It's About Time

Saturday, February 14, 2015

Women by Swedish painter Anders Leonard Zorn 1860–1920

Anders Leonard Zorn (Swedish painter, 1860–1920) Martha Dana 1899

Anders Leonard Zorn (Swedish painter, 1860–1920) Emma Zorn, Lasande 1887

Anders Leonard Zorn (Swedish painter, 1860–1920) Mrs John Crosby Brown c 1900

Anders Leonard Zorn (Swedish painter, 1860–1920) Mrs Walter Bacon

Anders Leonard Zorn Mrs. Walter Rathbone Bacon (Virginia Purdy) 1897

Anders Leonard Zorn (Swedish painter, 1860–1920) Queen Sophia 1909

Anders Leonard Zorn (Swedish painter, 1860–1920)

Anders Leonard Zorn (Swedish painter, 1860–1920) A Musical Family 1905

Anders Leonard Zorn (Swedish painter, 1860–1920) Bedouin girl 1886

Anders Leonard Zorn (Swedish painter, 1860–1920) Bottling Beer 1890

Anders Leonard Zorn (Swedish painter, 1860–1920) Castles in the Air 1885

Anders Leonard Zorn (Swedish painter, 1860–1920) Dalecarlian girl from Rättvik 1880

Anders Leonard Zorn (Swedish painter, 1860–1920) Dalecarlian Girl Knitting. Cabbage Margit, 1901

Anders Leonard Zorn (Swedish painter, 1860–1920) Emma Zorn in the Paris Studio

Anders Leonard Zorn (Swedish painter, 1860–1920) Frances Cleveland 1899

Anders Leonard Zorn (Swedish painter, 1860–1920) Fru Lisen Samson, nee Hirsch, Arranging Flowers at a Window 1881

Anders Leonard Zorn (Swedish painter, 1860–1920) Girl in an Orsa Costume

Anders Leonard Zorn (Swedish painter, 1860–1920) Girl playing mandolin 1884

Anders Leonard Zorn (Swedish painter, 1860–1920) Home Tunes 1920

Anders Leonard Zorn (Swedish painter, 1860–1920) Isabella Stewart Gardner in Venice 1894

Anders Leonard Zorn (Swedish painter, 1860–1920) Kuver Maja

Anders Leonard Zorn (Swedish painter, 1860–1920) Kvinde fra Mora, 1916

Anders Leonard Zorn (Swedish painter, 1860–1920) Lace-making in Venice 1894

Anders Leonard Zorn (Swedish painter, 1860–1920) Lacy Seam 1894

Anders Leonard Zorn (Swedish painter, 1860–1920) Lady with fur cape 1887

Anders Leonard Zorn (Swedish painter, 1860–1920) Madame Clara Rikoff 1889

Anders Leonard Zorn (Swedish painter, 1860–1920) Mademoiselle Antoinette May 1890

Anders Leonard Zorn (Swedish painter, 1860–1920) Margit 1891

Anders Leonard Zorn (Swedish painter, 1860–1920) Martha Liebermann 1896

Anders Leonard Zorn (Swedish painter, 1860–1920) Midnight 1891

Anders Leonard Zorn (Swedish painter, 1860–1920) Mona 1898

Anders Leonard Zorn (Swedish painter, 1860–1920) Mora Marknad

Anders Leonard Zorn (Swedish painter, 1860–1920) Morakulla

Anders Leonard Zorn (Swedish painter, 1860–1920) Mrs. Lucy Turner Joy 1897

Anders Leonard Zorn (Swedish painter, 1860–1920) Mrs. Potter Palmer 1893

Anders Leonard Zorn (Swedish painter, 1860–1920) Mrs. Veronica Heiss 1891

Anders Leonard Zorn (Swedish painter, 1860–1920) Night Effect. 1895

Anders Leonard Zorn (Swedish painter, 1860–1920) Old Anne, 1887

Anders Leonard Zorn (Swedish painter, 1860–1920) Ols Maria 1918

Anders Leonard Zorn (Swedish painter, 1860–1920) Omnibus 1891

Anders Leonard Zorn (Swedish painter, 1860–1920) Our Daily Bread The artist's mother 1886

Anders Leonard Zorn (Swedish painter, 1860–1920) Painter Alice Miller 1887

Anders Leonard Zorn (Swedish painter, 1860–1920) Peeling Potatoes 1916

Anders Leonard Zorn (Swedish painter, 1860–1920) Portrait of Edith Palgrave Edward

Anders Leonard Zorn (Swedish painter, 1860–1920) Portrait of Elizabeth Sherman Cameron 1900

Anders Leonard Zorn (Swedish painter, 1860–1920) Portrait of Frieda Schiff (1876–1958), Later Mrs. Felix M. Warburg 1894

Anders Leonard Zorn (Swedish painter, 1860–1920) Portrait of Lisen Lamm 1885

Anders Leonard Zorn (Swedish painter, 1860–1920) Portrait of Mme Ashley 1920

Anders Leonard Zorn (Swedish painter, 1860–1920) Portrait of Mrs. Eben Richards

Anders Leonard Zorn (Swedish painter, 1860–1920) Reveil

Anders Leonard Zorn (Swedish painter, 1860–1920) Roseta Mauri 1891

Anders Leonard Zorn (Swedish painter, 1860–1920) Sommarnöje 1886

Anders Leonard Zorn (Swedish painter, 1860–1920) Sunday morning 1891

Anders Leonard Zorn (Swedish painter, 1860–1920) The Bride

Anders Leonard Zorn (Swedish painter, 1860–1920) The cigarette smoker 1892

Anders Leonard Zorn (Swedish painter, 1860–1920) The Girl from Älvdalen 1911

Anders Leonard Zorn (Swedish painter, 1860–1920) The Letter 1892

Anders Leonard Zorn (Swedish painter, 1860–1920) The misses Salomon 1888

Anders Leonard Zorn (Swedish painter, 1860–1920) Woman getting dressed 1893

Anders Leonard Zorn (Swedish painter, 1860–1920)

