When I started reading about Laurent de La Hyre's Allegory of Grammar (more on that painting below), I was shocked to discover that I had earned a Bachelor of Arts degree without…
The Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister (Old Masters Picture Gallery) is part of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (Dresden State Art Collections). It was founded in the early 18th century by Augustus the…
Years ago I bought this poster of an exuberant bouquet by Jan van Huysum (1682-1749), which was at the time on loan to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. It's…
There's a joke that all the famous paintings whose location you can't remember are in the Museo di Capodimonte, a palace built in 1738 atop a hill in Naples. Among many…
Frederick Church and Albert Bierstadt painted huge, magnificent canvases of the American West and other exotic locales: people paid just to look at them. The Metropolitan Museum's site describes the viewing…
Because I’m a mom who writes about painting and sculpture, friends often ask me how I’d introduce a kid to art. The suggestions below are a combination of what I…
"The Lady Clare," by Alfred Lord Tennyson It was the time when lilies blow, And clouds are highest up in air, Lord Ronald brought a lily-white doe To give his…
First an an occasional series of posts on works I'd love to visit again ... or see for the first time. My choices for the Five Favorites series aren't all…
Reynolds's Captain Coussmaker always makes me think of the Scarlet Pimpernel, even though the Pimpernel did his heroic deeds in disguise, not in uniform. The real Capt. George K.H. Coussemaker (1759-1801) served in…
Years ago I heard a great lecturer talk about several wonderful pieces of art. Unlike other lecturers and writers I'd heard, she didn't discuss the significance of the works for the history of art…