A Young Woman Playing a Theorbo to Two Men by Gerard Terborch
1667-68
Oil on canvas, 68 x 58 cm
National Gallery, London
Several versions are known of the aristocratic interior by the artist.
Many artists have painted beautiful satins and silks , but no one has ever depicted satin more exquisitely than the much-travelled Dutchman Gerard ter Borch. First trained by his father Gerard ter Borch the Elder, who had lived in Italy in his youth, the precocious young painter worked in Amsterdam and Haarlem before venturing to Germany, Italy, England, France and Spain. In 1646 he went to M黱ster, where he witnessed the ratification of the treaty of 1648 signalling the triumphant end of the Dutch wars of independence from Spain. In 1654, he married and settled down, permanently, in Deventer.
Whether miniature full-length portraits, or scenes of – supposedly – everyday life, ter Borch’s pictures are distinguished by technical and psychological refinement. It seems curious, therefore, that he first specialised in guardroom subjects – although he brings even to the rowdy theme of garrisoned soldiers an element of stillness and reflection. His best-known paintings, however, represent elegant interiors with only a few figures, one of them usually a young woman in ravishing pale satin. Here, in an old-ivory bodice trimmed with fur and a white skirt setting off her fair hair, her shoe propped against a foot warmer, she plays the theorbo, an early form of lute, accompanying the man holding a song book. A man in a cloak looks on, and a spaniel seems to listen. Behind them is a curtained bed. Under the red Turkey carpet covering the table lies a single playing card, the ill-omened ace of spades.
The woman and the singing man each appear in other paintings by the artist, as do the silver box and candlestick – this is ‘selective’ naturalism, a scene composed from the imagination with ingredients assembled from drawings and studio props. In Dutch paintings of this type music-making is usually suggestive of love, while playing cards may be emblems of improvidence, and dogs and footwarmers can signify base desires. Yet it would be foolhardy to read this subtle painting, with its subdued tonality, as a scene of the demi-monde. We can never know what the relationships of these three figures are, and their thoughts and feelings, so delicately implied, are infinitely ambiguous. That, surely, was the artist’s intention: to evoke imperfectly understood events, tantalising in their suggestion of mutability and transience.
Boy ridding his dog of fleas by Gerard Terborch
c. 1665
Oil on canvas, 34,4 x 27,1 cm
Alte Pinakothek, Munich
With Pieter de Hooch and Johannes Vermeer, Gerard ter Borch is one of the most outstanding of Dutch genre painters. Their paintings are based on close observation of their contemporaries and their surroundings, and yet elements from everyday life are often combined to suggest a particular mood, create an intriguing situation or point a moral.
Ter Borch, the son of a painter, was born in Zwolle and trained there in the studio of his father and also in the Haarlem workshop of the landscape painter Pieter Molijn. In his youth he travelled widely in Europe – to Germany, Italy, England, France and Spain. By 1654 he had settled in Deventer in his native province of Overijssel, where he achieved great professional success. He also became one of the town’s regent class, serving as a councillor and painting a group portrait of his fellow regents.
In the genre scenes of his early years ter Borch depicted the life of soldiers but after settling in Deventer his paintings often showed elegant interiors in which small groups of figures talk, drink and make music. In this painting ter Borch shows a humbler setting and a mundane subject and yet he treats with the same delicacy and refinement the depiction of the differing textures of fur, hair, wood and felt. As with the painting of the lace-maker by Netscher, the painting gives an almost monumental quality to an everyday situation.
Boy ridding his dog of fleas by Gerard Terborch
c. 1665
Oil on canvas, 34,4 x 27,1 cm
Alte Pinakothek, Munich
With Pieter de Hooch and Johannes Vermeer, Gerard ter Borch is one of the most outstanding of Dutch genre painters. Their paintings are based on close observation of their contemporaries and their surroundings, and yet elements from everyday life are often combined to suggest a particular mood, create an intriguing situation or point a moral.
Ter Borch, the son of a painter, was born in Zwolle and trained there in the studio of his father and also in the Haarlem workshop of the landscape painter Pieter Molijn. In his youth he travelled widely in Europe – to Germany, Italy, England, France and Spain. By 1654 he had settled in Deventer in his native province of Overijssel, where he achieved great professional success. He also became one of the town’s regent class, serving as a councillor and painting a group portrait of his fellow regents.
