Thursday, March 31, 2011
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
The Aesthetic Movement
The Victoria & Albert Museum's exhibition of the 'Cult of Beauty' reflects how art spread into everyday life in the Victorian period
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/mar/26/aestheticism-exhibition-victoria-albert-museum
Monday, March 28, 2011
Dante Gabriel Rossetti - Bottles
Oil on board mounted on panel
14 3/4 x 13 3/4 inches
Samuel and Mary R. Bancroft Memorial, 1935
Charles Fairfax Murray - Helga and Gunnlaug, c. 1880-85
Oil on board
9/16 x 12 x 26 1/2 inches
Samuel and Mary R. Bancroft Memorial, 1935
John Everett Millais - The White Cockade, 1862
Oil on panel
24 x 17 3/4 inches
Samuel and Mary R. Bancroft Memorial, 1935
John Everett Millais - A Highland Lassie, 1854
Oil on board
8 1/2 x 6 5/8 inches
Samuel and Mary R. Bancroft Memorial, 1935
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Elizabeth Ellen Houghton - Reflections, 1895
Elizabeth Ellen Houghton (1853-1922)
Watercolor on paper adhered to wood backing
16 1/2 x 9 1/2 inches
Samuel and Mary R. Bancroft Memorial, 1935
Aelfred Fahey - Within the Beguinage, c. 1905
Aelfred Fahey (1876/7-after 1909)
Oil on panel
11 1/2 x 13 1/2 inches
Samuel and Mary R. Bancroft Memorial, 1935
Philip Burne-Jones - Beside a Summer Sea, 1896
Watercolor on paper
18 1/4 x 10 1/2 inches
Samuel and Mary R. Bancroft Memorial, 1935
Saturday, March 26, 2011
More on THAT dress : Victorian-Era Dress, Made With 1,000 Beetle Wings
http://www.ecouterre.com/victorian-era-dress-made-from-1000-beetle-wings-restored-for-50000/?isalt=0
http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/cymraeg/w-global/w-news/w-latest_news/w-news-famous-beetle-wing-dress.htm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2011/mar/11/ellen-terry-beetlewing-gown-macbeth
Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth 1889
http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?workid=13110&searchid=11609&roomid=3712&tabview=work
Friday, March 25, 2011
Tile panels
[Twelve William De Morgan pottery square tiles decorated in blue and green with flowering thistles on an off-white ground, each 6ins square (various impressed marks to backs - mostly crazed to glaze)]
[A pair of late Victorian oak framed blue and white three tile panels, each decorated with standing figure of a woman in the pre-Raphaelite manner, tiles 6ins square (one tile cracked)]
http://www.thecanterburyauctiongalleries.com/catalogue/39
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Marie Stillman
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Spartali_Stillman
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=67037101
with inscription 'A Study of/Kelmscott Manor/by Marie Stillman' (on the reverse)
pencil and watercolour heightened with bodycolour, on Whatman watercolour board, unframed
10 5/8 x 14½ in. (27 x 36.8 cm.)
William Michael Rossetti and by descent in his family to the present owner.
Marie Stillman made many studies of Kelmscott Manor, the sleepy old Cotswold house on the upper Thames of which William Morris and D.G. Rossetti became joint tenants in 1871, and where Rossetti and Jane Morris enjoyed the happiest phase of their liaison during the next few years. An example almost identical to the present watercolour is at Wightwick Manor, Wolverhampton (illustrated in John Christian, 'Marie Spartali: Pre-Raphaelite Beauty', Antique Collector, March 1984, p. 46, fig. 7). Another was exhibited at the New Gallery in 1905.
http://www.christies.com/LotFinder/LotDetailsPrintable.aspx?intObjectID=5396359
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
James Smetham
[Hugh Miller 1860]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Smetham
[The Days of Noah 1860]
[The Lord of the Sabbath 1861]
[Forsake Not the Law of Thy Mother]
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Flaming libertines: Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his muses
A new exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum illuminates the lives of the daring women who inspired Rossetti and the Aesthetic Movement
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/8395330/Flaming-libertines-Dante-Gabriel-Rossetti-and-his-muses.html#
1848
I've not often see it emphasised that 1848, the year the PRB formed was a revolutionary year throughout Europe
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1848
and perhaps deliberately was designed to shake the art establishment. There are still critics who dismiss the pre-raphaelites as some sot of temporary madness or aberration that filled in the gap till Impressionism arrived (late in their opinion) in Britain.
For me the PRB were about SEEING and feeling what they saw.
Walter Crane wrote "by their resolute and enthusiastic return to the direct symbolism, frank naturalism and poetic or romantic sentiment of medieval art, with the power of modern analysis superadded, and the more profound and intellectual study of both nature and art which the severity of their practice demanded, and last, but not least, their intense love of detail, turned the attention to other branches of design than painting.'
Fortnightly Review, Dec 1892
The work of the PRB, particularly Rossetti and Burne-Jones profoundly affected the French Symblists and on to Picasso and Kadinsky.
Henry Wallis - Study of a Girl Sitting in a Chair circa 1855
Crayon on paper
Tate
Death of Chatterton
http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?cgroupid=999999961&workid=15906&tabview=text&texttype=10
Monday, March 21, 2011
Blog Update
I'm changing all my blogs but this one only slightly. There will be several pictures and a short feature all published at 6am (UK time) each day.
*** later update ***
Because of my health I'm going to have to move, so updates may be errratic over the next few months - especially if I lose my internet connection.