Author: A Scholarly Skater
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A Winter’s Walk by Jacques-Joseph Tissot (December 14th)
A fashionable portrait of a woman taking a walk on a winter’s day, by French realism Jacques-joseph Tissot. Part of a fine art Advent calendar.
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Ball at the Russian Imperial Court (December 13th)
If you are seeing this (and I set the timer correctly), it means I am currently at a holiday ball. I figured the Advent Calendar should get in on the action, too. Interestingly, it is far easier to get a ticket to a glamorous and elegant holiday party than an artistic representation of one. It took me…
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Gargoyles and Grotesques of Tullgarns Slott, Södermanland, Sweden
Tullgarns Slott (Tullgarn Palace, in English) is an elegant summer palace of Swedish monarchy, built in the 1720s. Tullgarn is a mixture of several architectural styles and has beautiful wrought iron work, including these unusual-yet-functional gargoyles. The cream and peace Neo-Classical palace exterior (image below) hardly looks like someplace where one might find gargoyles, but here they are! I love…
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Santa with Elves by Norman Rockwell (December 12th)
Painter and The Saturday Evening Post illustrator Norman Rockwell (1894-1978) is beloved in the United States for his images of American life during and after World War Two – soldiers, Boy Scouts, school children, mid-twentieth century family life, and, of course, Santa Claus. My family owns an entire set of Christmas ornaments featuring his Santas in a variety of scenes at rest, work, and…
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The Magi by Joseph Binder (December 11th)
I looked at a lot of Magi/Three Wise Men paintings today, but something about this one particularly stood out for me. It is by Austrian artist Joseph Binder (1798–1864). I think it’s a combination of things – the clarity of the image, the colors (particularly the blues in the sky), the varying reactions of the…
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Christmas Eve by George Inness (December 10th)
Nineteenth-century Tonalist landscape painter George Inness (1825-1894) is one of my favorite American artists. Many of his paintings feature locations in the northeastern United States that I’m familiar with. That’s one of the reasons I feel connected to his works, although most of these places look quite different today. There’s no indication of where Christmas Eve…
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Skating Carnival Montreal by William Notman (December 9th)
I’ve seen this image before, in a book about ice skating history. This work by Scottish-Canadian photographer William Notman (1826-1891) depicts an elaborate gala at Montreal’s Victoria Rink in 1870. The event was to honor Prince Albert of the UK. It looks like a painting or print, but it’s actually a colored albumen photographic print. I can’t get…
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Annunciation by Fra Angelico (December 8th)
Today is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, so it seems appropriate to feature this Annunciation by Fra Angelico for the Advent Calendar. I have known that I wanted to use this painting since the beginning of the month, it was just a question of when. I love the work of Italian monk Guido di Pietro,…
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Winter in Switzerland by Jasper Cropsey (December 7th)
Day seven of the Advent Calendar features a winter-themed landscape painting by Jasper Cropsey – a member of the Hudson River School.
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Gargoyles and Grotesques of St. Vitus, Prague
The rooster is one of early Italian St. Vitus’s attributes, so it’s quite fitting that a rooster gargoyle can be found on his beautiful Gothic church in Prague. Some people think that this figure depicts an eagle. I disagree, but I can understand how one might come to that conclusion without knowing about the saint’s association to the rooster.…
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Saint Nicholas of Bari by Carlo Crivelli (December 6th)
December 5th’s Advent Calendar post is a painting of Saint Nicolas (the forefather of Santa Claus) by Italian Renaissance painter Carlo Crivelli.
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Flight into Egypt by Henry Ossawa Tanner (December 5th)
Henry Ossawa Tanner, Flight Into Egypt, 1923. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. When I decided I wanted to do a flight into Egypt painting today, I expected to pick a famous one. This common subject for religious paintings, involving Mary, Joseph, and the baby Jesus fleeing their persecutors on the back of a donkey has been represented by artists such…