In the genre scenes of his early years ter Borch depicted the life of soldiers but after settling in Deventer his paintings often showed elegant interiors in which small groups of figures talk, drink and make music. In this painting ter Borch shows a humbler setting and a mundane subject and yet he treats with the same delicacy and refinement the depiction of the differing textures of fur, hair, wood and felt. As with the painting of the lace-maker by Netscher, the painting gives an almost monumental quality to an everyday situation.
Danae by Correggio
1530
Oil on canvas, 158 x 189 cm
Galleria Borghese, Rome
Correggio’s masterpiece, Danaë, depicts one of the four stories in Ovid’s Metamorphoses about the “Loves of Jupiter”, commissioned in around 1531 by Frederick II Gonzaga in Mantua as a present for Charles V (the other scenes are in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna and the National Gallery, London).
The scene is set in an interior draped with rich and suitably folded hangings, framing a window opening onto the landscape, as if to “unveil” the union. Danaë, the daughter of Acrisius, King of Argos, and of Eurydice, had been shut up by her father in a tower with bronze doors, as it had been prophesied that she would gave birth to a son who would be the cause of Acrisius’ own death. But Zeus visited her in the form of a shower of gold falling from a cloud, and from their union Perseus was born. The maiden is reclining on a bed of classical design ornamented with knobs. Nearby Eros, as an intercessor between Zeus and the maiden, and representing divine desire, helps her to hold the sheet, so as not to loose the seed. At their feet two cupids, one wingless and the other winged, and intended as a contrast between “sacred love and profane love”, are busy engraving a tablet with an arrow. It is a perfectly handled and balanced scene, that, while reminiscent of Titian’s paintings, is not free of influence of Giulio Romano.
Correggio’s painting maintains a purity of style that never descends to the vulgarly erotic. Thus it reveals itself to be almost a prelude to some of Canova’s sculptures and to certain neoclassical solutions: that sheet, rumpled so as to resemble an unmade bed became a model for a great deal of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century painting.
Danaë is frequently represented in Renaissance and Baroque painting. You can view other depictions of Danaë in the Web Gallery of Art.
Deposition from the Cross by Correggio
1525
Oil on canvas, 158,5 x 184,3 cm
Galleria Nazionale, Parma
This painting, together with its companion piece the Martyrdom of Four Saints, was painted for the Del Bono chapel in San Giovanni, Parma. The unusual shape of the figures, which never fit into the scene, are probably due to the original dimensions of the chapel (which was later enlarged).
Apollo Flaying Marsyas by Jusepe de Ribera
1637
Oil on canvas, 202 x 255 cm
Musees Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels
“Oh, what is my repentance ! Oh, a flute is not worth all that ! Despite his cries, his skin is torn off his whole body; (..) his naked muscles become visible; a convulsive movement trembles the veins, lacking their covering of skin.” (Ovid: Metamorphoses, Book VI, verses 386-390). This is how Apollo punishes Marsyas, the satyr who dared to question the superiority of the melody of the divine lyre over the worldly sensuality of his flute.
This masterpiece by Jusepe de Ribera was painted in 1637, when his style had reached maturity. The passage from Ovid’s Metamorphoses depicted here is the fruit of the aesthetic atmosphere that prevailed at Naples, considered the capital of painting of the time. It is in this context that the painter highlights the confrontation between the divine and the earthly, with the form of representation underlining the content. From his Caravaggesque beginnings, Rivera preserved the expressiveness and the modelling provided by chiaroscuro. But the contrasts characterising this manifestation of Neapolitan Baroque are no longer limited to the clashes of light. De Ribera goes further, achieving a sense of the tragic through every item in the canvas. Like Caravaggio, he made use of popular sources and of real life situations in order to represent the expression of faith. In this way his paintings of figures who, like Marsyas, could have come from the alleyways of Naples, had already achieved renown right across Europe.
