Tuesday, April 24, 2018

Nineteenth-Century European Paintings of Meager Renown

Philip Reinagle
Cupid inspiring the plants with love
before 1805
oil on canvas (for engraved book illustration)
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Jean-Victor Bertin
Landscape with sheep and a woman sewing
ca. 1805
oil on canvas
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Landscape

1

A Personage is seen
Leaning upon a cushion
Printed with cornflowers.

A Child appears
Holding up a pencil.

"This is a picture
(Says the Child to the Personage)
Of the vortex."

"Draw it your own way,"
Says the Personage.

(Music is heard 
Pure in the island windows.
Sea-music on the Child's
Interminable shore, his coral home.)

Behind a blue mountain
Covered with chickenfoot trees,
The molten sun appears,
A heavy, painted flower.

A Personage is seen
Leaning upon the mountain
With the sun in one hand
And a pencil in the other.

"This is a picture
(Says the Personage to the Child)
Of the beginning of the world."

"Or of its end!" cries the child
Hiding himself in the cushions.

2

A Woman appears
Leaning upon the Child's shoulder.
He looks up again.

"This is my Mother
(Says the Child to the Personage)
Older than the moon."

(Grecian horses are heard
Returning from the foam
Of the pure island's windows,
And the Child's horizons.)

"My Mother is a world
(Says the Child to the Personage)
Printed with gillyflowers."

"Paint  her your own way"
(Says the Personage to the Child).
And, lifting up his pencil,
He crosses out the sun.

– Thomas Merton (1957)

Jacques-Laurent Agasse
The Mail Guard
ca. 1818
oil on canvas
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

William Etty
Two male nude studies
ca. 1818-20
oil on paper, mounted on canvas
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Louis-Auguste Gérard
Landscape with a bridge
ca. 1820
oil on canvas
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

James Stephanoff
Coronation of George IV
ca. 1821
watercolor
British Museum

Vicente López y Portaña
Portrait of Maria Isabel du Bourbón, Queen of the Two Sicilies
1829-30
oil on canvas
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

William James Müller
Landscape with cottage
before 1845
oil on canvas
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Clarkson Stanfield
Coast scene near Genoa
1846
oil on canvas
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Antoine Chintreuil
Landscape with an ash tree
ca. 1850-57
oil on canvas
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Frederic Leighton
Miss Laing
1853
oil on canvas
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Franz Xaver Winterhalter
Portrait of Sophia Frederika Mathilda, Princess of Württemberg
ca. 1863-73
oil on canvas
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Cornelis Springer
Zuiderhavendijk, Enkhuizen
1868
oil on panel
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Richard Roland Holst
Corner of a garden with nasturtiums
1891
oil on panel
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam