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Sir Walter Scott, 1771 - 1832. Novelist and Poet

Artist: Sir Henry Raeburn (Scottish, 1756-1823)

Date: 1822-1823

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, Scotland

Description

Scott's historical novels were read and admired throughout Europe. Those which dealt with Scottish themes, like Heart of Midlothian and Waverley, have had a major influence on how Scots see their own past and on how Scotland is viewed from outside. This portrait was one of the last Raeburn ever worked on, the artist dying only days after its completion. Scott, however, is shown at the peak of his career. Within four years he was bankrupt, and his health was destroyed from the need to write his way out of debt.

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Ruggiero Rescuing Angelica

Artist: Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (French, 1780–1867)

Date: 1819

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: Louvre Museum, Paris, France

Description

Orlando Furioso, a 16th-century epic poem by Ariosto, is the source of the tale of Roger, a knight whose steed is a hippogriff (a legendary creature half horse and half eagle). While riding near Brittany's coast Roger espies a beautiful woman, Angelica, chained to a rock on the Isle of Tears. She has been abducted and stripped naked by barbarians who have left her there as a human sacrifice to a sea monster. As Roger rides to her aid, a great thrashing in the water occurs - it is the monster approaching Angelica. Roger drives his lance between the monster's eyes and rescues Angelica.

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“It isn’t what we say or think that define us, but what we do.”

~ Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility, 1811

Jane Austen, the world renowned English author, completed just six works during her time and yet manages to command a legion of fans around the world. Her timeless stories have been turned into a plethora of movies, television shows, and modern adaptations in addition to being translated into multiple languages to cross cultural boundaries. Today she remains as popular as ever and is revered as much as any literary figure in the history of the English language.

Jane Austen, the world renowned English author, completed just six works during her time and yet manages to command a legion of fans around the world. Her timeless stories have been turned into a plethora of movies, television shows, and modern adaptations in addition to being translated into multiple languages to cross cultural boundaries. Today she remains as popular as ever and is revered as much as any literary figure in the history of the English language.

Painting • Jane Austen • John Springfield

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Ask Me No More

Artist: Lawrence Alma-Tadema (British, 1836–1912)

Date: 1906

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: Property of a European collector

Ask Me No More

'Ask me no more: thy fate and mine are seal'd: I strove against the stream and all in vain: Let the great river take me to the main: No more, dear love, for at a touch I yield.' Alfred, Lord Tennyson, The Princess.

'Ask me no more', which takes its title from a poem by the Poet Laureate Alfred Lord Tennyson, is a quintessential Alma-Tadema subject. In fact he treated it so often that it is probably the one with which he is most closely associated: a pair of lovers seated on a marble bench overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. The sun always shines in these pictures, although it never seems oppressively hot; and the lovers are invariably shown in a state of emotional anticipation rather than succumbing to passion itself. As Vern Swanson, the leading authority on Alma-Tadema, states in his catalogue raisonné of the artist's paintings, love-making is shown not 'at the point of climax, but rather earlier, when the tension is mounting.

A trademark feature of the painting is the marble bench. Alma-Tadema had made a specialty of painting marble since the late 1850s, and it had become one of his most celebrated accomplishments, endlessly commented on in reviews and even joked about in Punch. Dutch artists had always excelled at still-life, and Alma-Tadema's marble-painting is in this tradition. The same skill emerges in the way he handles flowers, as 'Ask me no more' also demonstrates. But the exquisitely rendered bunch of anemones does more than testify to the painter's virtuoso technique. Evidently a tribute from the youth to his sweetheart, it adds a touch of poignancy to the narrative. It is also a vital compositional element, placing an accent precisely where it is needed, and it provides a focal point for the colour scheme, a subtle interplay of blues, mauves and creams balanced against the pale aquamarine of the girl's dress.

This chromatic harmony is enhanced by the pearly light that pervades the scene, coming from behind the figures to create a contre-jour effect and cast delicate shadows onto the marble pavement. In 1884 Alma-Tadema had taken over 17 Grove End Road, St John's Wood, a house previously occupied by the French artist James Tissot who had fled back to Paris on the death of his muse and mistress, Kathleen Newton. He proceeded to remodel it extensively, furnishing it in a variety of exotic styles and generally turning it into one of the sights of London. Among its many notable features was the apsidal end of the artist's studio, which he had lined with aluminum to create the diffused and silvery light so typical of his later works. 'Ask me no more' is a classic example.

The picture is almost the last in which Alma-Tadema painted his ever-popular theme of a young couple suffering the palpitations of romance, although a watercolour version, entitled Youth, followed in 1908. 'Ask me no more' was the only picture he showed at the R.A. in 1906. He had seldom contributed more than three examples, and one became more or less the norm during his final years.