The figure of the god is marked by the classicism which was then in fashion in Naples. His anatomical perfection, his youth and his idealised beauty are surrounded by flowing, airy draperies which accentuate the diagonal thrust of the composition. In the spirit of the baroque, the roughness of Marsyas’ body and the shape of the tree contrast with this classicism. As in his famous depictions of martyrs, Ribera places the victim foreshortened in the foreground. The structure is balanced by a group of forest inhabitants who watch on powerless as the god bears down on his victim.
Archimedes by Jusepe de Ribera
1630
Oil on canvas, 125 x 81 cm
Museo del Prado, Madrid
The image we have today of the ancient scholar owes much to the classicistic ideals of the 19th century. This concept of cool distance and noble gravity is contradicted sharply by such a painting as Ribera’s Archimedes: the great physicist, mathematician and natural scientist is shown here as a toothless old Spaniard. His weathered, wrinkled face has none of the marbled pallor of scholarship. In one thin hand, he holds a pile of papers and in the other a compass. His nails are dirty, his dress unkempt, and an old cloak is thrown carelessly over his undershirt, open to reveal his chest. Archimedes looks at us with a broad grin, and seems as close to the everyday life of Ribera’s contemporaries as the artist’s paintings of the saints. We find no monumental dignity here, only the dignity of a strong personality.
Clubfooted Boy by Jusepe de Ribera
1642
Oil on canvas, 164 x 92 cm
Musee du Louvre, Paris
Standing in a sweeping landscape, dressed in hatcbed brown clothes, barefoot and shouldering a crutch, his disability is evident: his deformed foot is at the centre of the spectator’s field of vision. In his left band, this pitiable creature holds a note with the inscription: “DA MIHI ELIMO/SINAM PROPTER/ AMOREM DEI” (“Give me alms, for the love of God”).
Described in this way, the painting would appear to be an image of misery, humiliation and begging. Yet what meets the eye, contradicts such an unequivocal statement. The boy whose face is aged beyond his years stands proud and upright againt the landscape in the background. He looks directly downwards at the spectator with a relaxed gaze of experience and superiority. The boy’s mouth is opened in a relatively unattractive gummy grin that permits no patronizing sympathy. Ribera has created a monument to the justice of God. He shows up our hierarchical thinking, our worldly expectations of the gratitude of the poor, to whom we give alms. The apparently miserable, valueless individual stands here like a monument admonisbing us to remember that all creatures are equal before God. This boy is not begging for mercy. He is claiming his right to it.
Fortitude by Sandro Botticelli
c. 1470
Tempera on panel, 167 x 87 cm
Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence
The painting was commissioned for the Tribunale della Mercatanzia (a court where crimes of an economic nature were judged) and it was Botticelli’s most prestigious work of the 1470s. The entire series of Virtues had been ordered from Piero del Pollaiolo.
The figure of Fortitude is placed on a high throne with elaborately carved arms, a piece clearly traceable to Verocchio, but the feeling of tension that this thoughtful figure gives off surely comes from Antonio del Pollaiolo. The blue enamel work on the armour and the highlights on the metal are particularly interesting as they indicate a thorough knowledge of the goldsmith’s art. The way in which the cloth is portrayed comes from Verocchio. The energy and vitality of the girl in armour, expressed in her face and her pose, is an original creation of Botticelli and shows clearly the very personal way in which he developed and enriched the styles of his contemporaries.
Giuliano de Medici by Sandro Botticelli
1478
Panel, 54 x 36 cm
Staatliche Museen, Berlin
Three similar portraits of Giuliano still exist. In contrast to the version in Washington, the portraits that are now in Bergamo and Berlin were probably not created until after Giuliano’s assassination during the Pazzi conspiracy in 1478, when copies would have been ordered by friends and relatives as commemorative portraits.
A Summer Pastoral by Francois Boucher
A Summer Pastoral by Francois Boucher
1749
Oil on canvas, 259 x 197 cm
Wallace Collection, London
This painting and its companion piece, An Autumn Pastoral (also in the Wallace Collection), were commissioned by the financier Trudaine for his new château at Montigny-Lencoup, together with four overdoors by Oudry which are also in the Wallace Collection.
These great pastorals offer a characteristic Boucher blend of elegance and ruticity.
After the Dance
John William Waterhouse
Owner/Location: Private collection
Dates: 187g
Dimensions: Height: 76.2 cm (30 in.), Width: 127 cm (50 in.)
