Tuesday 30 September 2008

John Everett Millais paintings

John Everett Millais paintings
James Jacques Joseph Tissot paintings
Jules Joseph Lefebvre paintings
spending double. All this,’ he said, including in a wide sweep of his hand the evidence of profligacy about him. It was true; my room had cast its austere winter garments, and, by not very slow stages, assumed a richer wardrobe. ‘Is that paid for?’ (the box of a hundred cabinet Partagas on the sideboard) ‘or those?’ (a dozen frivolous, new books on the table) ‘or those?’ (a Lalique decanter and glasses) ‘or that peculiarly noisome object?’ (a human skull lately purchased from the School of Medicine, which, resting in a bowl of roses, formed, at the moment, the chief decoration of my table. It bore the motto ‘Et in Arcadia ego’ inscribed on its forehead.) ‘Yes,’ I said, glad to be clear of one charge. ‘I had to pay cash for the skull.’ ‘You can’t be doing any work. Not that that matters, particularly if you’re making something of your elsewhere

Monday 29 September 2008

Frederic Edwin Church paintings

Frederic Edwin Church paintings
Frederic Remington paintings
Francisco de Goya paintings
something wicked—said the dons hadn’t no right to put grass there for a gentleman to fall over. Said he was going to go and murder the lot of them.”
“Well, Hastings?”
“Well, he’s done it, sir.”
“What! all of them, Hastings?”
“No, sir, not all; but Mr. Curtis sir. The Dean went to find him to tell him to go to bed and found him asleep on the floor of Mr. Curtis’s room and Mr. Curtis,” with great glee, “dripping blood, sir. Quite slowly, pit-a-pat, as you might say.”
“Well, I’m damned!”
“Yes, indeed, sir. So was the Dean. He is with the Warden now, sir.”
The sky filled with chimes; it was twelve o’clock.
“Well, I must go to bed, Hastings. It’s a funny Business.”
“Yes, sir, and good night, sir.”
“Good night, Hastings.”
So Edward went to bed with a grave disquiet. It was a pity that Poxe should have done this; it was really a very great pity. But as he grew sleepier the conviction grew that perhaps

Saturday 27 September 2008

Eric Wallis paintings

Eric Wallis paintings
Edmund Blair Leighton paintings
Eugene de Blaas paintings
Yes, did you know him? I barely did. I hear he was rather awful. If you want to be genealogical, I have an uncle who is a duke. But I barely know him either.”
“And you are a painter?”
“Did Barbara tell you that?”
“She said you were an artistic genius.”
“She’s a loyal little thing. She must mean my music.”
“You compose?”
“I improvise sometimes. I play the guitar.”
“Professionally?”
bars, you know.”
“I do not know, I’m afraid. And you make a living by it?”
“Not what you would call a living.”
“May I ask, then, how you propose to support my daughter?”
“Oh that doesn’t come into it. It’s the other way round. I’m doing what you did, marrying money. Now I know what’s in your mind. ‘Buy him off,’ you think. I assure

Aubrey Beardsley paintings

Aubrey Beardsley paintings
Andrea del Sarto paintings
Alexandre Cabanel paintings
danger to his institution.”
“Where shall we go? Hill Street’s locked up. There won’t be anyone there until Monday.”
“The odd thing is I have no hangover.”
“Still ethereal?”
“Precisely. I suppose it means an hotel.”
“You might telephone to Barbara and tell her to join us. She said she was keen to leave.”
But when Angela telephoned to her sister-in-law, she heard: “But isn’t Barbara with you in London? She told me yesterday you’d sent for her. She went up by the afternoon train.”
“D’you think she can have gone to that young man?”
“I bet she has.”
“Ought I to tell Basil?”
“Keep it quiet.”
“I consider it very selfish of her. Basil isn’t at all in good shape. He’ll have a fit if he finds out. He had a sort of fit yesterday.”
“Poor Basil. He may never know.”
Basil and Angela settled their enormous bill. Their car was brought

Tamara de Lempicka paintings

Tamara de Lempicka paintings
Thomas Cole paintings
Theodore Robinson paintings
Skinny. And concerned with my soul.”
“Chump. Listen. I’m concerned with Barbara’s soul.”
“What’s she been up to?”
“I think she’s in love.”
“Rot.”
“Well, she’s moping.”
“I expect she misses me.”
“When she isn’t moping she’s telephoning or letters.”
“Not to me.”
“Exactly. There’s someone in London.”
“Robin Trumpington?”
“She doesn’t confide.”
“Can’t you listen in on the telephone?”
“I’ve tried that, of course. It’s certainly a man she’s talking to. I can’t really understand their language but it sounds very affectionate. You won’t like it awfully if she runs off, will you?”
“She’d never think of such a thing. Don’t put ideas into the child’s

