A Scholarly Skater
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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…
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Late Afternoon, New York, Winter (December 4th)
Frederick Childe Hassam, Late Afternoon, New York, Winter, 1900. Brooklyn Museum, Dick S. Ramsay Fund, 62.68. I think we’ve already established how much I love paintings of New York City in the snow, since I’ve written two previous posts on the topic (Snow falls softly on the city: the paintings of Guy C. Wiggins and Snow in…
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Santa Claus according to Thomas Nast (December 2nd)
The image of Santa Claus is pretty much omnipresent in the month of December, but how many people actually know where it comes from? Santa has his origins in numerous characters from the myths, legends, and stories of many different cultures; Saint Nicholas is his best-known but not only antecedent. As such, Santa Claus takes many diverse forms and personalities…
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Christ in the House of His Parents (December 1st)
The first installment of an art historical advent calendar – features Pre-Raphaelite painting Christ in the House of His Parents by John Everett Millais.
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Grotesques of the Old Philadelphia Fire Department Headquarters
A fire house is one of the last places I would expect to see gargoyles, or even not-quite-three-dimensional grotesque carvings, but a set of six firefighter grotesques can be found on the old Race Street Firehouse in Philadelphia. These droll little figures wear old-fashioned fire hats and carry hoses. I believe that the numbers on the hats refer to…
