It's About Time: October 2015

Friday, October 30, 2015

Bastille Day 1890 by van Gogh

Vincent van Gogh (Dutch artist, 1853-1890) is Auvers Town Hall 14 July 1890

Saturday, October 24, 2015

17C Golf - Children play & golf evolves

1595 Adriaen van der Linde

1603 Attributed to Adriaen van der Linde (Dutch artist, 1560-1609) Three-Year-Old Boy with Colf Stick

1626 Jan Anthonisz van Ravesteyn (Dutch painter, 1572-1657) Young Boy with a Golf Club and Ball

Bartholomeus van der Helst, ca. 1658-1659

1600s Unknown artist

1615 Unknown Artist

1640 Unknown artist

1612 Unknown Dutch artist, Master Slijper' holding a brass-headed kolf club

1613 Marinus Molenaar Kanters Boy aged four and a half

1620-30s Paulus Moreelse (Dutch artist, 1571-1638) Portrait Of A Four-Year Old Boy With Club And Ball

1624 Nicolaes Eliaszoon Pickenoy (Dutch painter, 1588-1656) 'Boys Playing Kolf on a Road.' Detail

1626 Adriaan Pietersz van der Venne (Dutch genre painter, 1589-1662).Man with Boy playing golf wearing ice spurs

1631 Wybrand de Geest (Dutch artist, 1592-1661-65) Portrait of a Boy with a 'Colf' Stick

1635 Wybrand de Geest (Dutch artist, 1592-1661-65) Portrait of two brothers

1650 Peter Lely (English artist, 1618-1680) The Children of the Markgraaf de Trazegnies

1660 Pieter de Hooch (Dutch genre painter, 1629-1684) The Little Golf Players

Sunday, October 18, 2015

1940s Independence Day in Southern Maryland

Fourth of July picnic, St. Mary's County, Maryland, 1942 National Geographic

Friday, October 16, 2015

Painting Flowers as Symbols - Clara Peeters 1594-1657

Clara Peeters (Flemish painter, 1594-c 1657)

Clara Peeters (1594-c 1657) was not painting portraits as were most women painters born in the 1400-1500s. Peeters is the best-known female Flemish artist of this era and one of the few women artists working professionally in 17C Europe, despite restrictions on women's access to artistic training and membership in guilds. Peeters was among the earliest specialist painters of still lifes and flowers, working while this genre was still emerging. Fewer than ten paintings of flowers produced in the Netherlands can be dated before 1608, when she painted her first recorded work.

Clara Peeters (Flemish painter, 1594-c 1657)

She was baptized in Antwerp in 1594, & married there in 1639. Her earliest dated paintings, from 1607-1608, are small, detailed images representing food & drink. At the time that Clara Peeters was painting, religious imagery was forbidden in the Dutch Reformed Protestant Church. Artistic symbols were developed to make coded references to life, death, & religion, so her paintings conveyed a meaning to her patrons of much more than objects in a still life. Each painting would be a visual puzzle to be decoded by the viewer.

Clara Peeters (Flemish painter, 1594-c 1657)

Some speculate that the skill with which this teenage artist executed her painting suggests that she may have been trained by a master painter. Although there is no documentary evidence of her education, some scholars theorize that Peeters may have been a student of Osias Beert, a still-life painter from Antwerp. By 1612, the 18-year-old artist was producing large numbers of painstakingly rendered still lifes displaying symbols in groupings of metal goblets, gold coins, & exotic flowers.

Clara Peeters (Flemish painter, 1594-c 1657)

1935 Picnic in California

Wednesday, October 14, 2015

1910-1925 American Picnic

1910-1925 American Picnic. Photo by John Johnson. Johnson was born in Lincoln in 1879 to Harrison Johnson, an escaped slave and Civil War veteran, & his wife, Margaret. After graduating from high school & briefly attending the University of Nebraska (where he played football), Johnson found work in one of the few realms open to African-Americans at the time: manual labor. He was a janitor & a drayman, but also a very prolific & talented community photographer. From roughly 1910 to 1925, he took as many as 500 photographs using a bulky view camera and flash powder.