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Marguerite and Faust in the Garden

Artist: Ary Scheffer (Dutch, 1795-1858)

Movement: Romanticism

Date: 1846

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia

Description

Scheffer’s work has been criticised as being overly sentimental, but his emotionally charged images struck a chord with the public, and he was one of the most popular artists of his day. Scheffer was inspired by the clarity of composition, and the direct approach to narrative, of Italian painting from before 1500. He frequently drew inspiration from great works of literature, such as, in this painting, Goethe’s Faust. Here Faust is seen courting Marguerite, watched by her neighbour Martha and Mephistopheles. The mocking expression on the face of Mephistopheles points to the tragic consequences that will result from this courtship.

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Miranda - The Tempest

Artist: John William Waterhouse (English, 1849–1917)

Date: 1916

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: Private collection

Description

In 1916 Waterhouse submitted three works to the Royal Academy: the group composition A Tale from the Decameron along with two single figure works "I am Half Sick of Shadows," said the Lady of Shalott and Miranda-The Tempest. As the titles suggest, Waterhouse had abandoned classical myths as subjects in favor of medieval and Renaissance narratives, often centering on a woman experiencing a revelation.

The Tempest is one of Shakespeare's most romantic plays, written late in his career, circa 1611; its original performance a year later coincided with the wedding of Elizabeth Stuart, the daughter of England's James I to Frederick, the Elector Palatine, later King of Bohemia.

As with many of Waterhouse's single-figure pictures of women, Miranda is a legendary, mystical woman withdrawn from the world, her future in peril. Miranda, her expression hidden from the viewer in three quarter profile, becomes a decorative object of dangerous beauty, her body surrounded by the violent bruised blue waves, the broken bits of Ferdinand's ship's mast suggesting the destructive, transformative power of love.

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Fidelia and Esperanza

Artist: Benjamin West (British-American, 1738–1820)

Date: 1776

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: Timken Museum of Art, Balboa Park, San Diego, CA, United States

Description

The neoclassical style oil on canvas painting Fidelia and Speranza portrays a scene from the epic poem The Faerie Queene, written by Edmund Spenser. Together Fidelia, representing faith, is holding the New Testament while her sister Speranza; representing hope, wait at the entry of the House of Holiness for the arrival of the Red Cross Knight. The knight, representing humanity, is lead through the ominous landscape by Una who represents spirituality. West depicts the two sisters in classical dress. Their elegant gestures and graceful contrapposto reveal West's, an American, admiration of the classical sculpture and artwork of the European old masters.

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Ophelia with a Blue Wimple in the Water

Artist: Odilon Redon (French, 1840-1916) symbolist painter

Date: 1900-1905

Medium: Oil and and pastel on paper

Collection: Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Description

Around 1900 young artists exhibited at various independent societies. Les Vingt in Brussels was such an association, of which both James Ensor and Jan Toorop were members and where Redon was invited to show his work. His dreamy, visionary art is part of Symbolism. Here he depicted the fatal drowning of Ophelia, the lover of Hamlet from the Shakespearean tragedy of the same title.

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Sylvia and the Outlaws: a Scene from Shakespeare's 'Two Gentlemen of Verona'

Artist: Thomas Stothard, R.A. (British, 1755-1834)

Date: 19th century

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: Private collection

Description

The scene is taken from the climax of Shakespeare's The Two Gentlemen of Verona which was probably written circa 1592-3 although it is not known to have been performed before the Restoration.

The two Gentlemen of Verona are the friends Valentine and Proteus. Proteus leaves Verona, and his original love Julia, for Milan, where he falls in love with the Duke of Milan's daughter Sylvia. Proteus, who has meanwhile exchanged a vow of constancy with Julia, also goes to Milan where he too falls in love with Sylvia. Betraying both his friend and his former love, Proteus informs Sylvia's father of Valentine's plan to elope with her and as a result Valentine is banished and joins the outlaws which allows Proteus to continue to court Sylvia. Julia meanwhile, pining for Proteus, comes to Milan, dressed as a boy, and becomes Proteus's page without him realising. while Sylvia, to escape an arranged marriage, leaves Milan to rejoin Valentine but is captured by the outlaws from whom she is rescued by Proteus. This composition shows this late moment in the play, soon after Valentine has arrived on the scene; Proteus, to the left of the composition, is struck by remorse and his contrition is such that Valentine is impelled to surrender Sylvia to him. However, the evident dismay of Proteus's page [Julia] at this turn of events leads to Julia's recognition by Proteus whose love for her is rekindled by her constancy.

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The Beautiful Lady Without Mercy

Artist: Arthur Hughes (English, 1832-1915)

Title: La Belle Dame Sans Merci

Date: 1863

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia

Description

This tragic tale was popularised by the English poet John Keats (1795–1821). His sensual and romantic poetry, often drawn from medieval narratives, helped to make such themes relevant to a modern audience. Here the knight falls in love with a beautiful woman who lures him to ‘her elfin grot’. There he sleeps and suffers a nightmare, seeing ‘pale kings and princes too, Pale warriors, death-pale were they all; They cried – “La Belle Dame sans Merci, Thee hath in thrall!”’. The knight wakes to find that he is one of many victims of her unrequited love, and is condemned to an eternally lonely existence. At the moment captured by Hughes, the knight is unaware of his impending doom.

