Art

Female Artists

A month or two ago someone sent me a comment criticizing the lack of any female artists on my site. Of course that’s a silly claim since I have quite a number of paintings by female artists here, and since I judge paintings by whether they are good rather than whether they are made by men or women. Be that as it may, I did a little checking just to see if there were any female artists whose work I had overlooked and I found a few interesting paintings that were on my list of things waiting to be considered and so I decided to scan them and post them for all to see. Ordinarily, I dislike exhibitions of art organized by sex, race, or similar irrelevant characteristics, but in this case they just happened to come to my attention at about the same time because of these silly allegations, so here they are…

Art

Art Teacher Suspended for Recommending Figure Drawing

In December Middletown, New York art teacher Pete Panse was suspended for recommending that some of his advanced students take a figure drawing class that included nude models, on the grounds that mentioning such a thing constituted a potentially sexually unfomfortable situation for some students or their parents. Since January I have been assisting Mr. Panse in his efforts to fight this procedure and we are making good headway so far. You can read all about the case, learn how you can help, and sign an electronic petition.

Please help any way you can!

Art

Christie’s Auction

The same day I went to Sotheby’s I also went to a pretty similar showing of auction items at Christie’s. Here are a few highlights…

I was particularly impressed by the Monsted landscapes I saw that day, though I had not heard of him before then. There was a particularly impressive one called A Wooded River Landscape, Deer Grazing in the Distance at the Sotheby’s auction that was similar to this, but which was impossible for me to scan because of how it was printed in the catalogue (it spanned the spine of the book). He was definitely an under-appreciated genius!

Art

Sotheby’s Auction

A few weeks ago several Art Renewal Center people met in New York to view some 19th century paintings being auctioned off later that week. There was a lot of amazing stuff to be seen there including some artists I had not been aware of. Here are a few highlights of what I saw there.

Art

Sargent Murals

John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) is best known for his portraits, but I have been interested to discover that he did quite a number of public murals, some of them at the very end of his life. They are quite a contrast in style from his more famous work. Here are a few examples.

Art

More on Bouguereau

Brian Shapiro recently pointed out that the Bouguereau I posted last week was incomplete (the feet were cut off) and he was right! Here’s what the whole thing looks like. It has a nicer color than the one I found as well. Thanks Brian!

Along the way I also found the following pair of Bouguereau studies on the same site…

Art

Carpeaux Goodies

Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux (1827-1875) has long been one of my favorite sculptors, and therefore I think it’s fitting that I feature him in the first sculpture posting here. One of my favorite Carpeaux sculptures is The Triumph of Flora, but I never knew where it was located…

Art

German Romantics

I have long found Caspar David Friedrich’s (1774-1840) paintings to have a certain haunting quality that is hard to put my finger on, and when I was doing some additional research on his work I found a few of his fellow Germans of the same era with a similar kind of quality. Here are a few of them…

Art

Dewing Reposts

Another artist I posted a series of examples of in a previous incarnation of this blog of Thomas Wilmer Dewing (1851-1938) paintings. Since these are relatively hard to come by, I thought I would repost them here again so that they will stay alive on the Net.

Art

Gotch Revived

In an earlier version of my blog, I posted a collection of Thomas Cooper Gotch (1854-1931) paintings that along the way got lost in the shuffle. In order to prevent them from being lost to the Net, I thought I would post them again.

Art

Edward Poynter Discoveries

Another artist I have had an eye out for for years is Edward Poynter (1836-1919), and I managed to find some interesting images I thought I would share with you all. One is a wonderful finished painting and the other is a study the demonstrates how thoroughly artists like Poynter understood anatomy and used that knowledge to make their paintings. No doubt David Hockney fans would claim that this proves that Poynter had an X-ray machine.

Art

Illustrators Galore!

Art

Some Obscure Finds

I did some digging for interesting turn of the century (and a little after) artists and came up with a few nice tidbits to share. The Blashfield Angel with The Flaming Sword is a little reminiscient of VonStuck’s painting with the same theme. I have been looking for more Elihu Vedder works for a while and one of them was among my finds…