Medium: Painting – oil on canvas
‘The picture shows a Roman interior, with a portion of the atrium and a peep into the court beyond. Two figures, a boy and a girl, recline on cushions, one sitting and the other languidly stretched on the tesselated pavement with a tambourine alongside. In the distance a group of minstrels on the extreme left complete the composition… There is no pretence of archaeological display, nor any highly-wrought detail, or accessories introduced for the mere mastery of textures…’ (J.A. Blaikie, ‘J W Waterhouse, ARA’, The Magazine of Art, 1886, p.3)
‘…two Greek girls, gracefully draped, resting themselves in the atrium of the house wherein they have been dancing. The colouring is quiet, and yet not without a certain richness, the prevailing tints being yellow, green, brown and grey. One girl lies on her back, the other sits at her side…’ (The Art Journal, Vol XV, 1876, p 216)
Lamentation over the Dead Christ with Saints by Sandro Botticelli
c. 1490
Tempera on panel, 140 x 207 cm
Alte Pinakothek, Munich
The stylistic changes in Botticelli’s late work are especially striking in the two paintings of the Lamentation over the Dead Christ (in Munich and Milan). Botticelli was reacting in these pictures to the new religious sensibility in Florence.
The dead Christ is lying lifelessly on a fine cloth in his mother’s lap, and she has fallen back in a swoon against the shoulders of his favourite disciple, John. The two Marys are gently supporting the head and feet of the crucified man. Mary Magdalene is fearfully and sorrowfully gazing at the crucifixion nails. St Jerome, St Paul and St Peter are observing the moving scene. The fervent gestures and postures of the figures express their grief at the death of Christ – a religious emotion intended to include the observer.
Originally the painting was in the church of San Paolino in Florence. After restoring in the Galleria degli Uffizi in 1813 it was purchased by the King of Bavaria.
Gustav Klimt
Death and Life
1916
Oil on canvas
178 x 198 cm
Private collection, Vienna
1433-34
Tempera on wood, 150 x 180 cm
Museo Diocesano, Cortona
In a loggia of columns and arches, the angel appears to Mary. Shown in profile, he occupies the larger part of the painting, his richly painted wings extending out through the colonnade, their upper tips marking the centre of the picture. He declaims to the Virgin, ‘the Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the highest shall overshadow thee’ (Luke 1, v. 35). She, demure, with a dove fluttering above her head in a burst of golden light, inclines towards him and responds, ‘Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word’ (Luke 1, v. 38). Beyond them the picture space extends into the Virgin’s chamber, and further, hidden space is hinted at by the bed curtain there which serves also to set off Gabriel’s nimbus.
Outside the loggia is a delicately painted garden, enclosed by a palisade, symbolic of Mary’s virginity. Carved in a roundel above the centre column is a half-length effigy of Isaiah, who had prophesied the birth of a child to a virgin. The pink entablature of the loggia points to the second reference to the Old Testament, in the top left corner, where Adam and Eve are expelled from Paradise.
Undoubtedly Angelico’s first truly great painting, this Annunciation formed a prototype for a noble line of derivatives.
Annalena Altarpiece by Fra Angelico
c. 1445
Tempera on wood, 180 x 202 cm
Museo di San Marco, Florence
The painting got the name from its original location, the Convento di San Vincenzo d’Annalena, founded by Annalena Malatesta.
This is Angelico’s second sacra conversazione, and shares many elements in common with its forerunner, the San Marco altarpiece. Unlike the San Marco altarpiece, however, there are no angels here and the Virgin and Child are in the company only of Sts Peter Martyr, Cosmas, Damian, John the Evangelist, Lawrence and Francis. Although they have left their individual panels, never to return, there is still an echo of these in the blank arches of the wall which closes the back of the picture.
The high wall and its pink cornice run the full width of the panel. The natural world, which was the setting of the first altarpiece, is now confined to the grass and flowers at the very front of the picture. There is no carpet on the ground here and the foreground is much shallower than in the earlier work. The method of space projection remains basically the same and relies on the receding rectangles of the steps to the throne and of its cornice. An element common to both altarpieces is the use of a carpet running across the back of the picture parallel to the picture plane.
