Brandon Knoll: Macaw

Post by Chaotic Shapes Here is the Finished drawing. It took longer than it was supposed to because of my vacation. It could have taken me about a week and a half instead it took about 3 weeks. The drawing Is done and that’s the only thing that matters. The length of time it takes…

Read More

Laurie and Blair Pessemier: Paint in Rome Workshop

A Day of Painting Blair and Laurie Pessemier paint in the Sabina area.   We invite you to paint with us.   We will provide easels, paints, canvas — everything you need to create a masterpiece.  Take the train to Stimigliano Scalo, and we’ll be there to pick you up and take you to the medieval Borgo, or…

Read More

Nikolai Tarkhov: Les Bretonnes

Where is Brittany? Brittany, occupying the largest French peninsula, is a cultural region in northwest France and is the traditional homeland of the Breton people.  Recognized by the Celtic League as one of the six Celtic nations, Brittany retains a distinct cultural identity that reflects its history. Tarkhov – The ‘Moscow Parisian’ According to Sotheby’s,…

Read More

Suzanne Valadon: Still Life (1922)

  Still Life   –   Suzanne Valadon , 1922. French,1865-1938 oil on canvas, 18 3/8 x 15 1/8 in. 46.67 x 38.42 cm. Via: huariqueje

Marc Chagall: Art and Revolution

New Exhibit at The Jewish Museum Diane Cole, in her article “Chagall The Revolutionary – Exhibit on his short-lived People’s Art School in Vitebsk suggests a rethinking of his work”, says the following: “The Russian Jewish artist Marc Chagall (1887-1985) made famous the steeples and rooftops of his native Vitebsk, along with the ebullient lovers,…

Read More

Cynthia Gregory and Ivan Nagy: “In A Rehearsal Room”

The Story – Seven Minutes of Magic According to shippermd, this video is  “An EXTREMELY RARE, 1976 film-short of a romantic Pas de Deux Ballet to Pachelbel’s Canon In D Major.”  Produced by David Hahn and choreographed by William Carter, this film highlights the talents of dancers Cynthia Gregory and Ivan Nagy. About ‘In A…

Read More

Edgar Degas: The Singer in Green (c.1884)

A sale catalogue of 1898 evocatively described the performer pictured in this pastel: “Skinny and with the graceful moves of a little monkey, she has just sung her ribald verses and, with a gesture that conceals an entreaty behind her smile, is inviting applause.” With her small eyes, high cheeks, and low brow, the model…

Read More

Odilon Redon: Etruscan Vase With Flowers (1900-1910)

Odilon Redon, “Etruscan Vase With Flowers”, (1900-1910), Metropolitan Museum of Art, Maria DeWitt Jesup Fund, 1951; acquired from The Museum of Modern Art, Lillie P. Bliss Collection Quotes from Odilon Redon: “I have often, as an exercise and as a sustenance, painted an object down to the smallest accidents of its visual appearance; but the…

Read More

Vincent van Gogh: Pietà (after Delacroix) 1889

Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, on or about Friday, 20 September 1889 In the Autumn of 1889 Vincent remains ill. He consoles himself by copying works from some of his favorite artists. He works in a small studio in the asylum of Saint Paul of Mausole in Saint Remy de Provence as he recovers from a prolonged episode of…

Read More

William Merritt Chase: At the Seaside (1892)

At the Seaside Beginning in 1891 Chase taught at a summer art school in Shinnecock, Long Island. The following year, he and his family moved into their new summer home, Shinnecock Hall… Chase taught at the beach resort until 1902, conducting open-air classes for as many as a hundred students each summer. This work is…

Read More

Truth and Beauty: Charity Water

Watch The Spring- The Charity Water Story: How a radical decision to reset his life led Scott Harrison to build a nonprofit that would change the way we think about giving.   Image Credit:  Among the Waves (1898), source: Ivan Aivazovsky [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Emily Carr: Untitled forest scene (c1932)

Emily Carr: Jungles January 1, 1936: “I painted one of the thick jungle sketches. Perhaps I am getting “junglier.” They won’t be popular. Few people know the jungle, or care about it or want to understand it. An organized tumult of growth, that’s what those thick undergrowth woods are, and yet there is room for…

Read More

Emily Carr: Who Is She?

