To Read

Guido Reni
Young Woman Reading
before 1642
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Cornelis Norbertus Gijsbrechts
Trompe l'Oeil with Letter Rack and Music Book
1668
oil on canvas
Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen

Gilbert Stuart
Portrait of physician Benjamin Waterhouse
ca. 1776
oil on canvas
Redwood Library and Athenaeum, Newport, Rhode Island

Jean-Baptiste Louis Gros
Frédéric Bourgeois de Mercey reading a Letter
ca. 1850-60
daguerreotype
Bibliothèque nationale de France

George Reynolds
Man reading in Hammock
1888
etching
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Irving Ramsay Wiles
Woman Reading
1889
oil on canvas
Lyman Allyn Art Museum,
New London, Connecticut

Charles Noel Flagg
The Bookworm
1891
oil on canvas
Lyman Allyn Art Museum, New London, Connecticut

John Frederick Peto
In the Library
ca. 1894-1900
oil on canvas
Timken Museum of Art, San Diego

A revealing study – never yet undertaken – would document the tradition (extending back into the Renaissance) of depicting books in various states of neglect and abuse.  Still life is one genre where the sad evidence is abundant, but portraits and historiae are equally rich in examples.  Scholars of the European past stress the fact that printed books tended to be more costly and valuable in earlier than in later centuries, yet their presentation is consistently casual and apparently indifferent throughout – volumes heaped on the floor, tipping off desks, splayed open upside down with pages creased and torn, covers bending or broken.  Was it subliminal hostility between media?  Writing was forever claiming impertinently to explain Painting.  How could Painting retaliate, except to become the Slaughterhouse of Writing?

Bernard Hall
The Marble Staircase, Public Library
1925
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Charles Locke
The Reading Room
1931
lithograph
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Adrian John Lawlor
Reading
ca. 1938
oil on canvas
Heide Museum of Modern Art, Bulleen, Australia

Balthus (Balthasar Klossowski)
Sylvia Colle
1954
oil on canvas
Saint Louis Art Museum

Jacob Lawrence
The Library
1960
tempera on board
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Anselm Kiefer
The Book
1979-85
oil paint, lead, photographic paper, straw and textile fabric on canvas
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Howard Bond
Bookmark, East Pennard, England
1982
gelatin silver print
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Madonna Staunton
Dream Trolly
2013
artist's book on wooden platform with wheels
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Island Life, 1860

I

One day when she was rinsing clothes at the jetty

the chill of the sea rose up through her arms

and into her soul.

Her tears froze to a pair of spectacles. The island

gathered itself, its white grass bristling,

and the herring flag streamed in the depths of the sea.

II

The swarm of smallpox caught up with him

and settled on his face. 

He lies in bed, staring into the ceiling.

What huge effort to move through this silence.

The strain of this moment spreading out forever,

this moment's wound in its ever-widening pool. 

– Tomas Tranströmer (1931-2015), translated by Robin Robertson (2006)

Scenery

Francis Bacon
Landscape
1952
oil on canvas
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

Paul Bril (landscape) and Hans Rottenhammer (figures)
Rest on the Flight into Egypt
ca. 1595
oil on copper
(painted in Venice)
Národní Galerie, Prague

Giulio Campagnola
Saturn reclining in a Landscape
ca. 1505
engraving
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Jan van de Cappelle
Arcadian Landscape
ca. 1660
drawing
National Gallery, Athens

Gustave Courbet
Winter Landscape at Ornans
ca. 1865-70
oil on canvas
Von der Heydt Museum, Wuppertal

Johann Christoph Dietzsch
Trompe-l'oeil Landscape on Paper
tacked with Sealing-Wax to Panel
ca. 1740
gouache on paper
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Rudolf Junk
House in Landscape
1914
color woodblock print
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Paul Klee
Landscape of Bridges
1924
oil on canvas
Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe

Barend Cornelis Koekkoek
Landscape in the Black Forest
1841
oil on panel
Dordrechts Museum, Netherlands

Roy Lichtenstein
Landscape with Figures and Rainbow
1980
oil and acrylic on canvas
Museum Ludwig, Cologne

Pierre Magnan-Bernard
Landscape in Provence
1932
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Gaillac

Isaac de Moucheron
Arcadian Landscape with the Three Fates
ca. 1710
watercolor on paper
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Jean-Pierre Norblin
Aqueduct in Arcadia
1784
watercolor and gouache on paper
National Museum, Warsaw

Marco Ricci
Rocky Landscape with Penitents
ca. 1725-30
gouache on vellum
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Konstantin Rozhdestvensky
Supremacist Landscape
1935
oil on canvas
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Claude-Joseph Vernet
Landscape with Ruinous Castle
ca. 1770
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