1440-41
Fresco, 190 x 164 cm
Convento di San Marco, Florence
This is the fresco on the wall of Cell 3 of the Convento di San Marco in Florence.
On the left St Peter the Martyr is represented. This is a favourite theme, here simplified. A contribution of Angelico’s pupils can be assumed.
The composition of this fresco is severe in the extreme. The Virgin inhabits not a house but a cell as Spartan as that in which the fresco is painted, and beyond Gabriel and Mary the eye meets only a plain blank wall. The one piece of decoration, the capital of the column, is deliberately obscured by the wing of the angel. Here and throughout the series the pallet is extremely restrained, as if Angelico thought rich and varied colours were as likely as decoration to distract the friars from spiritual contemplation.
Monet painting Impression, Sunrise
Painting: Impression: Sunrise
Artist: Claude Monet
Year: 1873
Size: 48cm x 63cm or 19 x 24 3/8″
Medium: Oil on canvas
Location: Musee Marmottan, Paris, France
Monet painting Etretat, Rough Seas
Painting: Rough Sea at Etretat
Artist: Claude Monet
Year: 1883
Medium: Oil on canvas
Location: Musee des Beaux-Arts, Lyons, France
Monet painting Boats on the Beach, Etretat
Painting: The Beach at Etretat
Artist: Claude Monet
Year: 1883
Medium: Oil on canvas
Location: Musee d’Orsay, Paris, France
The dock offers good views on the small bridge over Monet’s pond at Giverny.
There are six bridges in Monet’s water garden, the biggest being the one Monet painted so often. But the smaller bridge at the other end of the pond is very charming also.
This side of the garden is bathed by the sun in late afternoon. The warm light generates beautiful reflections on the surface.
One would like to do like Monet, just sit down and gaze at the water for hours, scrutinising the changing colors of nature.
Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Maxfield Parrish began drawing for his own amusement as a child. His given name was Frederick Parrish but he later adopted the maiden name of his paternal grandmother, Maxfield, as his middle name, and later as his professional name. His father was an engraver and landscape artist, and young Parrish’s parents encouraged his talent. He attended Haverford College and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. He entered into an artistic career that lasted for more than half a century, and which helped shape the Golden Age of illustration and the future of American visual arts.
He lived his entire life at his New Hampshire home/studio at The Oaks with his wife, who died in 1953, and his mistress and model, Sue Lewin, who survived his death in 1966 at age 95. He was by all accounts a charming and intelligent man whose writings add a great deal to the text in Ludwig’s book. His flouting of social mores seems to be of a piece with the ‘exceptions’ granted the rich and talented. He certainly qualified.
Launched by a commission to illustrate L. Frank Baum’s Mother Goose in Prose in 1897, his repertoire included many prestigious projects including Eugene Field’s Poems of Childhood (including 8 color plates) (1904) (see illustration) and such traditional works as Arabian Nights (including 12 color plates) (1909). Books illustrated by Parrish, in addition to those that include reproductions of Parrish’s work – including A Wonder Book and Tanglewood Tales (including 10 color plates) (1910), The Golden Treasury of Songs and Lyrics (including 8 color plates) (1911) and The Knave of Hearts (including 23 color images) (1925) – are highly sought-after collectors items.
Like all his siblings, he aspired to be a poet and attended King’s College School. However, he also wished to be a painter, having shown a great interest in Medieval Italian art. He studied at Henry Sass’s Drawing Academy from 1841 to 1845 when he enrolled at the Antique School of the Royal Academy, leaving in 1848. After leaving the Royal Academy, Rossetti studied under Ford Madox Brown, with whom he was to retain a close relationship throughout his life.
Following the exhibition of William Holman Hunt’s painting The Eve of St. Agnes, Rossetti sought out Hunt’s friendship. The painting illustrated a poem by the then still little-known John Keats. Rossetti’s own poem “The Blessed Damozel” was an imitation of Keats, so he believed that Hunt might share his artistic and literary ideals. Together they developed the philosophy of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, which they founded along with John Everett Millais. Rossetti was always more interested in the Medieval than in the modern side of the movement. He was publishing translations of Dante and other Medieval Italian poets, and his art also sought to adopt the stylistic characteristics of the early Italians.
