Broad Brims

Louise Breslau
Portrait of Gabriel Yturri
(companion of Robert de Montesquiou)
1904
pastel on paper
Musée Lambinet, Versailles

Richard Cosway
Miniature Portrait of the Prince of Wales
1787
watercolor on ivory
Huntington Library and Art Museum,
San-Marino, California

Baron Adolf De Meyer
Mrs Brown Potter
1908
photogravure
Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Einar Forseth
Portrait of sculptor Elna Kulle Hedvall
1914
oil on panel
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Henry Fuseli 
Portrait of Sophia Fuseli
ca. 1792-95
drawing, with added watercolor
Kunsthaus Zürich

Jacob Jordaens
Portrait of a Young Woman
ca. 1635-40
drawing, with added watercolor
Morgan Library, New York

Erik Kinell
Self Portrait
ca. 1955
drawing
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Nikos Lytras
The Straw Hat
ca. 1925
oil on canvas
National Gallery, Athens

Henri Martin
Portrait of politician Albert Sarraut
ca. 1897-98
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Carcassonne

Conrat Meit
Philibert le Beau, Duke of Savoy
(posthumous portrait bust)
ca. 1515-20
fruitwood
Bode Museum, Berlin

Frederic Remington
Remington in Cuba  for Collier's Weekly
1899
lithograph (poster)
Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Ørnulf Salicath
Portrait of Trygve Frølich
1915
oil on canvas
Lillehammer Kunstmuseum, Norway

Karl Struss
Ethel Prague, Long Island
ca. 1910
autochrome
Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Michiel Sweerts
Boy with a Hat
ca. 1655-56
oil on canvas
Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut

Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun
Portrait of Antoinette-Élisabeth-Marie d'Aguesseau,
comtesse de Ségur
1785
oil on canvas
Château de Versailles

Harald Sohlberg
Eugenie
1892
drawing
Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo

Herald:

[Turning towards the palace] Hail, palace, beloved home of my kings, and august seats, and you deities who face the sun!* Let these eyes of yours be bright, if they ever have been before, as you welcome your king home in glory at long last; for he has come, bringing light out of darkness to you and to all these people – King Agamemnon!  [Addressing the people of Argos] Give him a noble welcome, for that is truly proper, when he has dug up Troy with the mattock of Zeus the Avenger, with which the ground has been worked over and the seed of the whole country destroyed.  Such is the yoke that has been cast upon Troy by the son of Atreus, our senior king, who has come home a happy man!  He deserves to be honoured above all other mortals now alive: neither Paris, nor the city that has paid its due together with him, can boast that what they did was greater than what they have suffered.  Having been found guilty of abduction and theft, he has both lost his booty and caused his father's house to be mown down to the very ground in utter destruction: the family of Priam have paid double for their crime. 

– Aeschylus, from Agamemnon (458 BC), translated by Alan H. Sommerstein (2008)

*divinities who had shrines in front of the entrance to a building; perhaps the term was originally applied to shrines in front of temples (whose entrances normally faced the rising sun) and later generalized.  In front of Agamemnon's palace, as in front of many real Athenian homes, there is certainly a shrine of Apollo Agyieus and probably an image of Hermes; we do not know whether there are also shrines of one or more other deities.

Acid Tones - II

Rufino Tamayo
Profile of a Man
1964
lithograph
Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Per Krohg
Woman in Grey with Gold
1919
oil on canvas
Nordnorsk Kunstmuseum, Tromsø

Anonymous French Artist
Shelves with Art Supplies
19th century
oil on canvas
Musée de la Chartreuse, Douai

Anonymous American Artist
Western Insurance Co. of Buffalo
ca. 1866-71
chromolithograph
Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Jean-François Bony
Fruit and Flowers
1815
oil on canvas
Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille

Armand Cambon
Galel
ca. 1864
oil on canvas
Musée Ingres Bourdelle, Montauban

William Christenberry
Grave with Egg-Carton Cross
Hale County
1975
C-print
Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Gustaf Wernersson Cronquist
Untitled (Peaches)
ca. 1920
autochrome
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Paul-Elie Gernez
Nu au Coquillage
1934
pastel on paper
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Valenciennes

Auguste Herbin
Still Life with Coffee-Grinder
ca. 1912-13
watercolor on paper
Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
Berlin Street Scene
ca. 1914
drawing (colored chalks)
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Maximilien Luce
Bread Line
ca. 1918
oil on panel
Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

Marc Lafargue
Small Library
ca. 1920-25
oil on cardboard
Musée des Augustins de Toulouse

Master of Grossgmain
Death of the Virgin
ca. 1480
oil on panel
(altarpiece fragment)
Belvedere Museum, Vienna

Albert Marquet
Apples on a Plate
ca. 1910
oil on canvas
Musée de Grenoble

Stephan Bundi
Tartuffe
2008
screenprint (poster)
Museum Folkwang, Essen

Chorus:

We shall soon know about the beacon-watches and fire-relays of the traveling light-signals, whether they are indeed telling the truth or whether the coming of this joyful light has beguiled our minds like a dream.  I see, coming here from the seashore, a herald, his head shaded with a wreath of olive; and the thirsty dust, the sister and neighbour of mud, testifies to me that he will not signal voicelessly with fire-smoke, kindling a flame with mountain timber, but will say something that will either more definitely proclaim rejoicing for us, or – but I abhor speaking of the opposite alternative: may this be a happy addition to the apparently happy news already come – and whoever expresses his prayer for this city differently, may he himself reap the fruit of his mind's perversity!

Enter Herald. He falls down and kisses the ground.

Hail, soil of my fathers, land of Argos!  On this day, after nearly ten years, I have come back to you, achieving one of my hopes, after the shipwreck of so many: for I never thought that I would die in this Argive land and be able to share my beloved family tomb.  Now greeting to my land, [raising his hands to sun and sky] greeting to the light of the sun and to Zeus supreme over the land, to the Pythian lord – and please no longer shoot the shafts of your bow at us; you showed us quite enough hostility by the Scamander; but now, lord Apollo, become a saviour and a healer.  And I address all the Assembled Gods, and especially the protector of my own office, Hermes, the Herald whom heralds love and revere, and the heroes who sent us forth, praying that they may receive back with favour the army, or what the war has spared of it.  

– Aeschylus, from Agamemnon (458 BC), translated by Alan H. Sommerstein (2008)

Imitation Sunlight - II

Anna Ancher
Interior with the artist's mother reading
1910
oil on canvas
Skagens Museum, Denmark

Pierre Bonnard
Before the window in Grand-Lemps
1923
oil on panel
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon

Carl Gustav Carus
Balcony in Naples
ca. 1829-30
oil on canvas
Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Franz Ludwig Catel
Portrait of Karl Friedrich Schinkel in Naples
1824
oil on canvas
Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Wilhelm Gail
Foscari Loggia in the Palazzo Ducale, Venice
1834
oil on canvas
Bildgalerie von Sanssouci, Potsdam

Wilhelm von Gegerfelt
Farm at Balingsta
1891
oil on panel
Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde, Stockholm

Johann Erdmann Hummel
Granite Basin in the Lustgarten, Berlin
1831
oil on canvas
Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

 

Peder Severin Krøyer
Self Portrait
1888
oil on canvas
Stavanger Kunstmuseum, Norway

Gotthardt Kuehl
Garden Room
ca. 1895-1900
oil on canvas
Galerie Neue Meister (Albertinum), Dresden

Louis Lozowick
Checkerboard under the El
1926
lithograph
Addison Gallery of American Art,
Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts

Abraham van Strij
The Drawing Lesson
ca. 1800
oil on canvas
Dordrechts Museum, Netherlands

Henry van de Velde
Woman reading in the sun (Jeanne Biart)
1892
pastel on paper
Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

