Beautiful Tarnished Lines

(National Arts Club, NYC)

by Robert Edward Bullock

Drawing is the most immediate and direct of the visual arts. Held in the hand, a pencil or charcoal is a natural extension of the arm and therefor the mind. When Michelangelo said that drawing is the mother of all the arts he spoke as a draftsman of the human form and as an architect.

The National Arts Club, on the south side of Gramercy Park in Manhattan, has on display an exhibit of silverpoint drawings by more than 36 contemporary artists exploring the expressive range of this centuries-old medium. A variant of what is generally called "metal-point", silverpoint is, quite literally, drawing with a piece of silver wire on a prepared surface. The silver leaves behind lines, just as a graphite pencil does, but these lines tarnish to a beautiful, mellow effect. 

The medium itself dates back to at least the 15th-century but fell out of favor as other drawing materials were developed. Its visual quality, however, cannot be matched, as its range encompasses the evanescent traces of Jeffrey Lewis' "Bowl & House", to the shadowy depths of "Self-Portrait, Sick" by Evan Kitson.

The traditional, quiet, blue gray of the prepared surface in "Shell", further heightened by white chalk, emphasizes the beauty of silverpoint and is evocative of the sense of tradition associated with the medium. Here, the portrait of an adolescent is framed by the remains of a conch shell in a strange overlapping of human and nature, individual and archetype, youth and deterioration. In it, August Mosca captures something of the enigma of creating something new from traditional materials.

^ "Shell" by August Mosca, ca. 1980s

Color is used to great effect also in other works. Jeannine Cook's "Tillandsia Recurvate", highlighted with white on pale blue paper, uses a horizontal format to allow its serpentine plant forms to twist and curl about as flower buds trail upward. In "Natalia Sleeping", by Juliette Aristides, a soft peach orange surface envelopes the sleeping figure, whose features are softly highlighted with white.

^ "Tillandsia Recurvate" by Jeannine Cook, 2007  

Silverpoint's potential for incredible subtlety of line and tone is particularly suited to portraiture, a theme that runs through many of the works. "Innocence" by Sherry Camhy pushes the medium's range of lights and darks almost to its limits, the subject's life-like dimensions enhanced by both its size and the direct eye contact of the subject.

^ "Innocence" (detail) by Sherry Camhy, 2008

From Koo Schadler's Renaissance-inspired "Abigail in Black Hat", to the soulful gaze of Costa Vavagiakis' "Maria XXI", from Burton Silverman's "Model Resting" (from 1949, it is the earliest work in the exhibit), to Ephraim Rubenstein's "Maddie Asleep", with its sense of quiet and peace, both the individual and a momentary sense of time are captured in the tarnished lines of precious metal.

^ "Maddie Asleep" by Ephraim Rubenstein, 1990

Two works, not hung next to each other, nevertheless kept playing off each other in my mind. "Purple Hyacinth for Hendrix", a relatively small work by Margaret Krug, creates a very poetic sense of space as two small flowers, their stalks rising from the lower right quarter, almost seem to pause, overwhelmed in the light that floods around them. In contrast to this effect, the energetic, almost tense, musculature of Lea Wight's "Hand Study" fills the earth-toned picture plane. In it, two views of the human hand express the individual as well as any face ever could.

^ "Purple Hyacinth for Hendrix" by Margaret Krug, 2010

^ "Hand Study" by Lea Wight, 2013

But what makes an artist pick up a pencil or a stylus and draw, anyway? The mind is always searching curiously whatever is in front of it. Drawing is an attempt to understand how something is constructed, whether that be the human hand, the human face, a shell, or a flower. To draw, as Ruskin said, is to see, and "to see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion, all in one."

^ "Maria XXI" by Costa Vavagiakis, 2007

"The Silverpoint Exhibition" is on view through December 21 at The National Arts Club, located at 15 Gramercy Park South, New York, NY 10003. nationalartsclub.org 212-475-3424.

Technical information on silverpoint drawing can found in Bullock Online's March 2012 blog entry, "drawing and practice".

More information about Robert Edward Bullock's work can be found at BullockOnline.com

Simplicity and Imagination

(New York Academy of Art)

By ROBERT EDWARD BULLOCK, Special to the Sun | November 14, 2013

In nature, it is said that every action is balanced by an opposite and equal reaction. The art world is not bound to this law of physics but nonetheless displays a similar pattern in how modern art movements react to each other.

Turning away from her Abstract Expressionist training in the late 1960s, Martha Erlebacher went on to become a master of representational painting and brought to it a freshness and humor that is really pretty wonderful. In over 30 works, ranging from imaginative still life compositions to metaphor-loaded representations of the human form, the New York Academy of Art's current retrospective explores and celebrates the career of this renowned and talented painter who passed away earlier this year.

The dozen or so still-life compositions on display are amazing in their simplicity and imagination.

(read the full review at The New York Sun.)

Danish Surprise

(Scandinavian House, New York City)

By ROBERT EDWARD BULLOCK, Special to the Sun | November 9, 2013

The metamorphoses that swept European painting in the 19th century were dramatic, often abrupt, and stylistically further apart than their dates would suggest. In "Danish Painting from the Golden Age to the Modern Breakthrough," on display at Scandinavia House in Manhattan, 37 masterworks from the period between the Napoleonic Wars and the early 20th century offer up beautiful works along with some surprises.

Two works at the start hint at the breadth and the continuity of the works exhibited. J. Th. Lundbye's "Landscape Near Lake Arresø," 1838, is a 19th-century idyll, the freshness and simplicity of its warm green and pearl gray-blue palette lending a charming sense of air and light to the scene. In fluid daubs, shadows among the stands of trees indicate the direction of the light as a low rise in the land leads to the gauzy distant tones, little clouds jutting across the sky to the horizon.

(read the full review at The New York Sun.)

Perfection of Forms

(Museum of Biblical Arts and The Dahesh Museum of Art)

By ROBERT EDWARD BULLOCK, Special to the Sun | October 18, 2013

For several centuries, the Academic tradition of representational art achieved the seemingly contradictory goals of both the imitation of nature and the perfection of forms. "Sacred Visions," which opened Friday at the Museum of Biblical Art, brings together over 30 works by Gustave Doré, Jean-Léon Gérôme and their contemporaries, from The Dahesh Museum of Art and will go far to rekindle the public's interest in, and understanding of, their achievements in the 19th and early 20th century.

The Bible stories were primary subject matter in the formal academies such as the École des Beaux-Art in Paris and, combined with the Academic study and mastery of human anatomy, made for powerful and expressive works.

(read the full review at The New York Sun.)

Modern Art Turns 100

(The New York Historical Society)

By ROBERT EDWARD BULLOCK, Special to the Sun | October 12, 2013

In 1913, The International Exhibition of Modern Art landed at New York's 69th Regiment Armory and caused such a scene that we are still talking about it a century later. In "The Armory Show at 100," which opened Friday, The New-York Historical Society assesses the impact on American culture when modern art arrived full-force and roaring, whether we were ready for it or not.

The Armory Show, as it came to be known, displayed American paintings by William Glackens, George Bellows, Robert Henri and others alongside those of European artists such as Odilon Redon, Paul Cézanne, and Vincent van Gogh. Depending on one's view, the exhibition was either a symbol of progress or regression, simultaneously derided and celebrated as it traveled to Chicago and Boston.

(read the full review at The New York Sun)

Venetian Urgency and Grace

(The Morgan Library & Museum) 

by Robert Edward Bullock, Special to the Sun

Venice catches our attention with a strange, opulent theatricality, like brightly colored banners fluttering in the afternoon sun. In Tiepolo, Guardi, and Their World: Eighteenth-Century Venetian Drawings, which opened on Friday September 27, The Morgan Library and Museum looks at the role of drawing in the city which became an epicenter of international arts patronage as its political power attenuated and died. 

Over 100 works from The Morgan's vast collection provide a sweeping assessment of the achievements of this period with names that are practically synonymous with Venice --- Giambattista and Domenico Tiepolo, Canaletto, the Guardis, along with Piranessi, Gaspar Diziani, Francesco Tironi, and others. 