And to me the imbecility of ancient times is not a little demonstrated also by this that followeth.  For before the Trojan war nothing appeareth to have been done by Greece in common, nor indeed was it, as I think, called all by that one name of Hellas; nor before the time of Hellen, the son of Deucalion, was there any such name at all.  But Pelasgicum (which was the rather extended) and the other parts, by regions, received their names from their own inhabitants.  But Hellen and his sons being strong in Phthiotis and called in for their aid into other cities, these cities because of their conversing with them, began more particularly to be called Hellenes; and yet could not that name of a long time after prevail upon them all.  This is conjectured principally out of Homer.  For though born long after the Trojan war, yet he gives them not anywhere their name in general, nor indeed to any but those that with Achilles came out of Phthiotis and were the first so called; but in his poems he mentions Danaans, Argives, and Achaeans.   Nor doth he likewise use the word barbarian; because the Grecians, as it seemeth unto me, were not yet distinguished by one common name of Hellenes, oppositely answerable unto them.  The Grecians then, neither as they had that name in particular by mutual intercourse, nor after, universally so termed, did ever before the Trojan war, for want of strength and correspondence, enter into any action with their forces joined.  And to that expedition they came together by the means of navigation, which the most part of Greece had now received.   

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

Untitled

Emily K. Herron
Untitled
before 1893
cyanotype
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia

Jay van Everen
Untitled
ca. 1920
hand-colored stencil-print
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Carl Holty
Untitled
1932
drawing
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Jean Hélion
Untitled
1939
watercolor, gouache and ink on paper
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Walter Isaacs
Untitled
ca. 1940-50
oil on paper
Tacoma Art Museum, Washington State

Hans Hofmann
Untitled
1942
ink and crayon on paper
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Donald Friend
Untitled
ca. 1943
watercolor, gouache and ink on paper
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Charles Howard
Untitled
1944
oil on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Adolph Gottlieb
Untitled
1946
watercolor on paper
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Herbert Ferber
Untitled
1970
screenprint
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Menashe Kadishman
Untitled
1970
screenprint
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Joe Furlonger
Untitled
1988
charcoal and colored chalk on paper
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Bruce Davidson
Untitled
1992
gelatin silver print
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Peter Fischli and David Weiss
Untitled
1994
carved and painted polyurethane
(assemblage of 164 trompe-l'œil objects)
Guggenheim Museum, New York

Laura Owens
Untitled
1994
oil and acrylic canvas
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Tom Friedman
Untitled
2001
chicken-wire and painted styrofoam balls
Guggenheim Museum, New York

from Arrival at Santos

Here is a coast; here is a harbor;

here, after a meager diet of horizon, is some scenery:

impractically shaped and – who knows? self-pitying mountains,

sad and harsh beneath their frivolous greenery,

with a little church on top of one. And warehouses,

some of them painted a feeble pink, or blue,

and some tall, uncertain palms. Oh, tourist,

is this how this country is going to answer you

and your immodest demands for a different world,

and a better life, and complete comprehension

of both at last, and immediately,

after eighteen days of suspension?

Finish your breakfast. The tender is coming,

a strange and ancient craft, flying a strange and brilliant rag.

So that's the flag. I never saw it before.

I somehow never thought of there being a flag,

but of course there was, all along.

– Elizabeth Bishop (1952)

Seasonal

Raphael
Young Man with an Apple
1504
oil on panel
Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence

Willem van Aelst
Still Life with Peaches
ca. 1657
oil on canvas
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Donato Creti
Sleeping Child holding an Apple
ca. 1725
oil on canvas
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Nicolas-François Gillet
Paris with the Golden Apple
1757
marble statuette (reception piece)
Musée du Louvre

Henri Fantin-Latour
Three Peaches on a Plate
1868
oil on paper mounted on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

De Scott Evans
Still Life with Apple
ca. 1890
oil on canvas
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri

Heinrich Kühn
Still Life with Apples
ca. 1910
autochrome
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Marsden Hartley
Three Pears
1913
oil on board
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College,
Poughkeepsie, New York

Henri Matisse
Bowl of Apples on a Table
1916
oil on canvas
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia

André Derain
Pears and Jug
ca. 1928
oil on canvas
Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris

Georgia O'Keeffe
Apple Blossoms
1930
oil on canvas
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri

Franz Kline
Still Life with Pear
ca. 1945-47
oil on board
Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York

Edgar Fernhout
Rotten Apples against Paint Rag
1953
oil on canvas
Kunstmuseum, The Hague

William Scott
Pots and Pear
1955
oil on board
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide

Robert Kulicke
Two Pears on Gray Background
1976
oil on board
Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York

William Clift
Old Rhode Island Greening Apple Tree, Milton, New York
1986
gelatin silver print
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

Margot Sandeman
Anna contemplating Pear
2003
oil and collage on canvas
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh

Commendatory Verses, printed in the first edition (1623) of The Duchess of Malfi

To his friend, Mr. John Webster, upon his Duchess of Malfi.

        I never saw thy duchess till the day

        That she was lively body'd in thy play;

        Howe'er she answer'd her low-rated love,

        Her brothers' anger did so fatal prove,

        Yet my opinion is, she might speak more,

        But never, in her life, so well before.

– William Rowley

To the reader of the author, and his Duchess of Malfi.

        Crown him a poet, whom nor Rome, nor Greece,

        Transcend in all theirs, for a masterpiece:

        In which, whiles words and matter change, and men

        Act one another, he, from whose clear pen

        They all took life, to memory hath lent

        A lasting fame, to raise his monument.

– John Ford