applied and the protection given its surface."

"That pastel flourished in the eighteenth century must be ascribed not only to its aesthetic desirability but to the emergence of a prosperous buying public, a cultural climate that encouraged technology and innovation, and a burgeoning trade in artists' materials, notably crayons, paper, glass, and fixatives.  During the reign of Louis XIV (1643-1715) pastel had been employed for grand royal portraits, but in the early 1720s a shift occurred, sparked by the intimate crayon likenesses introduced by Rosalba Carriera during her brief sojourn in Paris in 1720-21.  The smaller works Carriera inspired suited the taste and elegant decor of the new aristocracy."

"Perhaps the most fundamental material factor that accounted for the widespread popularity of portraits in pastel was the increased availability of ready-made crayons.  As famed Dutch scientist Christiaan Huygens noted in a letter of May 30, 1663, and French painter and theoretician Roger de Piles remarked in his Premiers éléments de la peinture pratique in 1684, it was possible to purchase ready-made crayons in the 1660s.  Their commercial production was limited, however.  By the early decades of the eighteenth century, trade in crayons had proliferated.  As pastelists steadily gained in stature and dissociated themselves from the mechanical tasks of their métier, the fabrication of the colors, once carried out in the ateliers for the artists' own use, was handed over to independent artisans.  Responding to both artists' and sitters' desire for portraits in pastel that emulated oil paintings, specialist pastel makers producing an ever broadening palette of crayons established themselves in cities across Europe."

"Advances in glass technology also helped fuel the demand for portraits in dry color.  Although they were never executed on panel or directly on canvas, works in pastel were regarded as a type of painting.  The need to protect these powdery surfaces, however, had limited their dimensions to the small size (rarely exceeding 29 by 17 inches) of the sheets cut from hand-blown crown glass.  During the late 1680s a pouring process developed by the French royal glassworks (established in 1665 as one of the economic reforms of Louis XIV's minister of finance, Jean Baptiste Colbert) enabled the manufacture of clear cast plate glass measuring more than 60 by 40 inches, allowing pastel portraits to be executed on the same scale as those in oil.  The luxury implied by the costly glazing made pastels viable alternatives to easel paintings and well suited to display the wealth and prestige of their owners." 

– Marjorie Shelley, from an essay in Pastel Portraits: Images of 18th-Century Europe (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2011)

Gabriel de Saint-Aubin - Rococo Sketches at the Louvre

Gabriel de Saint-Aubin
Sheet of Studies
ca. 1760-78
drawing, with watercolor
Musée du Louvre

Gabriel de Saint-Aubin
Sheet of Studies
ca. 1760-78
drawing, with watercolor
Musée du Louvre

Gabriel de Saint-Aubin
Sheet of Studies
ca. 1760-78
drawing, with watercolor
Musée du Louvre

Gabriel de Saint-Aubin
Sheet of Studies
ca. 1760-78
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Gabriel de Saint-Aubin
Sheet of Studies
ca. 1760-78
drawing, with watercolor
Musée du Louvre

Gabriel de Saint-Aubin
Sheet of Studies
ca. 1760-78
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Gabriel de Saint-Aubin
Sheet of Studies
ca. 1760-78
drawing, with watercolor
Musée du Louvre

Gabriel de Saint-Aubin
Sheet of Studies
ca. 1760-78
drawing, with watercolor
Musée du Louvre

Gabriel de Saint-Aubin
Sheet of Studies
ca. 1760-78
drawing, with watercolor
Musée du Louvre

Gabriel de Saint-Aubin
Auction of Paintings
1776
drawing, with watercolor
Musée du Louvre

Gabriel de Saint-Aubin
Death of the Dauphin, son of Louis XV
1765
drawing, with watercolor
Musée du Louvre

Gabriel de Saint-Aubin
Hercules supporting a Coronet
(design for a ceremonial hanging)
1760
drawing, with watercolor
Musée du Louvre

Gabriel de Saint-Aubin
Allegory in Honor of Louis XVI
ca. 1775
drawing, with watercolor
Musée du Louvre

Gabriel de Saint-Aubin
Allegory of History
1767
drawing, with watercolor
Musée du Louvre

Gabriel de Saint-Aubin
The Artist painting an Allegory of Justice
ca. 1770
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Justice

Mais toi, mais le désert! étends plus bas

Tes nappes ténébreuses. 

