Basic

Karl Anton Reichel
Study of a Woman
1911
gouache on paper
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Giovanni Toschini
Bust of Heraclitus
ca. 1700
marble
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

Julius Scholtz
Portrait of Helene-Therese,
Gräfin von Einsiedel-Wolkenburg
1874
oil on canvas
Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz

Ditlev Conrad Blunck
Danish Artists at a Roman Osteria
1837
oil on canvas
Frederiksborg Museum, Hillerød, Denmark

Anonymous Italian Maker
Nightshirt
19th century
linen and lace
Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

Philippe-Laurent Roland
Portrait of scientist Jean-Antoine Chaptal, comte de Chanteloup
ca. 1802
plaster
Musée des Augustins de Toulouse

Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller
Portrait of Franz Joseph, future Emperor of Austria
1832
oil on panel
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

Friedrich von Amerling
Portrait of Princess Karoline von Liechtenstein
1837
oil on canvas
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

Michael Peter Ancher
Summer Evening on the Beach at Skagen
1897
oil on canvas
Skagens Museum, Denmark

Alonso Cano
Christ at the Column
before 1667
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Pau

Nils Dardel
Portrait of Ellen Roosval née Hallwyl
1919
watercolor on paper
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Domenico Guidi
The Virgin Annunciate
ca. 1670
marble
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

Jacques-Louis David
Portrait of Anne-Marie Louise Thélusson,
comtesse de Sorcy
1790
oil on canvas
Neue Pinakothek, Munich

Louis-Désiré-Joseph Donvé
Portrait of artist Piat-Joseph Sauvage
1786
oil on canvas
Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille

Johann Friedrich August Tischbein
Portrait of Engel Christina Westphalen née Axen
ca. 1798
oil on canvas
Hamburger Kunsthalle

workshop of Luca della Robbia
Virgin and Child with Lilies
ca. 1460-70
glazed terracotta
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

After the peace and league made between the Lacedaemonians and Athenians after the ten years' war, Pleistolas being ephore at Lacedaemon and Alcaeus archon of Athens, though there were peace to those that had accepted it, yet the Corinthians and some cities of Peloponnesus endeavoured to overthrow what was done, and presently arose another stir by the confederates against Lacedaemon.  And the Lacedaemonians also after a while became suspect onto the Athenians for not performing somewhat agreed on in the articles.  And for six years and ten months they abstained from entering into each other's territories with their arms; but the peace being weak, they did each other abroad what harm they could, and in the end were forced to dissolve the peace made after those ten years, and fell again into open war. 

This also hath the same Thucydides of Athens written from point to point, by summers and winters, as everything came to pass, until such time as the Lacedaemonians and their confederates had made an end of the Athenians dominion and had taken their long walls and Pieraeus.  To which time, from the beginning of the war, it is in all twenty-seven years.*

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

*This indicates that Thucydides lived to the end of the war.  We do not know how much longer he lived after.  There is a story that he was executed by the Thirty Tyrants, the oligarchic government installed by the Lacedaemonians in Athens in 404-403.  The History breaks off in Book viii, when dealing with the events following 411.  Thucydides may have had notes for the progress of the war from then till the capture of Athens, but being busy with the revision and final draft of the rest of the work, and particularly Books i-iv, he was unable to give final shape to the last part and so did not leave it in form for publication.  

White Elements

Reidun Tordhol
Against Grey Background
1990
oil on canvas
Lillehammer Kunstmuseum, Norway

Peter Karnig
Untitled
ca. 1975
gelatin silver print
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Valentin Serov
Portrait of Maria Vasilievna Yakunchikova
ca. 1885-88
oil on canvas
Malmö Konstmuseum, Sweden

Luca della Robbia
Virgin and Child with Angels
ca. 1450
glazed terracotta
Bode Museum, Berlin

workshop of Lucas Cranach the Younger
Postmortem Portrait of Martin Luther
ca. 1574
oil on panel
Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden

Otto Friedrich
Heinrich Gallia in Officer's Uniform
ca. 1915
oil on paper (sketch)
Belvedere Museum, Vienna

Henri Fantin-Latour
Still Life with Torso and Flowers
1874
oil on canvas
Göteborgs Konstmuseum, Sweden

Anonymous Artisans
Cast of the Farnese Hercules
(after colossal marble original in Naples)
18th century
plaster
Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel

Thomas Gainsborough
Portrait of Miss Ann Ford
1760
oil on canvas
Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio

René de Saint-Marceaux
Charlotte Corday
ca. 1899
marble
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Reims

Carl Jacob Malmberg
Stage Personality Helga Frankenfeldt
1870
collodion print
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Félix Nadar
Sarah Bernhardt as Pierrot
1883
collodion print
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Fernand Khnopff
Madeleine Mabille with Painting Tools
1888
oil on panel
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

Louis Bastin
Arrangement of White Objects
1957
etching and aquatint
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Eva Rubinstein
Duane Michals
1972
gelatin silver print
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Danny Lyon
Two Prisoners from Corpus Christi, Texas
1968
gelatin silver print
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Deep into the night they talked of many things, naturally enough for two people who believed that after tonight they would never see one another again and who were enjoying one another's company as long as they might.  Eventually they fell to considering the miracle at the stake.  Theagenes was inclined to attribute it to the benevolence of the gods, who had been incensed by Arsake's iniquitous allegations and taken pity on her innocent and blameless victim.  Charikleia seemed to be less certain.

"My bizarre deliverance," she said, "certainly bears all the marks of a supernatural or divine intervention to save me.  But the fact that we are so beset by one misfortune coming directly after another and subject to such various and excessive torments suggests that we are under heaven's curse and the victims of divine malevolence – unless it is the divinity's way of working miracles to plunge us deep in despair and then deliver us from the abyss!"

– Heliodorus, from The Aethiopica, or, Theagenes and Charikleia (3rd or 4th century AD), translated from Greek by J.R. Morgan (1989)

White Garments - III

Louis-Périn Lié
Portrait of the courtesan La Duthé
1778
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Reims

Angelica Kauffmann
Bacchante
1785
oil on canvas
Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Anatole Devosge
Study for Portrait of Young Woman
ca. 1800-1810
oil on cardboard
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon

Constance-Marie Charpentier
Melancholy
1801
oil on canvas
Musée de Picardie, Amiens

Jacques-Louis David
Alexandrine-Thérèse Nardot, comtesse Daru
1810
oil on canvas
Frick Collection, New York

Thomas Lawrence
Portrait of Lady Sarah Ingestre
ca. 1827-28
oil on canvas
Rhode Island School of Design, Providence

Narcisse Diaz de la Peña
Marquérite in Church, with Mephistopheles looming
(scene from Goethe's Faust)
ca. 1850
oil on panel (sketch)
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Reims

Amaury-Duval
Woman of Saint-Jean-de-Luz
ca. 1866
oil on canvas
Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille

Berthe Morisot
Lady with a Fan
(Portrait of Madame Marie Hubbard)
1874
oil on canvas
Ordrupgaard Art Museum, Copenhagen

Jean Béraud
In the Wings at the Paris Opéra
1889
oil on panel
Musée Carnavalet, Paris

Charles Chaplin
Le Sommeil
ca. 1890
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Reims

Édouard Vuillard
The Fitting
ca. 1892
oil on panel
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Reims

Edvard Munch
Study of Model
1893
drawing
(colored chalks on brown paper)
Guggenheim Museum, New York

Dudley Hardy
A Gaiety Girl
1894
lithograph (poster)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Ottilie Roederstein
Portrait of Frau Kost
1912
oil on canvas
Von der Heydt Museum, Wuppertal

Anonymous French Maker
Nightdress
ca. 1910
silk sarcenet and lace
Palazzo Pitti, Florence

Ce qui s'est réellement passé dans cette nuit où la chance a délié de sa ceinture sa bourse prodigue et en a sorti la possibilité des Onze, on ne le sait pas, Monsieur. Est-on même sûr que c'était la nuit? Ce qu'on sait seulement, savoir ou légende, ce sont les effets scéniques, le manteau couleur de fumée d'enfer qui passe en coup de vent, l'aplomb de quatre hommes sous des bicornes, la nef vide et les chevaux dans la nef, les cloches déposées, le tas d'or et les os embrasés des saintes: les trois personnages qui sont des types, Collot dans le rôle de Macbeth, Bourdon en Iago, Proli en Shylock; et devant ces stéréotypes Corentin éberlué entre l'or répandu et le bruit fantôme des cloches tient le rôle de saint Matthieu, qui n'est pas dans Shakespeare. On le voit ainsi. 

– Pierre Michon, from Les Onze (Verdier, 2009)

White Garments - II

Anna Dorothea Lisiewska-Therbusch
Young Lady in Negligée
ca. 1769-70
oil on canvas
Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun
Portrait of Louise Marie Adélaïde de Bourbon,
duchesse d'Orléans
ca. 1789
oil on canvas
Château de Versailles

François Gérard
Portrait of Alexandrine-Émilie Brongniart
1795
oil on canvas
Yale University Art Gallery

Marie-Geneviève Bouliard
Portrait of painter Adélaïde Binart
1796
oil on canvas
Musée Carnavalet, Paris

Eulalie Morin
Portrait of Juliette Récamier
1799
oil on canvas
Château de Versailles

Jacques-Louis David
Portrait of Juliette Récamier
1800
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

John Hoppner
Portrait of Mrs Dottin
ca. 1803-1804
oil on canvas
Detroit Institute of Arts

Jeanne-Élisabeth Chaudet
Girl eating Cherries
1817
oil on canvas
Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris

Hiram Powers
Diana
1852
marble
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Auguste Renoir
Lise with a Parasol
1867
oil on canvas
Museum Folkwang, Essen

Édouard Manet
Le Repos
ca. 1871
oil on canvas
Rhode Island School of Design, Providence

Edvard Munch
Summer Night - Inger on the Beach
1889
oil on canvas
KODE (Art Museums Complex), Bergen, Norway

Isidor Kaufmann
Hannah
ca. 1890
oil on panel
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Antoine Calbet
Reader
ca. 1890
watercolor and gouache on paper
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Reims

Isaac Israëls
Portrait of Jacqueline Sandberg
ca. 1910
oil on canvas
Teylers Museum, Haarlem

Signe Scheel
Profile at the Window (Lilli Scheel)
1914
oil on canvas
Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo

Tout cela vous l'avez lu aussi, dans les encadrés de l'antichambre. Vous vous êtes même arrêté devant la reproduction de l'esquisse à l'huile de Géricault qui n'est pas ici au Louvre, qui dort parmi les Girodet dans le musée de Montargis: Corentin en ventôse reçoit l'ordre de peindre les Onze. Le titre donné après coup est approximatif, le tableau est à peine ébauché, il y a de grands pans de blanc, car Géricault l'a peint quand il avait la mort sur l'épaule. Mais il est tout à fait conforme à ce que j'ai dit. 

Il ne pouvait en être autrement.

C'est que, Monsieur, l'esquisse de Géricault n'a d'autre valeur que d'avoir inspiré à Monseigneur l'Après-coup en personne, Michelet, Jules Michelet de son nom complet d'état civil, les douze pages définitives qui traitent des Onze, qui mettent en place Les Onze et les dressent devant la tradition historiographique pour les siècles des siècles.

– Pierre Michon, from Les Onze (Verdier, 2009)