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Rinaldo and Armida

Artist: Angelica Kauffmann (Swiss, 1741–1807)

Date: 1771

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, United States

Description

The story of Rinaldo and Armida is taken from Torquato Tasso's epic poem Gerusalemme Liberata (1580), an account of the First Crusade and the capture in 1099 of the holy city of Jerusalem. The poem was known in England within a few years of its publication but enjoyed renewed popularity in the mid-eighteenth century. Rinaldo is a handsome prince and Armida a beautiful sorceress sent by the devil to disrupt the Crusade. She bewitches Rinaldo but, despite her evil intent, falls in love and brings him to her enchanted palace on the Fortunate Isle. The lovers are finally discovered by some of Rinaldo's companions in arms, who recall him to his Christian duty.

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Isolde and the Love Potion

Artist: Anthony Frederick Sandys (British, 1832-1904)

Title: Ysoude with the Love Philter

Date: 1870

Medium: Oil on panel

Collection: Museo de Arte de Ponce, Ponce, Puerto Rico

Isolde is a character in the cycle of Asturians legends. The young woman was engaged to King Marco, but by mistake he drank a love potion with Tristan, the King’s emissary. The concoction caused the unfortunate couple to fall in love madly, with tragic consequences. Flowers have a symbolic meaning in this picture. The roses that appear in the foreground may be the ones that were used to make the potion, but they also represent love and passion. The pink carnations that decorate the tapestry of the background represent romantic love and the bonds of affection. Violets allude to fidelity, while thoughts evoke the feelings that lovers share.

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“Blessed is the season which engages the whole world in a conspiracy of love.” ~ Hamilton Wright Mabie

Painting • Noel • Lynn Bywaters

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“Coffee is a lot more than just a drink; it’s something happening. Not as in hip, but like an event, a place to be, but not like a location, but like somewhere within yourself. It gives you time, but not actual hours or minutes, but a chance to be, like be yourself, and have a second cup”

~ Gertrude Stein, Selected Writings

Art • Dear Starseed • Steve Nobel

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Between the Two my Heart is Balanced

Artist: Lubaina Himid CBE RA born 1954

Date: 1991

Medium: Acrylic paint on canvas

Collection: TATE Britain

Description

Between the Two My Heart is Balanced 1991 is a large painting depicting two women at sea in a small grey boat. Rendered in thick strokes of acrylic paint, the scene is painted from a vantage point inside the boat, facing the two women. The women, who are both black, are dressed in African-style clothing: the figure on the left wears a check-patterned dress and a tall black headdress, and her companion wears a bright red dress and headdress. At the back of the boat, visible between the bodies of the two women, is a pile of flat, coloured objects. The woman on the left is shown in profile, turning towards her companion while dropping some small blue objects over the edge of the boat into the sea with one hand. She holds a multicoloured item from the stacked pile with the other hand, which is raised to her eye-level. The woman on the right is shown frontally, but her eyes are turned to her left. Her face bears a pensive expression and she tosses small blue objects between her hands, while further pieces can be seen blowing from the boat into the sea to her left. In the background, the water is represented using turquoise, dark green and white paint. The horizon is very near to the top of the picture, so that the cream-coloured sky occupies a shallow band across the upper edge of the canvas. The scene is mostly made up from patches of colour and large, visible brushstrokes, and there is little detail shown. Although the women are depicted in a very flat, frontal style, the shape of the boat and the gradually diminishing size of the waves lend the scene an appearance of depth.

According to the artist, the pile of coloured objects that stands between the two women in this work, which occupies the position taken by the male figure in Tissot’s etching, represent maps. That the women appear to be tearing these maps into pieces might be seen as a rejection of forms of knowledge and navigation traditionally controlled by white men. Himid has described the painting along these lines, stating in 2001 that it is ‘a musing on what would happen if black women got together and started to try to destroy maps and charts – to undo what has been done’ (quoted in Rice 2003, p.75).

Himid was born in Zanzibar in Tanzania but moved to England shortly after her birth, and her paintings, woodcuts, installations, works on paper and curatorial projects have often emphasised the contribution of African migrants to the development of European culture. The African-style clothing worn by the women travelling in the boat in this painting suggests a connection with journeys from Africa and the complex cultural politics that are the result of such voyages. As the art historian Alan Rice has suggested, ‘This utopic, calm scene depicts the survival of African culture despite the intervention of slavery and colonialism. The women take control mid-ocean consigning Western charts, which have been the bane of enslaved blacks – crucially allowing Europeans to steer more accurately between African and American slave ports – to the depths of the sea’ (Rice 2003, p.75).

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“Have you really read all those books in your room?”

Alaska laughing - “Oh God no. I’ve maybe read a third of ‘em. But I’m going to read them all. I call it my Life’s Library. Every summer since I was little, I’ve gone to garage sales and bought all the books that looked interesting. So I always have something to read.”

– John Green, Looking for Alaska

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Surrealist Landscape

Artist: Peter Purver Smith (Australian, 1912-1949)

Date: 1938

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia