Daniel Chester French is best known as the sculptor of the Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial. For more, see the first post in this series. In this post: a selection of French’s works…
King Lear opens with Lear demanding that his daughters tell him how much they love him, before he divides his kingdom between them. In this ten-foot-wide painting of that scene,…
Elijah Boardman (1760-1823) In 1790, when Elijah was thirty years old, John Ramage painted his two-inch high portrait on ivory. From it, you'd probably recognize Elijah if you met him on…
In college, I had a poster of Autumn Landscape on my wall. It's much better on a computer screen, which provides some of the glow that the back-lighting does at the…
The Metropolitan Museum of Art keeps all the works in this post in the American Wing, on the west side of the second floor (Gallery 706). Among the unforgettable images…
The first part of this essay includes an introduction and a section on drawings for study. The second part is the beginning of the discussion of drawings as compositional studies…
The first part of this essay includes an introduction and a section on drawings for study. 2nd type of drawing: Drawings as studies for paintings Susanna and the Elders, ca.…
This essay was written in 2005, when the Metropolitan Museum of Art had a wonderful exhibition of drawings by Peter Paul Rubens. That one's long gone, but if you're in…
Tucked away in the triangular Lehman Wing, at the far west side of the Metropolitan Museum, is one of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres's most stunning portraits. Its subject is wealthy, aristocratic beauty…
Even in an era when scientific discoveries were being made with astonishing rapidity, man's first piloted flight in 1783 ranked as an awe-inspiring event. The Montgolfier brothers began experimenting with…