Deportment

Jan de Beer
St Jerome in a Landscape
ca. 1520-25
oil on panel
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Anthonie Blocklandt
Adoration of the Shepherds
ca. 1560-70
oil on panel
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Francesco Bassano the Younger
Study of Seated Woman
ca. 1580
drawing
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Reims

Giovanni Baglione
Virgin and Child with Angel
ca. 1598
drawing
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Abraham Bosse
Engraving Workshop
1642
etching
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Sébastien Bourdon
Holy Family with St Elizabeth and young St John the Baptist
ca. 1650
oil on canvas
Musée Magnin, Dijon

Salomon de Bray
St Helena with the True Cross
ca. 1650-60
oil on canvas
Národní Galerie, Prague

Gerard ter Borch the Younger
Woman with Wine Glass
ca. 1656-57
oil on canvas
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Samuel Bottschild
Seated Oriental in Roundel
ca. 1675
drawing
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden

François Boucher
Two Studies of a Youth seated on a Bank
1735
etching
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

Adam von Bartsch after Palma il Giovane
St John the Evangelist on Patmos
1782
etching and aquatint
Cabinet d'Arts Graphiques des Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

Joseph Boze
Portrait of Jean-Paul Marat
ca. 1793
oil on canvas
Musée Carnavalet, Paris

Giuseppe Bernardino Bison
Courtiers conversing in a Palace Courtyard
ca. 1820
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Mathieu Ignace van Brée
Death in 1640 of Peter Paul Rubens
1827
oil on canvas
Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp

Cecilia Beaux
Henry James
1911
drawing
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Richard Benson
Stones of Newport
1977-78
palladium print
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Richard Avedon
Oscar De La Hoya, Phoenix
1993
gelatin silver print
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

A Farewell

'And if I did, what then?

        Are you aggrieved therefore?

The sea hath fish for every man

        And what would you have more?'

Thus did my mistress once

        Amaze my mind with doubt;

And popped a question for the nonce,

        To beat my brains about.

Whereto I thus replied:

        'Each fisherman can wish

That all the seas at every tide

        Were his alone to fish.

'And so did I, in vain,

        But since it may not be,

Let such fish there as find the gain,

        And leave the loss for me.

'And with such luck and loss

        I will content myself,

Till tides of turning time may toss

        Such fishers on the shelf.

'And when they stick on sands,

        That every man may see,

Then will I laugh and clap my hands,

        As they do now at me.'

– George Gascoigne (1573)

Obvious

Nathan Oliveira
White Lady
1964
lithograph
Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Matthias Oesterreich after Giovanni Battista Internari
Allegorical Figure with Bird and Anchor
1749
etching
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wulfenbüttel

Jean-Baptiste Oudry
Portrait of a Pilgrim
1730
oil on canvas
National Museum, Warsaw

Walter Ophey
Floral Still Life
ca. 1910
oil on canvas
Von der Heydt Museum, Wuppertal

Gilles-Marie Oppenord
Design for Fountain
before 1742
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Jan van Ossenbeck
Cephalus and Procris
ca. 1655-60
engraving
Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen

Adriaen van Ostade
Painter's Studio
ca. 1649
drawing
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Peter Overadt (publisher)
Mary Magdalen in her Finery
ca. 1610
engraving
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wulfenbüttel

Jürgen Ovens
Portrait of a Nobleman
ca. 1640-50
drawing
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Girolamo Olgiati
The printer Aldus Manutius of Venice
(posthumous portrait)
1568
engraving
Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, Leipzig

Friedrich Oelenhainz
Portrait of Johann Nepomuk
1770
oil on canvas
Belvedere Museum, Vienna

Maria van Oosterwyck
Floral Still Life
ca. 1685-90
oil on canvas
Deutsche Barockgalerie, Augsburg

Ortolano (Giovanni Battista Benvenuti)
Christ and the Woman taken in Adultery
ca. 1524-27
oil on panel
Courtauld Gallery, London

Peter Oliver
Women in a Landscape
ca. 1630
drawing
Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen

Georgius Jacobus Johannes van Os
Bouquet
ca. 1830
watercolor on paper
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Jean Osouf
Youth in the Catalan Resistance
ca. 1943-44
bronze
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Reims

That an immature boy should do despite to his insensible age carries more disgrace to the friend who tempts him than to himself, and for a grown-up youth to submit to sodomy, his season for which is past, is twice as disgraceful to him who consents as it is to his tempter.  But there is a time, Moeris, when it is no longer unseemly in the one, and not yet so in the other, as is the case with you and me at present. 

Who can tell if his beloved begins to pass his prime, if he is ever with him and never separated?  Who that pleased yesterday can fail to please to-day, and if he please now, what can befall him to make him displease to-morrow?

What a good goddess is that Nemesis, to avert whom, dreading her as she treadeth behind us, we spit in our bosom!  Thou didst not see her at thy heels, but didst think that for ever thou shouldst posses thy grudging beauty.  Now it has perished utterly; the very wrathful goddess has come, and we, thy servants, now pass thee by.  

If beauty grows old, give me of it ere it depart; but if it remains with thee, why fear to give what shall remain thine?

A pair of brothers love me.  I know not which of them I should decide to take for my master, for I love them both.  One goes away from me and the other approaches.  The best of the one is his presence, the best of the other my desire for him in his absence.

Theodorus, as once Idomeneus brought from Crete to Troy Meriones to be his squire, such a dexterous friend have I in thee; for Meriones was in some things his servant, in others his minion.  And do thou, too, all day go about the business of my life, but at night, by Heaven, let us essay Meriones.

 – from Book XII (Strato's Musa Puerilis) in the Greek Anthology, translated and edited by W.R. Paton (1917)

Harry Bowden

Harry Bowden
Study for Williamsburg Mural
ca. 1936
gouache on paper
Archives of American Art, Washington DC

Harry Bowden
Suggestion for Mural
ca. 1936
gouache on paper
Archives of American Art, Washington DC

Harry Bowden
Untitled
ca. 1936-37
oil on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum,
Washington DC

Harry Bowden
Number 47 (Untitled Abstraction)
ca. 1936-37
oil on board
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Harry Bowden
Self Portrait
1943
gelatin silver print
Archives of American Art, Washington DC

Harry Bowden
Willem de Kooning in the Studio
1946
gelatin silver print
Archives of American Art, Washington DC

Harry Bowden
Willem de Kooning in the Studio
1946
gelatin silver print
Archives of American Art, Washington DC-

Harry Bowden
Ed Fortane painting, Sausalito
1946
gelatin silver print
Archives of American Art, Washington DC

Harry Bowden
Jackson Pollock's Studio
1949
gelatin silver print
Archives of American Art, Washington DC

Harry Bowden
Self Portrait
ca. 1950
gelatin silver print
Archives of American Art, Washington DC

Harry Bowden
Brett Weston
1951
gelatin silver print
Archives of American Art, Washington DC

Harry Bowden
Edward Weston, Pt Lobos Studio
1951
gelatin silver print
Archives of American Art, Washington DC

Harry Bowden
Robinson Jeffers, Tor House, Carmel
1955
gelatin silver print
Archives of American Art, Washington DC

Harry Bowden
Kenneth Rexroth with his Daughter
1955
gelatin silver print
Archives of American Art, Washington DC

Harry Bowden
The Grabhorns at the Grabhorn Press, San Francisco
1955
gelatin silver print
Archives of American Art, Washington DC

Harry Bowden
Ad Reinhardt posing in his Studio
1959
gelatin silver print
Archives of American Art, Washington DC

from Pharsalia

Wars worse then civill on Thessalian playnes,

And outrage strangling law and people strong,

We sing, whose conquering swords their own breasts launcht,

Armies alied, the kingdoms league uprooted,

Th'affrighted worlds force bent on publique spoile,

Trumpets, and drums like deadly threatning other,

Eagles alike displaide, darts answering darts. 

Romans, what madness, what huge lust of warre

Hath made Barbarians drunke with Latin bloud?

