Category Archives: Art

Love: American Style.

View larger image here.

At first glance, you see a father standing in a field with his son, but there is so much more. Placing his arm tenderly over the shoulder of his son, the father acts as a mentor. Standing together in the field, the son humbly listens to his father. Their heads are bowed as if in prayer. Looking further into the distance, you can see a mother holding her infant son. The daughter brings a pitcher of water, and the younger son runs eagerly to his father across the field.

[...]

Source.

This painting was Rockwell’s 257th overall of 322 total pictures featured on the cover of The Post. Rockwell’s career with the Post spanned 47 years, from his first cover illustration, Boy With Baby Carriage in 1916 to his last, Portrait of John F. Kennedy, in 1963.

View larger image here.

Norman Rockwell (American, 1894-1978). Christmas Homecoming, 1948. Cover illustration for The Saturday Evening Post, December 25, 1948. Oil on canvas. 35 1/2 x 33 1/2 in. (90.2 x 85.1 cm).

Norman Rockwell’s Christmas Homecoming appeared on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post published December 25, 1948.

The original oil on canvas painting, 35.5 x 33.5 inches or 90 x 85 cm, is currently part of the collection of the Norman Rockwell Museum of Stockbridge Massachusetts.

This painting was Rockwell’s 257th overall of 322 total pictures featured on the cover of The Post. Rockwell’s career with the Post spanned 47 years, from his first cover illustration, Boy With Baby Carriage in 1916 to his last, Portrait of John F. Kennedy, in 1963.

This was also the seventh Rockwell cover in 1948. The Post featured a Rockwell illustration on its cover seven times in 1948.

Source.

Heade’s primary interest in landscape, and the works for which he is perhaps best known today, was the New England coastal salt marsh. In 1883 Heade moved to Saint Augustine, Florida and took as his primary landscape subject the surrounding subtropical marshland.

Click here for larger image.

Martin Johnson Heade (August 11, 1819 – September 4, 1904) was a prolific American painter known for his salt marsh landscapes, seascapes, portraits of tropical birds, and still lifes. His painting style and subject matter, while derived from the romanticism of the time, is regarded by art historians as a significant departure from that of his peers.

Heade was born and raised in 1819 in Lumberville, Pennsylvania, a small hamlet along the Delaware River in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Until the mid 1850s, his family ran what is now called the Lumberville Store and Post Office, the village’s sole general store. The family spelling of the name was Heed.

Heade received his first art training from the folk artist Edward Hicks, who lived in nearby Newton, and possibly also from Edward’s cousin, Thomas Hicks. Heade was painting by 1839; his earliest known work is a portrait from that year. He traveled abroad and lived in Rome for two years. He first exhibited his work in 1841, at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadephia, and again in 1843 at the National Academy of Design in New York. Heade began exhibiting regularly in 1848, after another trip to Europe, and became an itinerant artist until he settled in New York in 1859.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Johnson_Heade

Original source.

St. Cecilia, a Portrait portrays Martha Crowninshield Derby, an American expatriate living in London, as Saint Cecilia, the patron saint of music.

Click here for larger image.

St. Cecilia, a Portrait portrays Martha Crowninshield Derby, an American expatriate living in London, as Saint Cecilia, the patron saint of music. Surrounded by luxurious furnishings and wearing a fashionable empire-waist dress, Mrs. Derby demonstrates her musical talents by playing a harp—an instrument chosen to echo her graceful figure and emphasize her slender fingers—as she is gazed upon by adoring cherubs. Copley likely created this work in response to earlier versions of women posed as St. Cecilia by his rival Sir Joshua Reynolds.

Measuring 92 by 58 inches, the painting is one of the largest paintings in the American art collection. Currently on display at the Mint Museum of Art on Randolph Road, it will be reinstalled as part of the Museum’s holdings of Colonial and Federal portraiture in the new Mint Museum Uptown, scheduled to open in October 2010.

[...]

Original source.

Cole often provided text to accompany his paintings, but did not comment on The Titan’s Goblet, leaving his intentions open to debate.

Click here for larger image.

The Titan’s Goblet is an oil painting by the English-born American landscape artist Thomas Cole. Painted in 1833, it is perhaps the most enigmatic of Cole’s allegorical or imaginary landscape scenes. It is a work that “defies full explanation”, according to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Titan’s Goblet has been called a “picture within a picture” and a “landscape within a landscape”: the goblet stands on conventional terrain, but its inhabitants live along its rim in a world all their own. Vegetation covers the entire brim, broken only by two tiny buildings, a Greek temple and an Italian palace. The vast waters are dotted with sailing vessels. Where the water spills upon the ground below, grass and a more rudimentary civilization spring up.

Original source.