Hand-Held

Michele Giambono
Bishop Saint
ca. 1425-50
tempera and oil on panel
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

Francesco Francia (Francesco Raibolini)
Portrait of Evangelista Scappi
ca. 1505
oil on panel
Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence

Maarten van Heemskerck
Portrait of a Woman spinning
ca. 1531
oil on panel
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Giampietrino (Giovanni Pietro Rizzoli)
The Magdalen in Prayer
before 1540
oil on panel
Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan

Hendrik Goltzius
Ill-Matched Couple
1615
oil on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Pier Leone Ghezzi
Portrait of sculptor Edme Bouchardon
ca. 1732
oil on canvas
Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence

Vincenzo Giacomelli
Diomedes stealing the Palladium
1839
oil on canvas
Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice

James Guthrie
A Gallant of the Terror
1880
oil on canvas
Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh

Sarah Cecilia Harrison
Self Portrait
1889
oil on canvas
Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin

Joseph J. Gould
The Illustrator
1900
ink and watercolor on board
(print study for Charles Scribner's Sons)
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Joseph J. Gould
The Printer
1900
ink and watercolor on board
(print study for Charles Scribner's Sons)
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Hugo Gellert
Modern Science for All
(from portfolio, Century of the Common Man)
1943
screenprint and lithograph
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Richard Diebenkorn
Coffee
1959
oil on canvas
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Dave Heath
New York City
1962
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Kenneth Graves
Business Office, State College, Pennsylvania
1978
gelatin silver print
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

 

John Harding
San Francisco, California - Grant Avenue
1989
inkjet print
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Victoria Gewirz
Lucky Stripe
ca. 1998
platinum-palladium print
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

from The Entertainment of the High and Mighty Monarch, Prince Charles, King of Great Britain, France and Ireland, into his ancient and Royal City of Edinburgh, the 15 of June 1633

[The King is greeted by various tableaux on his way into the city, and is addressed by Caledonia, the Muses, a selection of classical deities, and the sun and moon.]

JOVE:  Delight of heaven, sole honour of the earth,

             Jove (courting thine ascendant) at thy birth

             Proclaimed thee a King, and made it true,

             That Emperies should to thy worth be due  . . .

– William Drummond of Hawthornden (1623)

Visual Preferences (20th Century: 1973)

Martha Alf
Woven Canvas #9
1973
acrylic on canvas
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Trevor Allen
Yellow Couch with Zippo
1973
screenprint
Wichita Art Museum, Kansas

Alice Baber
Akbar Road
1973
oil on canvas
Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas

Will Barnet
Chess Game
1973
oil on canvas
Wichita Art Museum, Kansas

Robert Owen Beach
Standing Figure
1973
acrylic on canvas
NSU Art Museum, Fort Lauderdale, Florida

George Brecht
No Smoking
1973
lithograph
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis

Patrick Caulfield
Ah! Nuées accourues des côtes de La Manche
1973
screenprint
Fralin Museum of Art, Charlottesville, Virginia

Hilo Chen
Beach #4
1973
oil on canvas
San Jose Museum of Art, California

Robert Cottingham
Hot
1973
lithograph
Wichita Art Museum, Kansas

Sam Gilliam
Green Lizzie
1973
acrylic on canvas
McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas

Ralph Goings
Alpha
1973
watercolor and casein on paper
Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, North Carolina

Adolph Gottlieb
Phoenix Burst
1973
oil paint and alkyd resin on canvas
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

Asger Jorn
Exhibition, Kestner-Gesellschaft, Hannover
1973
lithograph (poster)
NSU Art Museum, Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Roy Lichtenstein
Untitled
1973
screenprint
Wichita Art Museum, Kansas

Robert Mapplethorpe
Alex
1973
toned gelatin silver print
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Toon Michiels
Interior
1973
gelatin silver print
Kunstmuseum, The Hague

         Bathtub Thoughts

            (c. 500-c. 1950)

Hail, future friend, whose present I 

With gratitude now prophesy,

Kind first to whom it shall occur

My past existence to infer.

