Thought and Memory

Tag: Art

  • A Breathtaking Journey to the “Top of the Ridge”

    “Top of the Ridge” by Lafayette Maynard Dixon is a breathtaking masterpiece that effortlessly captures the rugged beauty and untamed spirit of the American West. Dixon’s attention to detail and skillful brushwork transport viewers to a world of vast landscapes and serene solitude. This painting is a true testament to the enduring power of art to evoke emotions and inspire awe.

    Lafayette Maynard Dixon was a renowned American artist, celebrated for his iconic portrayals of the American West. Born in Fresno, California, in 1875, he was deeply influenced by the landscapes and cultures of the Southwest. Dixon’s artistic journey began in his youth, as he passionately sketched and painted scenes depicting the frontier.

    Dixon hailed from a family with Confederate roots that had relocated to California after the American Civil War. His father, Henry “Harry” St. John Dixon, transitioned from being a Confederate officer to becoming a rancher. Supported by a nurturing environment, Dixon’s mother, Constance Maynard, a well-educated daughter of a Navy officer from San Francisco, nurtured his love for literature and art, encouraging his writing and drawing pursuits.

    During his early career, Dixon explored various artistic styles, including Impressionism and Tonalism. However, it was his profound admiration for the American West and its distinct character that ultimately became the defining theme of his work. He rose to prominence as a prominent member of the Taos Society of Artists, significantly contributing to the promotion of the Western art movement.

    Dixon’s paintings masterfully captured the vast, open landscapes, cowboys, Native Americans, and the rugged beauty of the West. Through bold brushstrokes, vibrant colors, and a keen understanding of light and shadow, he skillfully conveyed the essence of the region. His artworks not only showcased the physical features of the West but also reflected his deep spiritual and emotional connection with the land.

    Beyond his artistic endeavors, Dixon held a deep admiration for Native American culture. He dedicated himself to preserving and honoring their traditions through his art, extensively traveling throughout the Southwest and immersing himself in the study of Native American tribes. Their customs and rituals became integral elements in his artwork.

    Throughout his career, Dixon received widespread recognition and acclaim for his unique artistic style, capable of evoking awe and nostalgia in viewers. His works have been displayed in prominent galleries and museums, and his enduring legacy continues to inspire artists and art enthusiasts to this day.

    Lafayette Maynard Dixon’s contributions to American art are immeasurable. His ability to capture the very essence of the American West in his paintings has left an indelible mark on the art world. Through his art, he immortalized the spirit of the frontier and the timeless beauty of the landscapes he held dear. Dixon’s powerful storytelling, technical brilliance, and profound connection to the natural world make his art a source of celebration and admiration.

  • The Madonna of the Lilies

    The Virgin of the Lilies (French: La Vierge au lys), also known as The Madonna of the Lilies, is an 1899 oil painting by the French artist William-Adolphe Bouguereau, now owned by a private owner.

    William-Adolphe Bouguereau 30 November 1825 – 19 August 1905) was a French academic painter. In his realistic genre paintings, he used mythological themes, making modern interpretations of classical subjects, with an emphasis on the female human body. During his life, he enjoyed significant popularity in France and the United States, was given numerous official honors, and received top prices for his work. As the quintessential salon painter of his generation, he was reviled by the Impressionist avant-garde. By the early twentieth century, Bouguereau and his art fell out of favor with the public, due in part to changing tastes. In the 1980s, a revival of interest in figure painting led to a rediscovery of Bouguereau and his work. He finished 822 known paintings, but the whereabouts of many are still unknown.

  • The Creation

    The six days of the Creation. This is a page size miniature that Michiel van der Borch made in a manuscript of Jacob van Maerlant’s rhymed Bible. The text was Van Maerlant’s translation and adaptation of Petrus Comestor’s Historia scholastica.

    Michiel put his name and the date below another miniature in the manuscript, making him the first painter known by name in the Netherlands.

    Top left: God addresses a group of angels, who represent Light.

    Center left: God creates a firmament which he called Heaven. It divided the waters in heaven and below.

    Bottom left: on the third day God separated land and water in the waters below. He made plants and trees grow on the land.

    Top right: on the fourth day God set the sun, the moon and the stars in the firmament of the heaven.

    Center right: the creation of the great whales, the fish, and of the birds.

    Bottom right: the sixth day. God created cattle, “creeping thing”, wild animals, and, finally, man. God pulls Eve from one of sleeping Adam’s ribs.

  • On the 400th Thanksgiving.

    The First Thanksgiving, 1621

    This is the 400th anniversary of the first Thanksgiving festival in the new world. Our ancestors landed here in 1620 and celebrated their first successful harvest in 1621.

    Jean Leon Gerome Ferris (August 8, 1863 – March 18, 1930) was an best known for his series of 78 scenes from , entitled The Pageant of a Nation, the largest series of American historical paintings by a single artist.

  • Save your strength for better times to come.

    “My comrades, hardly strangers to pain before now, we all have weathered worse. Some god will grant us an end to this as well. You’ve threaded the rocks resounding with Scylla’s howling rabid dogs, and taken the brunt of the Cyclops’ boulders, too. Call up your courage again. Dismiss your grief and fear. A joy it will be one day, perhaps, to remember even this. Through so many hard straits, so many twists and turns our course holds firm for Latium. There Fate holds out a homeland, calm, at peace. There the gods decree the kingdom of Troy will rise again. Bear up. Save your strength for better times to come.” ― Virgil, The Aeneid

    Aeneas and the Sibyl – Unknown

  • Romulus and Remus

    The Shepherd Faustulus Bringing Romulus and Remus to His Wife, Nicolas Mignard (1654)

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/53/Nicolas_Mignard_-_Self-portrait.jpg
    Nicolas Mignard, called Mignard d’Avignon, (7 February 1606 (baptised) – 20 March 1668) was a French painter known for his religious and mythological scenes and portraits. He spent most of his active life in Avignon creating religious and mythological paintings for religious institutions and stately homes but ended his career as court painter in Paris.

  • The Virgin in Prayer

    Full title: The Virgin in Prayer Artist: Sassoferrato Date made: 1640-50 Source: http://www.nationalgalleryimages.co.uk/ Contact: picture.library@nationalgallery.co.uk Copyright © The National Gallery, London

    Giovanni Battista Salvi da Sassoferrato (August 25, 1609 – August 8, 1685), also known as Giovanni Battista Salvi, was an Italian Baroque painter, known for his archaizing commitment to Raphael’s style. He is often referred to only by the town of his birthplace (Sassoferrato), as was customary in his time, and for example seen with da Vinci and Caravaggio.

    Self-portrait – Giovanni Battista Salvi da Sassoferrato

  • Arnold Bocklin’s Polyphemus

    Böcklin’s original training as a landscape painter shines through in this unconventional interpretation of an episode from the ancient Greek epic poem the Odyssey. Crashing waves meet jagged rocks in a spray and scurry of foam. Escaping from the island of the Cyclopes—one-eyed, ill-tempered giants—the hero Odysseus calls back to the shore, taunting the Cyclops Polyphemus, who heaves a boulder after the boat. Unlike Academic colleagues who treated ancient mythology with reverence and solemnity, Böcklin often played up strange, grotesque, and even ridiculous elements of these stories, conjuring a pre-Classical world governed by violence and lust.

  • Alexander Litovchenko’s “Charon carries souls across the river Styx”

    Charon, the ferryman of the dead in Greek mythology, shown in this nineteenth-century painting by Alexander Litovchenko.

    In Greek mythology and Roman mythology, Charon or Kharon is a psychopomp, the ferryman of Hades who carries souls of the newly deceased across the river Styx that divided the world of the living from the world of the dead. A coin to pay Charon for passage, usually an obolus or danake, was sometimes placed in or on the mouth of a dead person. Some authors say that those who could not pay the fee, or those whose bodies were left unburied, had to wander the shores for one hundred years, until they were allowed to cross the river.

    Alexander Dmitrievich Litovchenko was a Ukrainian-born Russian painter who specialized in depicting Muscovite Russia of the 16th and 17th centuries.

  • Guido Reni’s Michael

    Guido Reni’s Michael (in Santa Maria della Concezione church, Rome, 1636) tramples Satan. A mosaic of the same painting decorates St. Michael’s Altar in St. Peter’s Basilica.

    Michael is an archangel mentioned three times in the Book of Daniel.

    In the New Testament, Michael leads God’s armies against Satan’s forces in the Book of Revelation, where during the war in heaven he defeats Satan. In the Epistle of Jude, Michael is specifically referred to as “the archangel Michael”. Sanctuaries to Michael were built by Christians in the 4th century, when he was first seen as a healing angel. Over time his role became one of a protector and the leader of the army of God against the forces of evil. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_(archangel)