Insinue dans ce coeur pour qu'il ne cesse pas

Ton silence comme une cause fabuleuse.

Viens. Ici s'interrompt une pensée, 

Ici n'a plus de route un beau pays.

Avance sur le bord de cette aube glacée

Que to donne en partage un soleil ennemi.

Et chante. C'est pleurer deux fois ce que tu pleures

Si tu oses chanter par grand refus.

Souris, et chante. Il a besoin que tu demeures,

Sombre lumière, sur les eaux de ce qu'il fut. 

– Yves Bonnefoy (1962)

Justice

But you, but the wilderness! Spread lower

Your surface of darkness.

Work into this heart so that it will not stop

Your silence like a legendary cause.

Come. Here a thought breaks off.

Here a beautiful country runs out of roads. 

Go forward on the rim of that frozen dawn

Which gives you an enemy sun as your share.

And sing. You lament twice over what you lament

If you dare sing by great refusals.

Smile, and sing. He needs your presence,

Dark light, on the waters of what he was.

– translation by Galway Kinnell (1962)

Louvre - Unassigned French Study Drawings - 17th Century

Anonymous French Artist
Le Bassin d'Apollon, Versailles
17th century
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Anonymous French Artist
Louis XIV with Courtiers
17th century
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Anonymous French Artist
Courtier of Louis XIV
17th century
drawing, with watercolor
Musée du Louvre

Anonymous French Artist
Royal Nurses at the Court of Louis XIV
17th century
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Anonymous French Artist
Fall of Phaethon
17th century
drawing, with watercolor
(study for ceiling)
Musée du Louvre

Anonymous French Artist
Creation of Adam
17th century
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Anonymous French Artist
Apollo and Marsyas
17th century
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Anonymous French Artist
The Lamentation
17th century
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Anonymous French Artist
Apostle Paul on Malta shaking off Viper into Flames
17th century
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Anonymous French Artist
Moses trampling Pharaoh's Crown
17th century
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Anonymous French Artist
St Sebastian tended by St Irene
17th century
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Anonymous French Artist
St Sebastian tended by St Irene
17th century
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Anonymous French Artist
St Jerome kneeling before the Virgin and Child
17th century
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Anonymous French Artist
Landscape with Rocks
17th century
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Anonymous French Artist
Sheet of Studies
17th century
drawing
Musée du Louvre

from The Little Walls Before China

           A courtier speaks to Ch'in Shih-huang-ti, ca. 210 B.C.

Highness, the former walls were helpless. They

stood alone in the middle of small fields

protecting nothing. A single peasant's holding

engulfed each one as it ran briefly, straight

from noplace off to noplace, with ruinous steps

of broken stone at both ends. Only head-high,

without the towers, gates and towns of your great wall,

they stuck where they were, never rising over hills

or curving through valleys: nothing but shoddy masonry

and a mystery: who built them, how long ago,

what for? They seemed to have no role but balking

the reaper and the ox; their bases made

islands in the flashing scythe-strokes, where wild flowers

and shrubs sprouted.

                             So all the people praise you

for burying such walls and their memory

in your vast one, which joins them, stretching far

beyond where they once crumbled to hold your Empire:

a wall which therefore can never have an end

but has to go on extending itself forever.

How useful, how cogent your wall is: a pale

for the civilized, a dike against the wild people

outside, who trade their quiet human blood

for the rage of gods, tearing men to pieces,

throwing them, watching them fall. In burying

those little walls, Lord, you have covered our shame

at our ancestors, best forgotten, whose mighty works

were so pointless, or so pitiably useless. 

Was all their effort so that daisies could grow in fissures?

So that some human work would rise over the flats

and weather till it seemed not human? Only

so that something of ours could be like trees and rocks:

docile-seeming, yet sullenly opposed

to use, and when compelled, only half serving,

reserving from the functions that we give them

a secret and idle self. The peasants would make

lean-tos for cattle against those walls: they served

for this alone.

– A.F. Moritz (1999)