Brief salutation best beseems

Two nameless ordinal extremes:

Hail and farewell! Chance only knows

The length of our respective rows,

But our numeric bond is such

As gods nor love nor death can touch.

So thought, I thought, the last Romano-Briton

To take his last hot bath.

– W.H. Auden (1955)

Visual Preferences (20th Century: 1972)

Robert Mangold
Distorted Circle within a Polygon
1972
acrylic paint and graphite on canvas
Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, North Carolina

Peter Max
Satichananda Guru, Teacher of Light
1972
screenprint
Wichita Art Museum, Kansas

Alice Neel
Vera Beckerhoff
1972
oil on canvas
Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston

Georgia O'Keeffe
Black Rock with Blue Sky and White Clouds
1972
oil on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago

Claes Oldenburg
Proposal for a Feasible Monument in the Form of Melting Butter
1972
watercolor and crayon on paper
Seattle Art Museum

Nathan Oliveira
Smiling Head
1972
oil on canvas
Wichita Art Museum, Kansas 

Stephen Posen
Untitled, from Documenta
1972
lithograph
NSU Art Museum, Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Jan Sæther
Portrait of actor Nils Ole Oftebro
1972
oil on canvas
Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo

Frank Stella
Nasielk IV
1972
varnished ash
Art Institute of Chicago

 Hans Krondahl for Katja of Sweden
Lagoon
1972
screen-printed cotton fabric panel
Art Institute of Chicago

Julian Trevelyan
Rowers
1972
etching and aquatint
Fralin Museum of Art, Charlottesville, Virginia

Andy Warhol
Mao
1972
screenprint and acrylic paint on linen
Art Institute of Chicago

Andy Warhol
Mao
1972
screenprint on paper
NSU Art Museum, Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Andy Warhol
Mao
1972
screenprints on paper
Orange County Museum of Art, Costa Mesa, California

Shedrich Williams
Untitled
1972
gelatin silver print
Tacoma Art Museum, Washington State

Jack Youngerman
Untitled
1972
screenprint
Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami

The Old Man's Road

Across the Great Schism, through our whole landscape,

Ignoring God's Vicar and God's Ape,

Under their noses, unsuspected,

The Old Man's Road runs as it did 

When a light subsoil, a simple ore

Were still in vogue: true to His wherefore,

By stiles, gates, hedge-gaps it goes
Over ploughland, woodland, cow meadows,

Past shrines to a cosmological myth

No heretic today would be caught dead with,

Near hill-top rings that were so safe then,

Now stormed easily by small children

(Shepherds use bits in the high mountains,

Hamlets take stretches for Lovers' Lanes),

Then through cities threads its odd way,

Now without gutters, a Thieves' Alley,

Now with green lamp-posts and white curb,

The smart Crescent of a high-toned suburb,

Giving wide berth to an old Cathedral,
Running smack through a new Town Hall,

Unlookable for, by logic, by guess:
Yet some strike it, and are struck fearless.

No life can know it, but no life
That sticks to this course can be made captive,

And who wander with it, are not stopped at
Borders by guards of some Theocrat,

Crossing the pass so almost where
His searchlight squints but no closer

(And no further where it might by chance):
So in summer sometimes, without hindrance,

Apotropaically scowling, a tinker
Shuffles past, in the waning year

Potters a coleopterist, poking
Through yellow leaves, and a youth in spring

Trots by after a new excitement,
His true self, hot on the scent.

The Old Man leaves his Road to those
Who love it no less since it lost purpose,

Who never ask what History is up to,
So cannot act as if they knew:

Assuming a freedom its Powers deny,
Denying its Powers, they pass freely.

– W.H. Auden (1955)

Lord Arundel's Collections

James Basire after Peter Paul Rubens
Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel
1763
engraving
(frontispiece to Marmora Oxoniensia)
British Museum

Anonymous Copyist after Wenceslaus Hollar
Plan of Arundel House in the Strand ca. 1675 (demolished soon after)
printed 1808
etching
Yale Center for British Art

In the plan above, the complex of Arundel House is the central dark rectangle with a tail, its gardens maked out by paler rectangles marching down to the Thames.  In those gardens during the 1620s and 1630s – and in an adjoining indoor gallery – was displayed the first collection of ancient Greek and Roman sculpture to exist in England.  This group of works – both statues and carved inscriptions – came to be known as the Arundel Marbles, assembled by the Stuart courtier Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel.  

Wenceslaus Hollar after Adam Alexius Bierling
Arundel House from within the Courtyard, facing North
1646
etching
British Museum

Wenceslaus Hollar after Adam Alexius Bierling
Arundel House from within the Courtyard, facing South
1646
etching
British Museum

Wenceslaus Hollar
London from the top of Arundel House
1643
etching
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Wenceslaus Hollar
London from Milford Stairs below Arundel House
ca. 1643-44
etching
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

"Arundel had expressed the wish that his collection be kept together permanently, but this was not to be.  A series of family disputes ended with Henry Howard, Arundel's grandson, taking Arundel House and its contents.  . . .  The marbles seem to have survived the Civil War, but suffered from vandalism.  Of the two hundred and fifty inscriptions collected by Arundel one hundred and fourteen had already disappeared when in 1667 Henry was persuaded by John Evelyn to give the remainder to the University of Oxford.  The Vice-Chancellor's accounts for 1667-68 include entries for the 'Water carriage of the Arundell Marbles' and 'for cleansing the Marbles.'  The gift was commemorated with an inscription and the publication in 1676 of Humphrey Prideaux's Marmora Arundelliana [below]."  

– Michael Vickers, The Arundel and Pomfret Marbles in Oxford (2006)

Humphrey Prideaux
Marmora Oxoniensia
1676
title page to printed book
(marking the gift of the Arundel Marbles)
Staatsbibliothek Bamberg

Anonymous British Printmaker
Arrival of the Pomfret (Arundel) Marbles at Oxford in 1755
printed 1757
engraving
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

More Arundel Marbles were donated to the University in 1755.  These came from Arundel descendants with the family name Pomfret.  The new arrivals were commemorated in a fanciful engraved landscape in the Oxford Almanack. 

Roman Empire
Greek doctor Claudius Agathemerus and his wife Myrtale
AD 90-110
marble funerary relief
(formerly in the Arundel Collection)
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Humphrey Prideaux
Marmora Oxoniensia
1676
printed book
(funerary relief from the Arundel Collection)
Staatsbibliothek Bamberg

Roman Empire
The Oxford Bust 
(identified as Sappho or Faustina the Younger)
1st-2nd century AD
marble
(non-matching head and torso assembled ca. 1600)
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Wenceslaus Hollar
The Oxford Bust
1645
etching
(formerly in the Arundel Collection)
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Hollar etched the Oxford Bust during its time at Arundel House.  Two centuries later Frederick Sandys painted Gentle Spring after his encounter with the Oxford Bust in its museum setting.  

Frederick Sandys
Gentle Spring
1865
oil on canvas
(figure based on the Oxford Bust)
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Ancient Hellenistic Culture
Torso of a Man
(called the Arundel Homerus)
3rd-1st century BC
marble
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Peter Paul Rubens
Homerus
cs. 1603
drawing
Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Rubens studied and drew the Homerus fragment in Rome a decade before Arundel arrived in the city and acquired the piece.  Twenty years after making the drawing Rubens built the antique figure into one of his monumental Medici Cycle canvases.  In the sketch below, Homerus has assumed the shape of Chronos in the upper left background, arms distinctively folded over lighter robe.  

Peter Paul Rubens
Council of the Gods
1622
oil on canvas
(sketch for Medici Cycle painting in the Louvre)
Alte Pinakothek, Munich

William Westall
Sculpture Gallery in the Examination Schools, Oxford
1813
ink and watercolor on paper
(the Arundel Marbles on display, scale exaggerated)
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford