Grant Wood, Daughters of Revolution, 1932, oil on Masonite, 20” x 39.9”, Cincinati Art Museum, Cincinnati, Photo by Wmpearl, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.
Grant Wood clearly did not like the ladies he painted in his Daughters of Revolution, a satirical portrait of representatives of the Daughters the American Revolution (DAR) service organization for women who are descended from someone associated with the American … Continue reading
Anonymous Artist, Elizabeth Clarke Freake and Baby Mary, c. 1674, oil on canvas, 42.5” x 36.8”, The Yorck Project: 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.
Mrs. John Freake, of the Boston Freakes, was a real show-off. Colonial Americans were suspicious of art, judging it too aristocratic, but they did commission portraits because they were an excellent way to demonstrate wealth, especially if you were Elizabeth … Continue reading
John Singer Sargent, Madame X, 1883-1884, oil on canvas, 82.1” x 43.3”, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.
Madame X is the painting that ultimately ruined John Singer Sargent’s reputation in the Parisian art society. It is a portrait of Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau, an American-born expatriate who was well known for her style and beauty. Sargent emphasized … Continue reading
Edward Hopper, Nighthawks, 1942, oil on canvas, 33 ⅛” x 60”, Art Institute of Chicago, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.
The American artist Edward Hopper had the uncanny ability to make his brightly lit spaces rather cool. It suited the desolate mood of his realist images of the urban environment in the 20th century. The fluorescent lighting in this painting … Continue reading
Exhibition with two photographs of Pablo Picasso by Arnold Newman, Photo by Pieter Musterd via Flickr, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic License.
Now through May 12th, you can visit the first major retrospective exhibition of Arnold Newman’s remarkable photographic portraits at the Harry Ransom Center in Austin, TX. The exhibition includes over 200 of his masterworks in which he captured his celebrated … Continue reading
© 2013 Sally Whitman Coleman, PhD. All rights reserved.
You can still visit McSorley’s Bar (15 East 7th Street, New York, NY 10003) and it looks very similar to the way it did just over 100 years ago when John Sloan, a founding member of The Eight (also known … Continue reading
© 2013 Sally Whitman Coleman, PhD. All rights reserved.
Not too long ago, the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced that investigators seized more than 2,200 works of art, mostly photographs, valued at $18 million from a warehouse in Newark, NJ that were intended to be shipped to Spain via Amsterdam. … Continue reading
© 2013 Sally Whitman Coleman, PhD. All rights reserved.
Whether Georgia O’Keeffe’s subjects are representational or not, they always have a source in the natural world. Her Blue Black and Grey is a composition of abstract shapes and planes that are nevertheless reminiscent of the curves and colors one finds in … Continue reading
© 2013 Sally Whitman Coleman, PhD. All rights reserved.
“The Apostles of Ugliness” is what the critics called members of the Ashcan School of painting because these artists painted the life of working-class New Yorkers at the turn of the 20th century using dirty and dark colors that reflected … Continue reading
James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1, 1871, oil on canvas, 56.8
“An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision.” James Abbott McNeill Whistler
Arthur Dove, Sunrise, 1924, oil on wood, 18¼” x 20 ⅞”, Milwaukee Art Museum, Photo by Micah & Erin, via Flickr, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic License.
Arthur Dove was a member of a small circle of artists in New York City, including Alfred Stieglitz and Georgia O’Keeffe, that introduced modernism to America. Dove developed a highly original form of abstraction based upon the natural landscape and … Continue reading
© 2012 Sally Whitman Coleman, PhD. All rights reserved.
Have a great one.