Now Babilon, (proud through our spoile) should stoop,

While slaughtred Crassus ghost walks unreveng'd,

Will ye wadge war, for which you shall not triumph?

Ay me, O what a world of land and sea,

Might they have won whom civil broiles have slaine,

As far as Titan springs where night dims heaven,

I to the Torrid Zone where midday burnes,

And where stiffe winter whom no spring resolves,

Fetters the Euxin sea, with chaines of yce:

Scythia and wilde Armenia had bin yoakt,

And they of Nilus mouth (if there live any.)

Roome if thou take delight in impious warre,

First conquer all the earth, then turne thy force

Against thy selfe: as yet thou wants not foes.

– Lucan (AD 39-65), translated by Christopher Marlowe (before 1593)

Pressmarks

Anonymous Printmaker
Pressmark of Peter Brubach – Frankfurt
1544
woodcut
(Janus Head)
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Anonymous Printmaker
Pressmark of Peter Brubach – Frankfurt
1562
woodcut and letterpress
(Janus Head)
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Anonymous Printmaker
Pressmark of Gabriel Cotier – Lyon
1562
woodcut
(Mercury)
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Anonymous Printmaker
Pressmark of Andreas Cratander – Basel
ca. 1525
woodcut
(Fortuna)
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Anonymous Printmaker
Pressmark of Nicolaus Episcopus – Basel
1564
woodcut and letterpress
(Stork, Sceptre, Hand, Cloud)
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Anonymous Printmaker
Pressmark of Sigmund Feyerabend – Frankfurt
1572
woodcut and letterpress
(Fame)
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Anonymous Printmaker
Pressmark of Sigmund Feyerabend – Frankfurt
ca. 1580
woodcut
(Fame)
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Anonymous Printmaker
Pressmark of Johann Froben – Basel
1518
woodcut
(Caduceus)
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Anonymous Printmaker
Colophon with Pressmark of Lucantonio Giunti – Venice
1495
woodcut and letterpress
(Fleur de Lys)
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wulfenbüttel

Anonymous Printmaker
Pressmark of Sebastian Gryphius – Lyon
1532
woodcut and letterpress
(Griffin)
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Vincent Le Sueur
Pressmark of Henri Albert Gosse – Geneva
1746
woodcut and letterpress
(Allegorical Scenes)
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel

Anonymous Printmaker
Pressmark of Jiří Melantrich – Prague
1564
woodcut and letterpress
(Coat of Arms)
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Anonymous Printmaker
Pressmark of Erhard Ratdolt – Augsburg
ca. 1485-90
color woodblock print and letterpress
(Mercury with Caduceus)
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Anonymous Printmaker
Pressmark of Giovanni Rossi – Bologna
1564
woodcut and letterpress
(Mercury on Globe)
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Anonymous Printmaker
Pressmark of Johannes Schott – Strasbourg
1512
woodcut and letterpress
(Dagger with Monogram)
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Anonymous Printmaker
Pressmark of Adriaan Vlacq –The Hague
1657
woodcut and letterpress
(Phoenix)
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Unhappy Christmas Tree

An old woman believes that her Christmas tree wants to get married.
Her caretaker says:
–No, it's just a tree. See? Come here! Feel it!
The old woman feels a branch.
–Oh, you're right, it is a tree.
But the old woman is still worried.
–But inside . . . inside, there is a woman who wants to come out and get married.
The old woman will not be convinced she is wrong. She sits for an hour staring at the tree.
After an hour, the caretaker says:
–Come on, don't worry. It's only a tree.
–But it's so sad, it's so sad for her . . . With those little things all over her . . . Are they little men?
–No, don't worry, they're not little men. Those are your ornaments. You've had them for years. Every year we take them out and hang them on the tree.
–But they're hurting her! They're pinching her! She just wants to come out and get married. 

– Lydia Davis, from Our Strangers: Stories (2023)

author's note: "The style and sensibility of "Unhappy Christmas Tree" benefit from the influence of Russell Edson, whose works have been excellent examples, over the years, of the very short and, sometimes, boldly absurd story."