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Friday, November 27, 2015
A Book to Read Outdoors
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Wednesday, November 25, 2015
Dogs & Cats in American Folk Art - Robert Peckham 1785-1877
Tuesday, November 17, 2015
17C Love on Horseback
Sunday, November 1, 2015
The earliest Picnics occured after the Hunt in the 18C
Food historians tell us picnics evolved from the elaborate traditions of outdoor feasts enjoyed by the wealthy. Medieval hunting feasts & Renaissance-era country banquets probably were the earliest picnics.
"Picnic. Originally, A fashionable social entertainment in which each person present contributed a share of the provisions." The OED traces the oldest print evidence of the word picnic in the English language to 1748. The word was known in France, Germany, and Sweden prior to becoming an English institution.
---Oxford English Dictionary [Clarendon Press:Oxford], 2nd edition, Volume XI (p. 779)
"The earliest picnics in England were medieval hunting feasts. Hunting conventions were established in the 14C, and the feast before the chase assumed a special importance. Gaston de Foiz, in a work entitled Le Livre de chasse (1387), gives a detailed description of such an event in France. As social habits in 14C England were similar to those in medieval France, it is safe to assume that picnics were more or less the same."
---Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 1999 (p. 602)
"The French might have invented the word "picnic," pique nique being found earlier than "pic nic." It originally referred to a dinner, usually eaten indoors, to which everyone present had contributed some food, and possible also a fee to attend. The ancient Greek "eranos," the French "moungetade" described earlier, or modern "pot luck" suppers are versions of this type of mealtime organization. ...Picnics derive, also, from the decorous yet comparatively informal 16C "banquets"...whichh frequently took place out of doors."
---The Rituals of Dinner: The Origins, Evolutions, Eccentricities and Meaning of Table Manners, Margaret Visser [Penguin:New York] 1991 (p. 150-1)
"Picnic. An informal meal in which everyone pays his share or brings his own dish,' according to the Littre dictionary. That was probably the original meaning of the word, which is probably of French origin (the French piquer means to pick at food; nique means something small of no value.) The word was accepted by the Academie francaise in 1740 and thereafter became a universally accepted word in many languages. From the informal picnic, the outdoor feast developed...Weekend shooting parties and sporting events were occasions for grand picnics, with extensive menus and elaborate presentation."
---Larousse Gastronomique, completely updated and revised edition [Clarkson Potter:New York] 2001 (p. 883)
Friday, October 30, 2015
Bastille Day 1890 by van Gogh
Vincent van Gogh (Dutch artist, 1853-1890) is Auvers Town Hall 14 July 1890
Friday, October 16, 2015
"Women Artist" Painting Flowers as Symbols - Clara Peeters 1594-1657
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.
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.
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.
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