The Hyde Collection is a world-class art collection in the unassuming Adirondack town of Glens Falls, New York. It really was the most delightful little surprise, and I had a wonderful visit.
Tag: Dutch
The Joys of the Dutch Golden Age
In Praise of Painting: Dutch Masterpieces at the Met is an ongoing exhibition of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's paintings from the Dutch Golden Age. It provided the chance to view the works up close at my leisure, which gave me a new appreciation for this type of artwork.
Art That Inspires Me: Still Life Painting
I recently enjoyed an art exhibition at my local library. I saw many wonderful works there, but I noticed that the majority of the pieces I was drawn to were still lives. So I started to think about why that is. Back in the days of the European and American artistic academies, still life was considered the least prestigious of the painting genres, but it's one of my personal favorites.
Skating Through Time on a Snow Day
Snow day! Who doesn't love those words? Here in the northeastern United States, we are currently having a nice snow day, which makes it seem like a perfect time to do the second part of the winter paintings series I started around Christmas time. While part one was about winter landscapes, part two is about ice skating paintings!… Continue reading Skating Through Time on a Snow Day
December 20th: Still Life with Christmas Pudding, Holly and Wine by Johanna Helena Looisen
Today's painting, Still Life with Christmas Pudding, Holly and Wine, is my first Advent Calendar work by a female artist. I wasn't specifically looking for a work by a female painter today, just as I wasn't intentionally avoiding female artists for the first nineteen days. I'm featuring the painting because I love it; it's compelling for… Continue reading December 20th: Still Life with Christmas Pudding, Holly and Wine by Johanna Helena Looisen
Text in Manuscripts – Day Four of Medieval Manuscripts
I've spent a lot of time talking about illustration and other elaborate decoration, so today, I want to focus on pages with a lot of text. After all, the content of a book comes before everything else. I also decided to look into the British Library's amazing collection of manuscripts, since I've featured the Metropolitan Museum's holdings for the… Continue reading Text in Manuscripts – Day Four of Medieval Manuscripts
Gargoyle of the Day: St. John’s Cathedral, ‘s-Hertogenbosch, Netherlands
Technically, these little fellows are grotesques rather than true gargoyles, but who cares when they're so charming? Apes, monkeys, and related creatures had rather poor connotations in the Middle Ages, symbolizing a variety of evils and sins including greed and lust, but this pair is depicted with a touching humanity nonetheless.
An Old Dutch Skating Painting
I found this 19th-century Dutch skating picture in this month's The Magazine Antiques article about Lawrence Steigrad Fine Arts, who just sold this work to the Rijksmuseum. The acquisition is so recent that the Rijksmuseum does not yet have an image of the painting on its website, but it does provide this interesting anecdote about… Continue reading An Old Dutch Skating Painting