I started this post intending only to feature one interesting and beautiful totem watercolor, but I rapidly discovered the compelling story of the artist herself. As stated in summary by the Vancouver Art Gallery, “Her independence as a woman when domesticity was expected, her resolve to travel frequently and unaccompanied to isolated First Nations villages,…

Read More

Rupert Bunny and Ola Gjeilo: Angels and Northern Lights

Click for enlarged detail: Angels Descending by Rupert Bunny c.1897 Details Title: Angels Descending Creator:Rupert BUNNY Date Created: c.1897 Location: Paris Physical Dimensions: w98.4 x h157.5 cm Type: Painting Rights: Morgan Thomas Bequest Fund 1904, © Art Gallery of South Australia External Link: Art Gallery of South Australia Medium:oil on canvas  Image source: Google Arts…

Read More

Mary Cassatt: The Tea (1880)

“Cassatt’s paintings often document the social interactions of well-to-do women like herself. The activities they depict—tea drinking, going to the theatre, tending children—fall within the normal routine for Cassatt’s sex and class. Yet the painter’s insistence upon representing such episodes from the modern world (even a sheltered segment of it), her dislike for narrative, and…

Read More

Luys Milán: Fantasias I – XXII from El Maestro – Renaissance Vihuela

Music of the Spanish Renaissance performed by Polivios (www.polivios.net) on  Renaissance Vihuela built by Barbara Ferloni (www.apizzico.de) It all started with one music video. I enjoyed this music very much but knew nothing about the vihuela or Renaissance music in general. To remediate my own educational gaps, I started reading. As usual, the more I learn…

Read More

Mary Cassatt: Lydia Crocheting in the Garden at Marly (1880)

  “Cassatt and her family spent the summer of 1880 at Marly-le-Roi, about ten miles west of Paris. Ignoring the village’s historic landmarks in her art, Cassatt focused instead on the domestic environment. Here, she portrayed her elder sister, Lydia, fashionably dressed and insulated by a walled garden from any modern hurly-burly. Lydia is absorbed…

Read More

Jacob Hoefnagel: Casal Desigual, 17th Century

Who Is Jacob Hoefnagel? Jacob Hoefnagel (1573 in Antwerp – c.1632 in Dutch Republic or Hamburg), was a Flemish painter, printmaker, miniaturist, draftsman, art dealer, diplomat, merchant and politician. He is noted for his illustrations of natural history subjects as well as his portraits, topographical views, emblems and mythological works. wikipedia   Artist Jacob Hoefnagel…

Read More

Vincent van Gogh: Laboureur dans un champ, St Remy (1889)

  Click for enlarged image:   Laboureur dans un champ, St Remy by Vincent van Gogh, (1889) Details: Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) Laboureur dans un champ oil on canvas 19 7/8 x 25 ½ in. (50.3 x 64.9 cm.) Painted in Saint Rémy, early September 1889 image source: Christies    

Mary Cassatt: Mother and Two Children, 1906

“I do not admit that a woman can draw like that,” said Degas when he saw one of her pictures. At eight o’clock on the evening of June 14, 1926, a very old woman—blind and suffering from advanced diabetes—died in her chateau on the edge of the tiny village of Mesnil-Theribus, some thirty miles northwest…

Read More

Tchaikovsky: Swan Lake with Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev

  Swan Lake, Op. 20 Composer: Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Dancers: Margot Fonteyn and Rudolf Nureyev with members of Wiener Staatsopernballett Ballet in 4 acts by: Vladimir Begitchev and Vasily Geltzer Orchestra: Wiener Symphoniker Conductor: John Lanchbery Choreography: Rudolf Nureyev Directed: Truck Branss   Image source Edgar Degas: The Entrance of the Masked Dancers (1882), Image…

Read More

Johann Heinrich Vogeler: Reverie

“People who believe they are ignorant of nothing have neither looked for, nor stumbled upon, the boundary between what is known and unknown in the universe.” – Neil deGrasse Tyson, Astrophysics for People in a Hurry      

Santiago Rusiñol: Sitges Interior (c1894)

Sitges Interior, Santiago Rusiñol, c1894 Click for enlarged image:   Details Title: Sitges Interior Creator: Santiago Rusiñol Date Created: Around 1894 External Link: Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya Medium: Oil on canvas   Image credit: Google Arts and Culture

Robert Lewis Reid: Fleur de Lis (c.1900) updated

Who is Robert Lewis Reid? American impressionist Robert Reid was born in Stockbridge, Massachusetts in 1862. A painter of landscape, figures, still-life and murals, Reid was one of the founding members of the ‘Ten American Painters’, a group of Impressionists who rebelled against traditionalism in 1897. According to The Met, “Robert Reid was among the…

Read More

Renoir: Dance at Bougival

I can’t look at this familiar painting without feeling happy. Renoir was a master in every way. The open-air cafés of suburban Bougival, on the Seine outside Paris, were popular recreation spots for city dwellers, including the Impressionist painters. Renoir, who was primarily a figure painter, uses intense color and lush brushwork to heighten the…