The exhibit opens with Sebastiano Ricci's "Two Angels", a modest-size drawing in ink and wash over charcoal, strangely beautiful for the sculptural form the figures possess, intensely present yet otherworldly. From Pietro Longhi's poetic "Pastoral Landscape" to the bucolic nostalgia of Marco Ricci's "A Roman Capriccio", the exhibit spans scenes of daily life and fanciful compositions, preparatory studies for commissioned works and independent finished pieces.

Of the nine works by Giovanni Battista Piazetta (1682-1754), "Portrait of a Girl with a Pear" and "Young Woman with a Tambourine" stand out for their meticulous description .....

(read the full review at The New York Sun)

                                   ^ Marco Ricci, 1676-1729, "A Roman Capriccio" (The Morgan Library & Museum)

^ Giovanni Battista Piazetta, 1682-1754, "Young Woman with a Tambourine" (The Morgan Library & Museum)

                             ^ Francesco Guardi, 1712-1793, "View of Levico in the Valsugana" (The Morgan Library)

                                     ^ Canaletto, 1697-1786, "Architectural Capriccio" (The Morgan Library & Museum)

       ^ Giovanni Battista (Giambattista) Tiepolo, 1696-1770, "Psyche Transported to Olympus" (The Morgan Library & Museum)

^ Giovanni Battista (Giambattista) Tiepolo, 1696-1770, "Virgin and Child Seated on a Globe"

                                                           (The Morgan Library & Museum)

^ Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo, 1726?-1804, "The Holy Family Arrives at the Robber's Farm"

                                                          (The Morgan Library & Museum)

                                 ^ Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo, 1726?-1804, "The Last Illness of Punchinello"

                                                                  (The Morgan Library & Museum)

A Definite Swagger

(New-York Historical Society)

by Robert Edward Bullock, Special to the Sun

In the period between the American Civil War and the outbreak of World War I the United States became a rich and powerful nation. "Beauty's Legacy: Gilded Age Portraits in America", opening Friday at The New-York Historical Society, examines the intense rejuvenation of portraiture in America during this pivotal point in more than sixty works in oil and watercolor, and two small bronzes.

The half-century that followed Reconstruction saw the nation wearied by carnage and destruction transform into an economic powerhouse, its national identity defined during a period of intense entrepreneurialism. Personal fortunes of "new money" came with prestige in the competitive environment of high society and fed a demand for portraiture which helped to both secure and advertise power, wealth, and virtue. Competition for commissions came from both sides of the Atlantic, with talents such as Sargent, Beckwith, Bouguereau, Rembrandt Peal, and Gilbert Stuart all answering the call.

The exhibit ranges from the modern sensibility and dash of Anders Zorn's "Samuel Untermyer" (1901) to the sweet charm and intimacy of Lilly Martin Spencer's "Robert Green Ingersoll with His Grandchildren" (1898), to the assured authority and measured gaze of "The Right Reverend Henry Codman Potter" (1887) by Eastman Johnson .....

(read the full review at The New York Sun)

^ Théobald Chartran, "James Hazen Hyde", 1901  (New-York Historical Society)

^ Eastman Johnson, "The Right Reverend Henry Codman Potter", 1887 (New-York Historical Society)

^ Fernand Paillet, "Mrs Jerome Napoleon Bonaparte", 1892 (NewYork Historical Society)

Hildesheim's Medieval Splendor

(Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gallery 521: Special Exhibition)

Hildesheim's Medieval Splendor 

by Robert Edward Bullock, Special to the Sun

===================================================

Twelfth-century Europe was a complex and varied culture of often overlapping religion, politics, and private life. This is reflected in the arts of the period, a high-water mark of imagination and craftsmanship. Like other cultures of deep and widely held faith, Medieval Europe - Christendom - created precious objects that, born of such high sentiments, were like prayers rendered in gold, silver, and precious stones.