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres paintings

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres paintings
John William Godward paintings
John William Waterhouse paintings
been greeted in limber youth. Two arms embraced his neck and drew him down, an agile figure inclined over the protuberance of his starched shirt, a cheek was pressed to his and teeth tenderly nibbled the lobe of his ear.
“Babs, I thought you were at a party. Why on earth are you dressed like that?”
His daughter wore very tight, very short trousers, slippers and a thin jersey. He disengaged himself and slapped her loudly on the behind.
“Sadist. It’s that sort of party. It’s a ‘happening.’
“You speak in riddles, child.”
“It’s a new sort of party the Americans have invented. Nothing is arranged beforehand. Things just happen. Tonight they cut off a girl’s clothes with nail scissors and then painted her green. She had a mask on so I don’t know who it was. She might just be someone

Friday 26 September 2008

Rene Magritte The Blank Check painting

Rene Magritte The Blank Check paintingSir Lawrence Alma-Tadema In the Tepidarium paintingMarc Chagall I and the Village painting
When the King fled the Ustashi began massacring Jews. The Italians rounded them up and took them to the Adriatic. When Italy surrendered, the partisans for a few weeks held the coast. They brought the Jews to the mainland, conscribed all who seemed capable of useful work, and imprisoned the rest. Her husband had been attached to the army headquarters as electrician. Then the Germans moved in; the partisans fled, taking the Jews with them. And here they were, a hundred and eight of them, half starving in Begoy.
Major Gordon was not an imaginative man. He saw the complex historical situation in which he participated, quite simply in terms of friends and enemies and the paramount importance of the war-effort. He had nothing against Jews and nothing against communists. He wanted to defeat the Germans and go . Here it seemed were a lot of tiresome civilians getting in the way of this object. He said cheerfully: “Well, I congratulate you.”
Mme. Kanyi looked up quickly to see if he was mocking her, found

Sandro Botticelli La Primavera painting

Sandro Botticelli La Primavera paintingSalvador Dali meditative rose paintingSalvador Dali clock melting clocks painting
now awash, now emerging clear from falling water; now awash again, deeper; now barely visible, mere patches on the face of gently eddying foam—his brain was softly drowning. He roused himself, as children do in nightmare, still scared, still half asleep. “I can’t be drugged,” he said loudly, “I never touched the .” The military organization into which Major Gordon drifted during the last stages of the war enjoyed several changes of name as its function became less secret. At first it was called “Force X”; then “Special Liaison Balkan Irregular Operations
“Drugs in the coffee?” said Elizabeth gently, like a nurse soothing a fractious child. “Drugs in the ? What an absurd idea. That’s the kind of thing that only happens on the films, darling.”
He did not hear her. He was fast asleep, snoring stertorously by the open window

Johannes Vermeer girl with the pearl earring painting

Johannes Vermeer girl with the pearl earring paintingGustav Klimt The Three Ages of Woman paintingGustav Klimt The Kiss (Le Baiser _ Il Baccio) painting
Elizabeth found the place. It belonged to someone in her office. It was named Good Hope Fort, and stood on the Cornish coast. “It’s only just been derequisitioned,” she said: “I expect we shall find it in pretty bad condition.”
“We’re used to that,” said John. It did not occur to him that she should spend her leave anywhere but with him. She was as much part of him as his maimed and aching leg.
They arrived on a gusty April afternoon after a train journey of normal discomfort. A taxi drove them eight miles from the station, through deep Cornish lanes, past granite cottages and disused, archaic tin-workings. They reached the village which gave the house its postal address, passed through it and out along a track which suddenly emerged from its high banks into open grazing land on the cliff’s edge, high, swift clouds and sea-birds wheeling overhead, the turf at their feet alive with fluttering wild flowers, salt in the air, below them the roar of the Atlantic breaking on the rocks, a middle-distance of indigo and white tumbled waters and beyond it the serene arc of the horizon. Here

Leonardo da Vinci The Last Supper painting

Leonardo da Vinci The Last Supper paintingLeonardo da Vinci Mona Lisa Smile paintingRembrandt The Return of the Prodigal Son painting
awake for two hours he turned on the lamp that stood on the table between them. Elizabeth was lying with her eyes wide open staring at the ceiling.
“I’m sorry. Did I wake you?”
“I haven’t been asleep.”
“I thought I’d read for a bit. Will it disturb you?”
“Not at all.”
She turned away. John read for an hour. He did not know whether she was awake or asleep when he turned off the light.
Often after that he longed to put on the light, but was afraid to find her awake and staring. Instead he lay, as others lie in a luxurious rapture of love, hating her.
It did not occur to him to leave her; or, rather, it did occur from time to time, but he hopelessly dismissed the thought. Her was bound tight to his; her family was his family; their s were intertangled and their expectations lay together in the same quarters. To leave her would be to start fresh, alone and naked in a strange world; and lame and weary at the age of thirty-eight, John Verney had not the heart to move.

Thursday 25 September 2008

Paul Cezanne Mount Sainte Victoire painting

Paul Cezanne Mount Sainte Victoire paintingPaul Cezanne Leda with Swan paintingPaul Cezanne House and Trees painting
wash the whole thing out.”
“Thank you, Anderson,” said Tamplin.
The house-captain lit the candle which stood in a biscuit-box shade on the press by his bed. He undressed slowly, washed and, without saying prayers, got into bed. Then he lay there reading. The tin hid the light from the dormitory and cast a small, yellow patch over his book and pillow; that and the faint circle of the gas-lamp were the only lights; gradually in the darkness the lancet windows became dimly visible. Charles lay on his back thinking; O’Malley had made a fiasco of his first evening; first and last he could not have done things worse; it seemed a rough and tortuous road on which Mr. Graves had set his feet, to self-confidence and poise.
Then, as he grew sleepier, Charles’s thoughts, like a roulette ball when the wheel runs slow, sought their lodging and came at last firmly to rest on that day, never far distant, at the end of his second term; the raw and gusty day of the junior steeplechase when, shivering and half-changed, queasy with apprehension of the trial ahead, he had been summoned by Frank, had shuffled into his clothes, run headlong down the turret stairs and with a new and deeper alarm knocked at the door.
“Charles, I have just had a telegram from your father which you must read. I’ll

Jean Fragonard The Swing 1767 painting

Jean Fragonard The Swing 1767 paintingJean Fragonard The Bathers paintingAlexandre Cabanel Nymph and Satyr painting
don’t see anything particularly decent in that.”
“Well, it makes a sort of link. He explained why he put O’Malley on the Settle. He’s a student of character, you know.”
“Who? O’Malley?”
“No, Graves. He said that’s the only reason he is a schoolmaster.”
“I expect he’s a schoolmaster because it’s so jolly slack.”
“Not at all. As a matter of fact, he was going into the Diplomatic, just as I am.”
“I don’t expect he could pass the exam. It’s frightfully stiff. Graves only takes the Middle Fourth.”
“The exam is only to keep out undesirable types.”
“Then it would floor Graves.”
“He says schoolmastering is the most human calling in the world. Spierpoint is not an arena for competition. We have to stop the weakest going to the wall.”
“Did Graves say that?”
“Yes.”

George Bellows Dempsey and Firpo painting

George Bellows Dempsey and Firpo paintingCaravaggio The Sacrifice of Isaac paintingCaravaggio The Musicians painting
There’s a four-and-sixpenny table d’hôte.”
“Please, Jorkins, spare us the hideous details of your gormandizing.”
“Oh, all right. I thought you were interested, that’s all.”
“Do you think,” said Tamplin, confining himself ostentatiously to Charles and Wheatley, “that Apthorpe is keen on Wykham-Blake?”
“No, is he?”
“Well, he couldn’t keep away from him in Evening School.”
“I suppose the boy had to find consolation now his case Sugdon’s left. He hasn’t a friend among the under-schools.”
“What d’you make of the man Peacock?” (Charles, Tamplin and Wheatley were all in the Classical Upper Fifth under Mr. Peacock.)
“He’s started decently. No work tonight.”
“Raggable?”
“I doubt it. But slack.”
“I’d sooner a master were slack than raggable. I got quite exhausted last term ragging the Tea-cake.”

Thomas Moran Paintings

Thomas Moran was an artist of the Hudson River School. His vision of the Western landscape was critical to the creation of Yellowstone National Park. His pencil and watercolor field sketches and paintings captured the grandeur and documented the extraordinary terrain and natural features of the Yellowstone region. Thomas Moran Paintings were presented to members of Congress by park proponents. These powerful images of Yellowstone fired the imagination and helped inspire Congress to establish the National Park System in 1916. The Thomas Moran House in East Hampton, N Y is a National Historic Landmark. He is a high-productive artist for landscape works, and some of them are my favorites, like Moran Forest Scene, Autumn Landscape and The Autumnal Woods Under the Trees

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