A Mind of Winter

Winter’s arrival can bring a contemplative, philosophical turn to an artist’s mind. The faded dawns, gray-velvet afternoons and sparkling-clear nights can inflect paintings of winter with a quiet, melancholy stillness present at no other time [...]

By |2023-12-21T15:59:50-05:00December 21st, 2023|

The Italian Sargent?

He was the most fashionable portraitist in the most fashionable place in the Western world: Parisian high society during the Belle Epoch, or “Beautiful Period” of 1871–1880, a golden age of aristocratic prosperity and joie de [...]

By |2023-12-19T12:48:24-05:00December 19th, 2023|

Monet’s Poplars

Claude Monet, not that he was some sort of all-powerful art god or something (spoiler: he was), once diverted a branch of the Epte River. Though it sounds like something only heroes like Hercules can [...]

By |2023-12-12T12:20:55-05:00December 12th, 2023|

Japan’s van Gogh

You can learn a lot from studying artists who never gave up. Consider the difficult life and late-blooming career of Shiko Munakata. The young man who would eventually be “Japan’s van Gogh” hadn’t gone to [...]

By |2023-12-08T11:20:22-05:00December 8th, 2023|
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