An April Birthday Boy
Antoine Vollon, known primarily for his excellent still-life paintings, had a birthday on April 23rd. In the glory days of the annual academic Salon in Paris (1760s–1890s)—when the self-ap ...
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Curator’s Corner
Claude Raguet Hirst Realism
Nothing showcases the American obsession with realism in art during the 1800s better than the brief Trompe l’Oeil Realism movement of the 1880s and 1890s. Like the Dutch Baroque realist still-li ...
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Curator’s Corner
National Plant a Flower Day
Not only is it National Women’s [Art] History Month, but Monday is National Plant a Flower Day. Due to the two major nor’easters that have rocked the Northeast, I would like to feature a h ...
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Curator’s Corner
Deceiving the Eye
I’ve written before about the long-standing interest in extreme realism in American painting. Colonial American self-taught artists (“limners”) may not have been schooled in anatomy, ...
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Curator’s Corner
Still Life and Our Culture of Abundance
I got so excited the other night while watching Antiques Roadshow. A person brought two little still-life paintings from 1865, and I said to myself, “Oh, those look like John Francis’s wor ...
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Curator’s Corner
The Raphael of Flowers
I don’t usually experience beauty attacks when considering art from France of the late 1700s and early 1800s. Neoclassicism isn’t my thing! But this artist is a standout in a period otherw ...
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Curator’s Corner
The Peale Women
The name “Peale” is synonymous with the First Family of American painting. The painters of the Peale family were the first “dynasty” of American art, and what a dynasty! They e ...
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Curator’s Corner
The Brueghel (Bruegel) Family
Having ancestry in northern Europe (Switzerland), I naturally gravitated toward Northern Renaissance art in college. I’m particularly fond of Flemish artists, because they reflect a similar unva ...
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Curator’s Corner
Have We Seen This Before?
I’m sure I’ve said it before, but I’m not a big fan of stylistic labels. However, I do like investigating interesting similarities in artists’ works from different periods. The ...
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Curator’s Corner
Thoughts on Still Life
I like to contemplate terms that are used by art historians. One of them is “still life.” In French it’s nature morte (dead nature) and in German it’s Stillleben (sti ...
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