Read More

“Se potessero i sospir miei” (Imeneo), art by Ivan Aivazovsky

“Se potessero i sospir miei” from Handel’s Imeneo Jeffrey Stivers produced this excellent video pairing of “Se potessero i sospir miei” sung by Ann Hallenberg, conducted by Andreas Spering, and accompanied by Capella Augustina on period instruments. The song is from Handel’s opera Imeneo, (HWV 41). Fortunately for those like me who need a bit of remedial…

Read More

Edouard Vuillard: The Pot of Flowers (1900)

Edouard Vuillard: The Pot of Flowers (1900) I love everything about this painting by Edouard Vuillard — color, composition, and especially the texture. If it is, indeed, a snapshot of his studio, then it must have been a lovely place to paint.Vuillard selected much of his subject matter;;;

Édouard Vuillard: Flowers on Mantel at Les Clayes (1935)

Édouard Vuillard: Flowers on a Mantelpiece at Les Clayes (1935)
“Magnificent peonies, at the point of wilting, have been arranged on a mantelpiece in front of a mirror. Depicted vividly in a matt paint, their deep red hue …

Edouard Manet: The Balcony (1868-1869)

When Manet painted this piece, scenes of bourgeois life were in vogue, yet The Balcony went against the conventions of the day. The painting tells no story or anecdote; the protagonists are frozen, as if isolated in an interior dream, evidence that Manet was freeing himself from academic constraints, despite the obvious reference to Majas on the Balcony by Francisco Goya,

Pierre-Auguste Renoir: Bal du moulin de la Galette (1876)

Snapshot in Time This painting is doubtless Renoir‘s most important work of the mid 1870’s and was shown at the Impressionist exhibition in 1877. Though some of his friends appear in the picture, Renoir’s main aim was to convey the vivacious and joyful atmosphere of this popular dance garden on the Butte Montmartre. The study…

Read More

Edgar Degas: Dancers in Blue (1895)

Dancers in Blue (1895). Edgar Degas (French, 1834-1917). Oil on canvas. Musée d’Orsay. “Whereas previously in his “dance classes” Degas focused on isolated figures and large spaces, here he groups together four figures making adjustments to their hair and costumes, almost forming one single creature with several heads, several arms and several feet. The shapes…

Read More

The Painting Life of Vincent van Gogh: Video Biography

  ENGELS: A unique tv documentary of the life and the works of Vincent van Gogh. For 60 minutes we are travelling with Vincent in a geographical reconstruction of his life. The documentary shows beautiful pictures of which Van Gogh has drawn his inspiration for his works. A lot of the buildings still exist. Through…

Read More

Van Gogh & Japan: Part 1

Van Gogh created “Flowering Plum Orchard” after a Japanese print by Hiroshige from the extensive collection he shared with his brother Theo. Vincent closely followed the composition of Hiroshige, but not the exact colours of the original. The Oriental characters he painted on the frame were derived from a Japanese example, but the text is…

Read More

Maria Sibylla Merian and Natural History

Who was Maria Sibylla Merian? Artist, scientist, mother, rule breaker extraordinaire…the life of Maria Sibylla Merian is filled with reasons to make me curious about this German-born naturalist and scientific illustrator who lived in the 1700s..  I plan to delve more deeply into her remarkable story in future posts, but for now, just a snapshot:…

Read More

Vincent van Gogh: A Tale of Two Paintings (1889)

Preface See previous posts for detailed images of The Olive Trees and The Starry Night. Note that Olive Trees with the Alpilles in the Background is also called The Olive Trees Vincent van Gogh painted at least 18 paintings of olive trees, but only one –The Olive Trees — was a complement to The Starry…

Read More

Santiago Rusiñol i Prats: The Girl with Carnation

The girl with carnation (Teresa Mirabent Planas) Santiago Rusiñol 1893 From the collection of Cau Ferrat Museum “From the beginning the light of Sitges dazzled Rusinol’s retina, just like before it blinded Arcadi Mas I Fondevila, Joan Roig I Soler and the rest of the Luminist School painters. That’s why one of the topics that…

Read More

William-Adolphe Bouguereau: Girl With a Pomegranate (1875)

  Sotheby’s Catalogue Note At the close of the 1860s, Bouguereau’s reputation had been secured by his masterful portrayals of peasant life in the French countryside. Yet the artist did not limit himself in sources of inspiration and, like many of his contemporaries, became interested in the people and culture of North Africa and the…

Read More

Who Am I?

The Story: Sunnyside was born many years ago, the name of my fictional home for orphaned children and animals in a story for Mrs. Watson’s eighth grade writing class.  A medical degree and six biologic homeschooled children later, Sunnyside became the name of my classical education website, Sunnyside Classical Christian School.   Now entering a new…

Read More