The Wunderkammer of the Mild Colonial Boy, Esq., a Reactionary Tory Gentleman, who armed only with a Steampowered Babbage Engine and Pure Intentions, wanders the Time Streams and Aetheric Plane gathering an Eccentric Hodgepodge of Curiousities, Frivolities, Whimsicalities and Nonsense.
Q. Why is your Tumblelog called "My Ear-Trumpet Has Been Struck by Lightning"?
A. Because "My Grandmother's Ear-Trumpet Has Been Struck by Lightning" wouldn't fit in the available space.
Louise Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun (1755 – 1842)
Self-portrait in a Straw Hat, 1782, oil on canvas,
Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun was a French painter, and is recognized as the most famous woman painter of the 18th century. Her style is generally considered rococo and shows interest in the subject of neoclassical painting. She cannot be considered a pure Neoclassist, however, in that she creates mostly portraits in Neoclassical dress rather than the History painting.
Valentin Serov
Girl with Peaches, 1887, oil on canvas, the Tretyakov Gallery.
Valentin Serov was a Russian painter and one of the premier portrait artists of his era. Girl with Peaches was one of the greatest works of Serov’s early period. In the paintings Serov concentrated on spontaneity of perception of the model and nature. In the development of light and color, the complex harmony of reflections, the sense of atmospheric saturation, and the fresh picturesque perception of the world. These features inaugurated Russian impressionism.
Édouard Manet
Berthe Morisot With a Bouquet of Violets, 1872, oil on canvas, Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
This is probably the most famous portrait ever done of Berthe Morisot. She was a young painter with whom Manet shared a deep friendship and who would marry one of his brothers a few months later.
Rather than using the uniform light he often employed in his portraits, Manet chose here to light his model vividly from the side so that Morisot’s face seems to be all light and shadow. Here represented with black eyes (in fact they were green), she is dressed all in black, with a matching hat, no doubt better to enhance her “Spanish” beauty remarked on since her first appearance in Manet’s work in 1869.
Giovanni Boldini (1842 – 1931)
Portrait of Lina Cavalieri, oil on canvas.
The Italian operatic soprano Lina Cavalieri was known for her great beauty. Blessed with a good singing voice, a young Cavalieri made her way to Paris, France, where her stunning good looks opened doors and she obtained work as a singer at one of the city’s café-concerts. During her career she sang with the Opéra de Monte-Carlo, the Sarah Bernhardt Theatre in Paris, the Metropolitan Opera, the Oscar Hammerstein’s Manhattan Opera Company; she was a much-loved star in pre-Revolutionary St. Petersburg, Russia.
Her portrait by the Italian artist Giovanni Boldini was acquired by Maurice Rothschild.
Paul César Helleu (1859–1927)
Portrait of Alice Guérin, 1900,oil on canvas,
Helleu is best known for his portraits of many of the most famous and beautiful women of his time including the Duchess of Marlborough, the Countess of Greffulhe and the Marchesa Casati. He was commissioned to paint a portrait of a young woman named Alice Guerin in 1884. They fell in love, and married two years later (July 28, 1886). She was undoubtedly his favourite model. Charming, refined and graceful, she helped introduce them to the aristocratic circles of Paris, where they were popular fixtures.
Georges-Pierre Seurat
A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, 1884, oil on canvas, 207.6 × 308 cm, Art Institute of Chicago.
This Painting is one of Georges Seurat’s most famous works, and is an example of pointillism (a technique of painting in which small, distinct dots of pure color are applied in patterns to form an image. Seurat developed the technique in 1886, branching from Impressionism).
Seurat spent over two years painting A Sunday Afternoon, focusing meticulously on the landscape of the park. He reworked the original as well as completed numerous preliminary drawings and oil sketches. He would go and sit in the park and make numerous sketches of the various figures in order to perfect their form. He concentrated on the issues of colour, light, and form.
Samuel Palmer
A Cornfield by Moonlight with the Evening Star, c. 1830, watercolour with bodycolour and pen and ink, The British Museum.
This striking watercolour (with bodycolour) is one of his finest works from the Shoreham period. The paint is mixed with various varnishes and pastes to alter its thickness and sheen. Palmer’s technique was as unconventional as his vision.
Pieter Bruegel the Elder
Peasant Wedding Feast, 1567, oil on wood, 114 x 163 cm, the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.
Pieter Bruegel the Elder was the Flemish Renaissance painter and printmaker, one of his many topics was depicting peasant life. Experts think Bruegel painted the work c. 1567. He married in 1563 and died in 1569, aged about 40. The painting was therefore executed during his short marriage, shortly before his death.
The Peasant Wedding Feast is full of realistic detail, providing a window on 16th-century social reality. The celebration takes place on a farm. Long tables were put together using wooden planks and trestles. The feast is in a barn; two ears of corn with a rake reminding us of the work that harvesting involves, and the hard lot peasants have. The plates are carried on a door off its hinges. The main food was bread, porridge and soup.