Works of art delivered the Christian message by glorifying the Holy. Just as in the Torah, where God instructs the Jews to use "the purest gold" in the temple, the most precious materials were appropriate in the service of the Catholic Church. In his “De Consecratione,” the twelfth-century abbot of St-Denis, Abbot Suger, praised the working of gold and silver and precious stones to "conjoinest the material with the immaterial, the corporeal with the spiritual, the human with the Divine". 

Sparkling like King Solomon's mines, "Medieval Treasures from Hildesheim" is the Metropolitan Museum's dazzling new exhibit of church furnishings and treasures from Hildesheim Cathedral in Germany's Lower Saxony region. Consecrated in 872 and designated a UNESCO world cultural heritage site in 1985 along with Saint Michael's Church in Hildesheim, its collection of .....

(read the full review at The New York Sun)

Reichenau Gospel Lectionary and Collectar, ca. 1010–30 (Dombibliothek Hildesheim; Photograph by Lutz Engelhardt)

Ringelheim Crucifix, ca. 1000 / before 1022 (Dom-Museum Hildesheim, on loan from the church of Sts. Abdon and Sennen, Salzgitter- Ringelheim)

Reliquary of Saint Oswald, ca. 1185–89; partly restored 1779 (Dom-Museum Hildesheim; Photograph by Lutz Engelhardt)

Flesh and Shadow

(Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gallery 602: European Paintings)

Flesh and Shadow

by Robert Edward Bullock, Special to the Sun

Two paintings currently on loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art provide a glimpse of the achievements and the variety of subjects in seventeenth-century Italian painting. A fertile and creative artistic environment gave birth to some of the greatest talents in Western art that, like constellations of bright stars, cause us to stop and stare nearly four hundred years later.

Alongside scenes from the Bible and saints lives were those from ancient mythology, such as Danaë. Confined to a tower as a virgin by her father, the king, because of a prophecy that he would be killed by the son she would bear, Danaë is visited by the god Jupiter, who appears as a shower of gold and lays with her for the night. Their son, Perseus, grows to one day behead Medusa and to accidentally kill his grandfather. 

Orazio Gentileschi (b.1563) dramatizes the story's key event with mannerist effect. His "Danaë" (ca.1621) shows the princess full and fertile, the classical ideal, reclining on a royal bed against the enveloping shadows as a putto clumsily raises the heavy drapery, bathed in the light of the divine. The veil separating the worlds of gods and men is, in effect, momentarily .....

(read the full review at The New York Sun)

"Danaë" by Orazio Gentileschi. Oil on canvas, ca.1621. Private collection on temporary loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY

"St Dominic in Penitence" by Filippo Tarchiani. Oil on canvas, no date given (first quarter of 17th-century). Private collection on temporary loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY.

(Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gallery 828 – Modern & Contemporary Art Collection. Notes of July 18, 2013)

Re. Garden at Vaucresson by Edouard Vuillard: There is so much in this painting that fascinates. The sense of density and build-up, of thickness and tangle, which must surely result, in part, from the actual working technique, merges in a sense with the imagery itself. The high summer growth and quiet sunny heat of a private garden is brought forward and presses against the eye with an almost tapestry-like effect. Vuillard effectively cuts the sharpness of his high-keyed, modern palette by applying color over color, allowing the ground and subsequent paint layers to lend themselves, in total, to a more subdued effect. What, on its own, would be a rather acidic yellow-green is, instead, an intricate web of brushwork of muddy yellows, lime greens, and raw siennas, and in the right quarter of the image, a soft (nickel titanium?) butter yellow, quieted down and controlled with dull pinks and browns. Elsewhere, the effect of dappled sunlight and strong, cool shadows give definition to space and forms.

There’s a trick, of sorts, to this. The broken, rough edges of forms and shimmering touches of color all transmit the sense of sunshine and warmth. The plant growth in the foreground is formed with larger, bolder shapes and brushwork, bringing these forms closer to us. The lilac hedge that vertically divides the bottom half of the picture plane is a dense network of cool and warm violets, almost dusty purple in the shadows, and rising to grays that touch upon bluish-green in the sunlight. Getting up close to it, there is an almost disorienting handling of the brush here, like crewel-work.

