Expressive Faces (Painted)

Wybrand de Geest
Portrait of an Officer
ca. 1625-35
oil on panel
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun
Julie Le Brun looking in a Mirror
1787
oil on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

John Bellany
My Father
1966
oil on board
Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh

Anthony van Dyck
Portrait of an Old Woman
1618
oil on panel
Gemäldegalerie, Dresden

Annibale Carracci
Portrait of Lute-Player Giulio Mascheroni
ca. 1593-94
oil on canvas
Gemäldegalerie, Dresden

Gilbert Stuart
Portrait of Marianne Ashley Walker
1799
oil on canvas
Indianapolis Museum of Art

John Singleton Copley
Portrait of Nathaniel Hurd
ca. 1765
oil on canvas
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio

John Singer Sargent
Portrait of Miss Beatrice Townsend
1882
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Natalie Dower
Portrait of Patrick George
1958
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

George Romney
Portrait of Mrs Davies Davenport
ca. 1782-84
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Thomas Eakins
Study of the Head of Robert C.V. Meyers
1875
oil on paper, mounted on panel
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Rembrandt
Man with a Sheet of Music
1633
oil on panel
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Christian Krohg
Sick Girl
1881
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Norway, Oslo

Anonymous Italian Artist
Portrait of Alessandro Alberti, with Page
ca. 1544-45
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

William Orpen
Anita
1905
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

Titian
Portrait of Cardinal Pietro Bembo
ca. 1539-40
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Before the Concert

If I could lay hold

on this glass of water and the stable

transparency of its contents

that contain an image of the table

on which it stands – under the glass

a draped, red cloth –

then I should possess not only

that coolness and that red, but both

of the foreshortened lutes

waiting to make music there,

under a curving window

on either side of the reflected score,

but the lutenist

(whose throat is sore today)

lowers a Brobdingnagian hand

and takes away

this universe, and I

watch it wash and disappear

over the threshold of his dryness,

until it's clear –

those minute instruments, 

their world quicksilvering into water

under a melting window – 

that is a room I shall never enter.

– Charles Tomlinson (1990)

French Painters Idealizing Children and Parents

Anonymous French Artist
Two Girls with a Basket of Roses
1675
oil on canvas
Musée des Augustins de Toulouse

François de Troy
Portrait of Prince James Francis Edward Stuart
(later known as the Old Pretender)
ca. 1698
oil on canvas
Traquair House, Innerleithen, Scotland

Jean-Marc Nattier
Portrait of Madame Crozat de Thiers
and her Daughter
1733
oil on canvas
 Indianapolis Museum of Art

Robert Tournières
Portrait of Monsieur de Saint-Cannat and his Sons
ca. 1740
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Marseille

François Boucher
Conspiracy of Cupids
ca. 1740-50
oil on canvas
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio

François Boucher
Cupids Dancing
ca. 1740-50
oil on canvas
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio

Jean-Marc Nattier
Portrait of Marie Zéphirine de France
ca. 1751
oil on canvas
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence

François Gérard
Portrait of painter Jean-Baptiste Isabey
with his daughter Alexandrine
1795
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Robert Lefèvre
Portrait of Mother and Son
ca. 1810
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Marseille

Jean-Léon Gérôme
Two Peasant Women with a Baby
1849
oil on canvas
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Jean-Léon Gérôme
Two Peasant Women with a Baby (detail)
1849
oil on canvas
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Pierre Puvis de Chavannes
Young Mother
1887
oil on canvas
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

William Adolphe Bouguereau
Cupid with Butterfly
1891
oil on canvas
Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio

Maurice Denis
The Crown of Daisies
ca. 1905-1906
oil on canvas
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Carolus-Duran
Portrait of Michel, son of Georges Feydeau
1905
oil on canvas
Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille

Kore in Hades

I came, yes, dear, dear

Mother, for you I came, so I remember, 

To lie in your warm

Bed, to watch the wonder flame

Burning golden gentle and bright the light of the living.

With you I ran

To see the roadside green

Leaves and small cool bindweed flowers

Living rejoicing to proclaim

We are, we are manifold, in multitude

We come, we are near and far,

Past and future innumerable we are yours

We are you. I listened

To the sweet bird whose song is for ever,

I was the little girl of the one mother.

World you wove me to please a child

Yet its texture was thinner than light, fleeter

Than flame that burned while it seemed

Leaves and flowers and garden world without end.

Bright those faces closed and were over.

Here and now is over, the garden

Lost from time, its sun and moon

Mother, daughter, daughter, mother, never

Is come; there is nothing, nothing for ever. 

– Kathleen Raine (1961)

Family Groupings by British Painters

follower of George Jamesone
George Jamesone with his Wife and their Child
ca. 1640
oil on canvas
National Trust, Fyvie Castle, Aberdeenshire, Scotland

Thomas Hudson
Mrs Bowles, wife of Canon Bowles, and her Child
ca. 1740
oil on canvas
The Wilson, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire

William Beechey
Mr and Mrs John Custance of Norwich with the daughter Frances
ca. 1786
oil on canvas
Norfolk Museums

David Wilkie
William Chalmers Bethune, his wife Isobel Morison
and their daughter Isabella Maxwell Morison
1804
oil on canvas
Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh

John Hayter
Lady Augusta FitzClarence Kennedy-Erskine
(natural daughter of King William IV) with her Children
ca. 1830
oil on canvas
National Trust, House of Dun, Scotland

from A Prayer For My Daughter

May she be granted beauty and yet not
Beauty to make a stranger's eye distraught,
Or hers before a looking-glass, for such,
Being made beautiful overmuch,
Consider beauty a sufficient end,
Lose natural kindness and maybe
The heart-revealing intimacy
That chooses right, and never find a friend.

– William Butler Yeats (1919)

George Hayter
Elizabeth Stuart, Lady Stuart de Rothesay
with her daughters Charlotte and Louisa
1830-31
oil on canvas
Government Art Collection, London

William Dyce
John Small and his Son
ca. 1835
oil on canvas
University of Edinburgh

Theodor von Holst
Gustav von Holst and his brother Theodor
ca. 1835
oil on canvas
The Wilson, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire

Charles Baxter
The Sisters
ca. 1840-50
oil on canvas
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Charles West Cope
The Young Mother
1845
oil on panel
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Frederic Leighton
Mother and Child
1865
oil on canvas
Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery, Lancashire

George Elgar Hicks
Seated Woman with two Children
1879
oil on card (sketch)
Southampton City Art Gallery

George Dunlop Leslie
Alice in Wonderland
ca. 1879
oil on canvas
Brighton and Hove Museums and Art Galleries

Sydney Prior Hall
The Three Daughters of the Prince and Princess of Wales
1883
oil on canvas
National Portrait Gallery, London

John Collier
The Three Daughters of William Reed
1886
oil on canvas
Williamson Art Gallery and Museum, Birkenhead, Merseyside

Icarus

Giulio Romano
Daedalus and Icarus
ca. 1530-35
drawing
Art Institute of Chicago

Giovanni da Castelbolognese
Fall of Icarus
ca. 1540-45
rock crystal intaglio
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Anonymous Italian Maker
Fall of Icarus
ca. 1580-1620
onyx cameo
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Hendrik Goltzius after Cornelis van Haarlem
Fall of Icarus
ca. 1588
engraving
Teylers Museum, Haarlem

Anthony van Dyck
Daedalus and Icarus
ca. 1615-25
oil on canvas
Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto

Simon Vouet
Daedalus and Icarus
ca. 1625
oil on canvas
Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut

Andrea Sacchi
Daedalus and Icarus
ca. 1645
oil on canvas
Musei di Strada Nuova, Genoa

Charles Le Brun
Daedalus and Icarus
ca. 1664-65
oil on canvas
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

from The Metamorphoses

Daedalus now had come to detest his protracted exile
in Crete and was longing to visit his native country again,
but his way was barred by the sea. 'King Minos can block my escape
by land or water,' he sighed. 'The air, at least, is still open;
my path lies there. He is lord of the world, but not lord of the sky.'
So saying, he put his mind to techniques unexplored before
and altered the laws of nature. He carefully layered some feathers,
the smallest to start with, the shorter positioned next to the longer –
you'd think they had grown like that – as sometimes rustic panpipes
rise in a gradual slope with their reeds of unequal length;
and then he bound them with twine in the middle and wax at the bottom.
This neatly compacted plumage he curved in a gentle camber
to imitate real birds' wings. His young son Icarus, standing
beside him and little aware of the threat to himself he was touching,
smiled as he caught at the feathers fluttering in the breeze;
and now and again he would carelessly soften the yellow wax
with his thumb, enjoying his game as a meddled and interfered
with his father's wonderful work. But soon the finishing touches
were deftly laid, and Daedalus balanced his aged body
on both of his wings, then beat at the air and hovered suspended.
Next he instructed his son: 'Now, Icarus, listen carefully!
Keep to the middle way. If you fly too low, the water
will clog your wings; if you fly too high, they'll be scorched by fire.
Fly between sea and sun. No need to determine your course
by Boötes, the Bear, or Orion's naked sword, like a sailor.
Simply follow my lead.' As he gave his pupil his flying
orders, he fitted the wings on the boy's inexperienced shoulders;
and while he did it the old man's cheeks were wet with his tears
and his hands were trembling in fatherly fear."

– Ovid (8 AD), translated by David Raeburn (2004)

Joost de Momper the Younger
Landscape with the Fall of Icarus
before 1635
oil on panel
Nationalmuseum, Stockholm

Francesco Allegrini
Fall of Icarus
before 1679
oil on paper, mounted on panel
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Merry-Joseph Blondel
Fall of Icarus
1819
ceiling painting
Rotonde d'Apollon, Louvre

Abraham Bloemaert
Lucht
(Fall of Icarus)
ca. 1632
drawing
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Stefano della Bella
Icarus and Daedalus
(from Jeu de Mythologie)
1644
etching
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Frans Xaver Wagenschön
Daedalus forming the wings of Icarus with melted wax
before 1790
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Anonymous Sculptor
Daedalus and Icarus
(modern forgery of Roman relief)
undated
marble
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York