As those of you who follow my tweets (apologies for the shameless Twitter plug) know, I have been traveling for the past three weeks. I was in Spain for eleven days, France for one, and another five in California. To some it might sound like glamorous, Indiana-Jonesing; but, in reality, I spent most days underground [...]
Note: Right now there are two remarkable exhibitions taking place: The Sacred Made Real, about religious Spanish sculpture, a loan of John Singer Sargent’s painting The Children of Darley Bolt (1882) to the Prado Museum, where it hangs next to Velázquez’s Las Meninas (c. 1656). I know I have written about Eakins and Velázquez before, [...]
The youngest son of the powerful Duke of Sutherland, Lord Ronald Gower (British, 1845-1916) was educated at Eton and Cambridge. He distinguished himself as a popular politician, serving in the British Parliament from 1867-1874. Following his political career, Gower became an unlikely, critically-acclaimed sculptor and an historical writer. In the words of his mother, the Duchess [...]
If you saw the above work and thought “Bougeureau,” you could be forgiven. Hugues Merle (French, 1823-1881) is in many ways a forgotten proto-Bougeureau. Merle and William-Adolphe Bougeureau (1825-1905) knew one another well and, for a time, were represented by the same gallery. Born two years apart, both graduated from the École de Beaux-Arts, were [...]
It has been an embarrassingly long time since I last posted. Several of you have written, asking if I had finished or been finished.
Thank you.
Each note of encouragement and bewilderment at my absence has propelled me forward. I plan on spending the next couple of weeks responding with mountains of gratitude. (The surprising news is that, [...]
(Dear Readers, I am currently on vacation and will be back and posting regularly at the end of September. Have a great summer!)
(Note: The following was written for the private collector who owns these two bronzes. I enjoyed my research so much, that I thought I would share it here, with his permission.)
At a time [...]
It’s been over for a week, but I feel compelled to post pictures from my visit to the Grosvenor House Art & Antiques Fair. Before it ended, I was able to spend several hours with dealers and buyers one of the longest-running and grandest art fairs in Europe.
Despite the gloom and doom supposedly hovering over [...]
Artists and art historians in the classical tradition like to point out the close relationship that art and science enjoyed from the Renaissance. Mathematical perspective, anatomical study of human and animal figures, geology, and meteorology all played serious roles in the fine arts.
This week the exhibition“Endless Forms: Charles Darwin, Natural Science and the Visual Arts” opens [...]
While not forgotten in Spain, Carlos de Haes’ work has been little recognized elsewhere. As a teacher and award-winning artists, Haes is perhaps Spain’s greatest landscape painter.
Carlos de Haes (Brussels, 1826-Madrid, 1898) was born in Belguim to Spanish parents. Due to financial troubles, the family was forced to return to Spain in 1835. There, Haes [...]
Occasionally, I come across a book that was made with me in mind. Figures du Corps: Une Leçon d’Anatomie à l’École des Beaux-Arts is the catalogue of the exhibition by the same name held from October 21, 2008 to January 4, 2009 at the l’École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. (Painfully, I first learned about [...]