Frederik Vermehren
Courtyard, Kongens Nytorv, Copenhagen
1845
oil on canvas
Hirschsprung Collection, Copenhagen

Édouard Vuillard
Boulevard des Batignolles
ca. 1910
oil on cardboard
Landesmuseum, Hannover

Camille Pissarro
Corner of the Garden, Éragny
1897
oil on canvas
Ordrupgaard Art Museum, Copenhagen

Henri Matisse
Street in Arcueil
ca. 1903-1904
oil on canvas
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Chorus:

There is much, at any rate, that strikes deep into the soul:

one knows the men one sent off,

but instead of human beings

urns and ashes arrive back

at each man's home.

Ares, the moneychanger of bodies,

holding his scales in the battle of spears,

sends back from Ilium to their dear ones

heavy dust that has been through the fire,

to be sadly wept over,

filling easily-stowed urns

with ash given in exchange for men.

And they lament, and praise this man

as one expert in battle,

that man as having fallen nobly amid the slaughter –

"because of someone else's wife".

That is what they are snarling, under their breath,

and grief steals over them, mixed with resentment

against the chief prosecutors, the Atreidae.

And over there, around the city wall,

the men in their beauty occupy 

sepulchres in the land of Ilium:

the enemy's soil covers its conquerors. 

– Aeschylus, from Agamemnon (458 BC), translated by Alan H. Sommerstein (2008)

Writerly People

Boris Artzybasheff
Arnold Toynbee
1947
gouache on board
(commissioned by Time magazine)
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

René Bouché
W.H. Auden
1962
oil on canvas
(commissioned by Time magazine)
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Boris Chaliapin
Phyllis McGinley
1965
oil on canvas
(commissioned by Time magazine)
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Boris Chaliapin
Rebecca West
1947
gouache on board
(commissioned by Time magazine)
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

James Chapin
Boris Pasternak
1958
oil on panel
(commissioned by Time magazine)
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

John Collier
Karl Marx
1977
pastel on paper
(commissioned by Time magazine)
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Mirko Ilic
Anatoly Rybakov
1988
screenprint
(commissioned by Time magazine)
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Alex Katz
John Updike
1982
oil on canvas
(commissioned by Time magazine)
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Douglas Kirkland
Erma Bombeck
1984
C-print
(commissioned by Time magazine)
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

R.B. Kitaj
George Orwell
1983
pastel on paper
(commissioned by Time magazine)
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Henry Koerner
Sylvia Porter
1960
oil on canvas
(commissioned by Time magazine)
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

James Marsh
P.D. James
1986
acrylic on canvas
(commissioned by Time magazine)
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Sidney Nolan
Robert Lowell
1967
watercolor and crayon on paper
(commissioned by Time magazine)
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Christopher Ogden
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
1974
C-print
(commissioned by Time magazine)
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Robert Vickrey
J.D. Salinger
1961
gouache on board
(commissioned by Time magazine)
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Edward Weston
Robinson Jeffers
1932
photogravure
(commissioned by Time magazine)
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Samuel Woolf
Thomas Mann
1934
charcoal on paper
(commissioned by Time magazine)
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

from Ibis

[A Curse]

Let th'earth deny thee fruit, and stream

    his waters holde from thee:

Let every winde deny fitte blastes

    for thy commoditie.

Let not the Sun shine bright on thee,

    nor glistering Moone by night:

And of thy eyes let glimsing Starres

    forsake the wished sight.

Let not the fire graunt thee his heate,

    nor Ayre humiditie:

Let neither earth nor yet the Sea

    free passage grant to thee.

That banyshed and poore thou mayst

    straunge houses seek in vayne:

That craving too, with trembling voice

    small almes mayst obtaine.

That neither sound of body, nor 

    thy mynde in perfect plight:

This night be worse than passed day,

    and next day than this night. 

That thou mayst still be pitifull,

    but pitied of none:

And that no man nor woman may

    for thy mischaunces mone.

– Ovid (43 BC-AD 17), translated by Thomas Underdown (1569)