In 1850, Rossetti met Elizabeth Siddal, who became an important model for the Pre-Raphaelite painters. They were married in 1860.
Question: How much fat and protein should a person consume per day?
Answer: It depends on your age, your size, and your gender. The USDA suggests that 50% of your calories come from carbohydrates, about 30-35% of your calories come from fat, and about 15-20% of your calories come from protein.
Currently, the recommended amount of protein for most adults is around 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of bodyweight per day. One kilogram equals 2.2 pounds, so a person who weighs 165 pounds (75kg) would need about 60 grams of protein per day.
The suggested amount of fat would be about 65 grams per day for a 2000 calorie per day diet or 80 grams of fat per day for a 2500 calorie per day diet.
Fat Math
You should already be in the habit of reading the labels on all commercial food products. Newer labels include not only the total fat, but also the amount of saturated fat in a product. These labels base their percentage on a 2,000 calorie-per-day diet, of which no more than 30% should consist of any type of fats. 1 fat gram equals 9 calories, thus no more than 700 fat calories per day should be ingested, based on the aforementioned standard. If your caloric intake is less, adjust your fat intake accordingly. Newer labels will also provide cholesterol facts, which should be limited to no more than 300 milligrams per day.
Optimum cholesterol levels are measured not only overall, but by the ratio of LDL (bad) to HDL (good). The recommendation is to keep your cholesterol levels between 200-239 milligrams. Higher numbers are cause for great alarm. However, one can have high cholesterol levels, yet still be considered good as long as the ratio follows the guidelines. The ratio of cholesterol to HDL should not exceed 6:1. The ratio of LDL to HDL should ideally be 3:1 and not exceed 4:1.
According to the National Heart and Lung Association, a mere 1.0 gram of Omega-3 fatty acids daily can reduce heart disease in men by 40%. To give you an idea of how much you would have to eat, a 4-ounce serving of Atlantic salmon has more than 2 grams of Omega-3 fatty acids and a 4-ounce serving of tuna has .08 gram.
Sources from about.com
Understanding Fat Labels
Food product labeling can be very confusing. Even if you faithfully read labels, food manufacturers will try to sway you into buying product using enticing terms that may not necessarily mean what you think they mean. Here are some of the more common labels:
• Low fat: 3 grams of fat or less per normal serving.
• Lean: Meat or poultry with less than 10 grams of fat, less than 4 grams of saturated fat, and less than 95 milligrams of cholesterol per 100 grams. However, companies having product names with “Lean” in the title prior to November 27, 1991 may retain those product names.
• Extra lean: Meat or poultry with less than 5 grams of fat, less than 2 grams of saturated fat, and less than 95 milligrams of cholesterol per 100 grams.
• Low in calories: Cannot contain more than 40 calories per normal serving.
• Light or lite: Foods that have 1/3 fewer calories than a comparable product, or have half the fat content of a comparable product, and the label must specify which one. If the adjective light is used to describe the taste, smell or color, it must be clearly stated as to what the term refers. It can also refer to products that have 50% of the sodium of normal products, but must be clearly specified as well.
• Fat-free: Foods with 0.5 grams fat per serving and no added fat or oil.
• Reduced fat: No more than half the fat of an identified comparable food.
• Low sodium: 140 milligrams or less per serving.
• Low cholesterol: Contains no more than 20 milligrams of cholesterol per typical serving size.
• Cholesterol-free: Food with 2 milligrams or less of cholesterol per serving and less than 2 grams of saturated fat per serving.
• “Good” source: Foods can be labeled as a good source of vitamins or nutrients if they provide at least 10% of the recommended daily allowance (RDA).
• “High” source: Must provide at least 20% of RDA.
• Milk exception: Although 2% milk does not fit within the above terminology, it can still be called low-fat. (It contains 5 grams.)
Source from about.com
Ter Borch is excellent as a portrait painter, but still greater as a painter of genre subjects. He depicts with admirable truth the life of the wealthy and cultured classes of his time, and his work is free from any touch of the grossness which finds so large a place in Dutch art. His figures are well drawn and expressive in attitude; his colouring is clear and rich, but his best skill lies in his unequalled rendering of texture in draperies, which is seen to advantage in such pictures as The Letter and in The Gallant Conversation engraved by Wille – which exists in various repetitions at Berlin and Amsterdam, and in the Bridgewater Gallery.