Anders Leonard Zorn (Swedish painter, 1860–1920) Mrs Symons 1888

Anders Leonard Zorn (Swedish painter, 1860–1920) In Scotland (Mrs. Symons), 1887

Anders Leonard Zorn (Swedish painter, 1860–1920) Gunnlod, 1893

Anders Leonard Zorn (Swedish painter, 1860–1920) A Kitchen Maid 1919

Anders Leonard Zorn (Swedish painter, 1860–1920) was one of Sweden’s foremost artists who obtained international success as a painter, sculptor & printmaker in etching. In 1887, Zorn had received a request from the management of the Uffizi in Florence, to paint a self-portrait for their collection. It was not until 1888, that he completed this, and left the following reflections:

"I had by then never painted a portrait in the studio, because of the strange lighting and due to all the people disturbing me, but for my portrait, this could fit... It should be done in oils, and so I began trying. Of course, my vanity would portray me as a man capable of much more than painting, and suiting enough I was working on a bust of Emma in clay, so I let that lump of mud get in there as well."

Anders Leonard Zorn (Swedish painter, 1860–1920) Self Portrait 1888

Thursday, February 12, 2015

Women by Croatian artist Vlaho Bukovac 1855-1922

Vlaho Bukovac (Italian - Biagio Faggioni) (Croatian painter, 1855-1922) Baroness Rukavina 1898

The Croatian artist Vlaho Bukovac's (1855-1922) real name was Vlaho Fagioni. His father was Italian & mother was from Dubrovnik, Croatia. He began to exhibit his talent for drawing in his early childhood, but because of his family's poverty he could not continue his education in Croatia. His uncle Frano had emigrated to America, & invited young Vlaho to join him in New York in 1867.

Vlaho Bukovac (Italian - Biagio Faggioni) (Croatian painter, 1855-1922) My Nest - The Artist's Family

In 1871, he returned to Dubrovnik & embarked as an apprentice on a merchant ship that sailed on regular line Istanbul-Odessa-Liverpool. His apprenticeship ended abruptly, when he fell through a tap-door on board ship & suffered severe concussion. Convalescing at home he painted the walls of his parents house with fanciful scenes of gardens & animals. These faithfully-restored murals can still be seen at the Bukovac House in Cavtat, Croatia.

Vlaho Bukovac (Italian - Biagio Faggioni) (Croatian painter, 1855-1922) Young Artist -Portrait of the Artist's Daughter

He left home once again to study in Paris at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts under Alexandre Cabanel in 1877, & exhibited in the Paris Salon from 1878. He remained in Paris for the next 13 years, except for 2 periods of portraiture in England, in 1886 & 1888. Throughout his career he experimented with a variety of painting styles including the pointillist technique. On his return to Zagreb in 1893, he founded the Society of Croatian Artists. In 1903, he became a professor at the Prague Academy of Fine Arts.

Vlaho Bukovac (Italian - Biagio Faggioni) (Croatian painter, 1855-1922) Lady Reading

Vlaho Bukovac (Italian - Biagio Faggioni) (Croatian painter, 1855-1922)

Vlaho Bukovac (Italian - Biagio Faggioni) (Croatian painter, 1855-1922) Daydreams 1905

Tuesday, February 10, 2015

The sexual revolution in 18C England & her colonies

An article appeared in The Guardian about a little known sexual revolution in 18C England. It was written by Faramerz Dabhoiwala about his book, The Origins of Sex: A History of the First Sexual Revolution.

Here are a few snippets. "Since the dawn of history, every civilisation had punished sexual immorality. The law codes of the Anglo-Saxon kings of England treated women as chattels, but they also forbade married men to fornicate with their slaves, and ordered that adulteresses be publicly disgraced, lose their goods and have their ears and noses cut off. Such severity reflected the Christian church's view of sex as a dangerously polluting force, as well as the patriarchal commonplace that women were more lustful than men and liable to lead them astray...

" When the Massachusetts settler James Britton fell ill in the winter of 1644, he became gripped by a "fearful horror of conscience" that this was God's punishment on him for his past sins. So he publicly confessed that once, after a night of heavy drinking, he had tried (but failed) to have sex with a young bride, Mary Latham. Though she now lived far away, in Plymouth colony, the magistrates there were alerted. She was found, arrested and brought back, across the icy landscape, to stand trial in Boston. When, despite her denial that they had actually had sex, she was convicted of adultery, she broke down, confessed it was true, "proved very penitent, and had deep apprehension of the foulness of her sin … and was willing to die in satisfaction to justice". On 21 March, a fortnight after her sentence, she was taken to the public scaffold. Britton was executed alongside her; he, too, "died very penitently". In the shadow of the gallows, Latham addressed the assembled crowds, exhorting other young women to be warned by her example, and again proclaiming her abhorrence and penitence for her terrible crime against God and society. Then she was hanged. She was 18 years old.

"That is the world we have left behind. Over the following century and a half it was transformed by a great revolution that laid the ground for the sexual culture of the 19th and 20th centuries, and of our own day. The most obvious change was a surge in pre- and extramarital sex. We can measure this, crudely but unmistakably, in the numbers of children conceived out of wedlock. During the 17th century this figure had been extremely low: in 1650 only about 1% of all births in England were illegitimate. But by 1800, almost 40% of brides came to the altar pregnant, and about a quarter of all first-born children were illegitimate. It was to be a permanent change in behaviour."

The article, actually a review of Dabhoiwala's book, then goes on to explore the reasons for this sexual revolution. You can find the article here.