^ Garden at Vaucresson. Tempera (distemper) on canvas. 1920, reworked in 1926, 1935, 1936. Edouard Vuillard (French, b.1868-d.1940)

(Metropolitan Museum of Art, Robert Lehman Collection. Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Paintings. Gallery 957. Notes of May 24, 2013 - cont.)

(^ The Pool [Memory of the Forest of Chambord]. 1839. Théodore Rousseau [1812-1867]. Metropolitan Museum/ Lehman Collection/ Accession Number: 1975.1.204)

Re. The Pool [Memory of the Forest of Chambord]: Carries the generic title of "Landscape" on the tag next to the painting in the gallery. Cerulean blue sky breaking up into whitish-pink horizon visible in center of horizon between two dominant groupings of trees. The bottom 1/3rd is all dark foreground, so the trees and ground are tangled, autumnal, broken by dappled trunks of birch and shade. 

(^ The Pond [La Mare]. 1855. Théodore Rousseau [1812-1867]. Metropolitan Museum/ Lehman Collection/ Accession Number: 1975.1.205)

Re. The Pond [La Mare]: a little more than 2//3rds of the painting is humid cobalt pale blues and soft grays. Again, the dark, shadowy ground cover and trees here almost to black in their darkest values. Both paintings have a pool of water in the central foreground. This is a reoccurring element in Rousseau's landscape, as is the dominant use of dark foreground. 

(Metropolitan Museum of Art, Medieval Art Collection. Notes of May 24, 2013, 6:30 PM)

(^ Saint Peter as the First Pope. ca. before 1348. Spain. Pine partially covered with canvas, gesso, paint. 79 x 22.5 x 13″. Rogers Fund, 1926/ Accession Number: 27.18.2)                             

I watch as one person after another takes pictures of this or that artwork with their tablet or cell phone and walk away --- just walk away. There is no attempt to reckon with the actual thing in front of them. They may as well have stayed home and browsed the collection online. To stand before a 14th-century polychromed Christian sculpture of Saint Peter is to see the physical work of someone who lived and thought and created 700 years ago ---  the grain of the wood, the way the features are carved by hand and gessoed, the way the paint was applied. You see it from the side and their lack of understanding about anatomy and the depth of their faith are all there. That is not something that is recorded in a quick snapshot on a cell phone. But no one cares.

We no longer consider the reproduction to be something to refer to when the original is not available to see. The reproduction is now an acceptable, maybe even preferable, substitute for the original. Why bother standing in front of the physical object itself when you can look at a photo of it (if the photo is ever looked at)? Who cares about the one-on-one interaction that is only possible with the actual thing? Maybe the comment about this, made to me by someone recently, that these pictures are probably just to post on Facebook to appear "cool", is accurate.

(Metropolitan Museum exhibition - The Path of Nature: French Paintings  from the Wheelock Whitney Collection, 1785-1850.) [Notes from April 11, 2013] Re. The Giralda, Seville by Adrian Dauzats: without laboring over minute details, Dauzats gives us indications of various shifts in the color of masonry; the cobalt blue of the sky shows up in the shadows, especially effective where it meets up against the soft cream-colored plaster of the upper structures; soft edges, and allowance for how the trailing of the brush suggests surfaces, are all things I have to learn from as a painter. A really fine sense of balance between the general and the specific creates all these beautiful little forms.

^ The Giralda, Seville. Oil on paper, laid down on canvas. ca.1836/37. Adrien Dauzats (b.1804-d.1868). 


Re. The Gate to the Temple of Luxor by Antoine-Xavier-Gabriel de Gazeau: a humid sky shifts between subtle shifts of whitish hues --- slightly gray blue, white, slightly yellow ochre white.

^ The Gate to the Temple of Luxor. Oil on paper, laid down on canvas. 1836. Antoine-Xavier-Gabriel de Gazeau, comte de La Bouëre (b.1801-d.1881).


Re. Cloud Study (Distant Storm), by Simon Denis: For most of the cloud's edges, the end of the brush was allowed to point outward, creating a feathery edge, instead of using the side of the brush to create a hard edge; a huge amount of sky and cloud formation is held within these small measurements (maybe 8x10"?).

^ Cloud Study (Distant Storms). Oil on paper. ca.1786-1806. Simon Denis (b.1755-d.1813).


Re. Mountainous Landscape at Vicovaro, by Simon Denis: Simon Denis is perfect; straight forward and direct with a keen sense of tone;  all the air and light and grandeur of the place fills his little paintings.
"Each day he painted or drew on the spot, always in a different place; and, in this fashion, he learned, as he himself said, to make studies by making pictures, and to make pictures by making studies." - Joseph Bidauld, french painter, b.1758-d.1846.

^ Mountainous Landscape at Vicovaro. Oil on paper.  ca.1786-97. Simon Denis (b.1755-d.1813).


Re. View in the Gardens of the Villa d'Este, by Léon Pallière: simplicity; all hues toned down (no #1 tone --- pure white); I have read of palettes which included no blues but, rather, black serves the place of it with the very lightest gray (it would need to be a cool black then, not a warm black); this could be an example; how much we are told about the pool's structure in the foreground with only a few simple shapes, carefully calibrated tones, and the drag of the brush; again, no sharp edges, no straight edges, no hard angles; imperfections aid in description and create naturalness.

^ View in the Gardens of the Villa d'Este. Oil on paper, laid down on canvas. ca.1814-17.  Léon Pallière (b.1787-d.1820).


Re. Mountainous Landscape with Bridge, by Eugène-Joseph Verboeckhoven: dramatic use of light hitting pale, massive cliff wall places our attention on the foreground, framed dramatically on either side in other shadowed, steep formations, with masonry protruding like a ridge up the right bank; this light is repeated back further, at its source --- the early evening sun, soft and warm with some faint rosy tone, behind the foreground outcrop; evening light quickly transferring to pale baby blue but the shift is so subtle; distant hills dissolve away from their nearer sibling into soft soft violet grays with no edge, no interruption, the light melts ridges where atmosphere lay.

^ Mountainous Landscape with Bridge. Oil on paper, laid down on canvas. ca.1820s? Eugène-Joseph Verboeckhoven (b.1798-d.1801)

(Metropolitan Museum. Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity exhibit. April 9, 2012, 3 PM) Re. Édouard Manet, a portrait painted by Henri Fantin-Latour; beautiful, reserved palette; clearly delineated forms, simplified and bold; a sense of light and air surrounding a living, breathing figure.

^ Édouard Manet. Oil on canvas, 1867. Henri Fantin-Latour (1836-1904). Art Institute of Chicago collection.

(Metroplitan Museum, Gallery 810: Manet & Impressionism. Fri., 01.18.2013. 5 PM.) Re. Soap Bubbles by Thomas Couture --- contemplative atmosphere of muted tones and values; simple domestic objects (books, a drinking glass, etc.) united by soft, diffused light; a pervading quietness. The wistful, pre-Raphaelite youth seems lost in his own thoughts. Couture allows the brush to trail off and get lost from the viewer's gaze where it needs to --- the shirt cuffs are crisp and sharp at the highlights, soft and a bit muted where they turn down and away from the light. Edges do so much to tell us about what we see, they transmit so much information. With the feel of distemper in some areas, rather than oil paint, and with a sombre tonality, the few bright colors that Couture does make use of almost seem to twinkle --- the red in the chair's upholstery, and the filmy, iridescent blues and pinks of the soap bubbles themselves. Bubbles were a symbol of mortality, and used in vanitas, of which this painting is an example, reminding us that man's existence is transient and only of a moment --- "For He remembered that they were but flesh; a wind that passeth away, and cometh not again." (Psalm 78, King James translation).

^ Soap Bubbles. oil on canvas, ca. 1859. Thomas Couture (1815-1879). Metroplitan Museum of Art, Gallery 810: Manet & Impressionism.

(Metropolitan Museum, Gallery 826: Post-Impressionism. Fri., 01.18, 2013. 4 PM) Re. Odilon Redon's The Chariot of Apollo and Pandora, it seems he found the strangest color relationships --- strange because they seem unreal yet also naturally occurring. His blues and blue-greens seem to be from someplace previously unknown, a vein of newly discovered ore mined beneath the sea, a color belonging to some long-forgotten god.

^ The Chariot of Apollo. oil on canvas, ca. 1905. Odilon Redon (French. 1840-1916). Metropolitan Museum of Art.

^ Pandora. oil on canvas, ca. 1914. Odilon Redon (French. 1840-1916). Metropolitan Museum of Art.

(Metropolitan Museum, Gallery 812: European Paintings. Fri., 11.02, 2012)
Re. River Rocks by Gustave Courbet (French, 1819-1877): (typical of Courbet's late work?) muted, quiet meditation on solitude and peace. Except for a touch of relief in the left foreground, which a patch of sunlight seems to provide, the entire space, a small body of water enclosed by trees and shadowy stillness, is a study of middle and deep values of browns, greens, and blues. Nothig registers lighter than a v.5, and fully a third of the painting is handled in v.8, 9, and 10. His blues (and I remember this from others of his paintings) are green-tinged cerulean opaquely applied and, while not bright, act as a "sweet-spot" among the masses of moist leaves and breathing shadows. Re. Courbet's The Calm Sea, 1869. A wonderful sense of sparkling air and expansiveness, all brought down a bit in tone. His golden sands are ochre, not yellow, and his azure blues have just a touch of gray to take the edge off. Re. Courbet's The Fishing Boat, 1865. The sky with clouds built up along the horizon are especially beautiful --- blued gray masses that have a touch of violet in the gray shift between themselves (v.4 each?),against a quiet sky of dying light shown in an opal pink and baby blue, both knocked down some.

^ The Calm Sea. oil on canvas, 1869. Gustave Courbet (French. 1819-1877). Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Among other things I saw, I want to remember these:
> Sir Seymour Haden [British], 1818-1910 On the Test, ca.1856
> Thomas Frye [Irish], 1711/12-1762 Portrait of a Man, 1760
> William Hoare [British], ca.1707-1792 Portrait of Wm. Pitt the Elder, ca.1754
> Jonathan Richardson, Sr. [British], 1665-1745 Portrait of Jonathan Richardson, Jr., the Artist's Son, 1729
> Cornelius Varley [British], 1781-1873 Portrait of a Man In Profile 
> Josef Diveky [Hungarian], 1887-1951 -Rocking Horse with Three Children -Kaulitz Dolls 
   (I) -Kaulitz Dolls 
   (II) Colored lithographs published by Weiner Werkstätte, 1909
   "The postcards were used to market the workshop's products to a wide audience."
> Richard Teschner [Austrian], 1879-1948
> Vilhelm Hammershøi [Danish], 1864-1916 Moonlight, Strangade 30, 1900 Oil on canvas [severe compositions and limited palette of mostly grays. lovely.]
> Wilhelm Bendz [Danish], 1804-1832 Study of Light Oil on paper
> Johan Christian Dahl [Norwegian], 1788-1857 Cloud Study Oil on paper.
> Fritz Petzholdt [Danish], 1805-1838 German Landscape with View Towards a Broad Valley, ca.1829 Oil on paper
> Richard Wilson [Welsh], 1712/1713-1782 Welsh Landscape with a Ruined Castle by a Lake Oil on wood
> Charles Rémond [German], 1788-1825 Terrace of the Capuchin Garden, Sorrento, ca.1823/24 Oil on paper
> Alexander Desgoffe [French], 1805-1882 Cloud Study with Distant Mountains Oil on paper
> Simon Denis [Flemish], 1755-1813 Aniene River at Tivoli Oil on paper
> Simon Denis Landscape Near Rome During a Storm Oil on paper
> Aldro T. Hibbard
> T. Allen Lawson
> Joseph Wright of Derby, ARA, 1734-1797
> Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, 1824-1898
> Paolo Farinati, 1524-1606

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