Ter Borch’s works are comparatively rare; only about eighty have been catalogued. Six of these are at the Hermitage, six at the Berlin Museum, five at the Louvre; four at the Dresden Museum, and two at the Wallace Collection.
The artist’s painting The Suitor’s Visit, c. 1658, oil on canvas, 80 x 75 cm (31 1/2 x 29 9/16 in.) in the Andrew W. Mellon Collection, was used on the cover of Marilyn Stokstad’s second edition of Art History.
Frits Thaulow (1847 – 5 November 1906) was a Norwegian impressionist painter.Born in Christiania, Thaulow was educated at the Academy of Art in Copenhagen in 1870-72, and in the following years 1873-75 he was under the tuition of Hans Gude at the Baden School of Art in Karlsruhe.Thaulow then lived mainly in Paris, France, being influenced by French impressionism.
Thaulow returned to Norway in 1880. He became one of the leading young figures in the Norwegian art scene, together with Christian Krohg and Erik Werenskiold, and helped established the first National Art Exhibit (also known as Høstutstillingen, the Autumn Exhibit) in 1882.
The National Gallery of Norway feature 37 of his works.He later returned to France. He died in the Netherlands
Abbott Handerson Thayer’s Formative years and return to New Hampshire
Abbott Handerson Thayer was born in Boston, Massachusetts. The son of a country doctor, his childhood was spent in rural New Hampshire, near Keene, at the foot of Mount Monadnock. In that rural setting, he became an amateur naturalist (in his own words, he was “bird crazy”), a hunter and a trapper. He studied Audubon’s Birds of America on an almost daily basis, experimented with taxidermy, and made his first artworks: watercolor paintings of animals.
At age 18, he moved to Brooklyn, New York, to study painting at the Brooklyn Art School and the National Academy of Design. In 1875, having married Kate Bloede, he moved to Paris, where he studied for four years at the École des Beaux-Arts, with Henri Lehmann and Jean-Léon Gérome, and where his closest friend became the American artist George de Forest Brush. Returning to New York, he set up his own portrait studio (which he shared with Daniel Chester French), became active in the Society of American Painters, and began to take in apprentices.
Life became all but unbearable for Thayer and his wife in the early 1880s, when two of their small children died unexpectedly, just one year apart. Emotionally devastated, they spent the next several years moving from place to place, gradually severing their ties to New York. Although he was not yet financially secure, Thayer’s growing reputation led to more portrait commissions than he could accept.Among his sitters were Mark Twain and Henry James, but the subjects of many of his paintings were the three remaining Thayer children, Mary, Gerald and Gladys.
In 1898, Thayer visited St Ives, Cornwall and, carrying an introductory letter from C. Hart Merrian, the Chief of the US Biological Survey in Washington, D.C., applied to the lord of the Manor of St Ives and Treloyhan, Henry Arthur Mornington Wellesley, the 3rd Earl Cowley, for permission to collect specimens of birds from the cliffs at St Ives. In 1901, he and his wife settled permanently in Dublin, New Hampshire, where they had often vacationed and where Thayer had grown up. Soon after, when her father died, Thayer’s wife lapsed into an irreversible depression, which led to her confinement in an asylum, the decline of her health, and eventual death, on May 3, 1891.
Soon after, Thayer married their long-time friend, Emma Beach, whose father owned The New York Sun. He and his second wife spent their remaining years in rural New Hampshire, living a spartan existence and working productively. Eccentric and opinionated, Thayer grew more so as he aged, and his family’s manner of living reflected his strongly held beliefs: the Thayers typically slept outdoors year-round in order to enjoy the benefits of fresh air,and the three children were never enrolled in school. The younger two, Gerald and Gladys, fully shared their father’s enthusiasms, and became painters. Throughout this latter part of his life, among Thayer’s Dublin neighbors was George de Forest Brush, with whom (when they were not quarreling) he collaborated on matters pertaining to camouflage.
