Mourning Dove

The Mourning Dove may be a member of the dove family (Columbidae). The bird is also called the Turtle Dove or the American Mourning Dove or Rain Dove, and formerly was known as the Carolina Pigeon or Carolina Turtledove. It is one of the most abundant and well-known of all North American birds. 

It is also the leading game bird, with more than 20 million birds (up to 70 million in some years) shot annually in the U.S., both for sport and for meat. Its capacity to sustain its population under such pressure stems from its prolific breeding: in warm areas, one pair may raise up to six broods a year. Its mournful woo-OO-oo-oo-oo call gives the bird its name. The wings can make an unusual whistling sound upon take-off and landing. The bird is a strong flier, capable of speeds up to 88 km/h (55 mph).

Mourning Doves are light grey and brown and usually muted in color. Males and females are similar in look. The species is generally monogamous, with two squabs (young) per brood. Both parents incubate and care for the young. Mourning Doves eat almost completely seeds, but the young are fed crop milk by their parents

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The Mourning Dove is a medium-sized, slender dove approximately 31 cm (12 in) in length. Mourning Doves weigh 4-6 ounces, generally closer to 4.5 ounces. The elliptical wings are broad, and the head is rounded. Its tail is long and tapered. Mourning Doves have perching feet, with three toes forward and one reversed. The legs are short and reddish colored. The beak is short and dark, usually a brown-black hue.

The plumage is generally light gray-brown and lighter and pinkish below. The wings have black spotting, and therefore the outer tail feathers are white, contrasting with the black inners. Below the eye is a distinctive crescent-shaped area of dark feathers. The eyes are dark, with light skin surrounding them. 

The adult male has bright purple-pink patches on the neck sides, with light pink coloring reaching the breast. The crown of the adult male is a distinctly bluish-grey color. Females are similar in appearance, but with more brown coloring overall. The iridescent feather patches on the neck above the shoulders are nearly absent, but can be quite vivid on males. Juvenile birds have a scaly appearance, and are generally darker

The Harpies and the Suicides

The Wood of the Self-Murderers: The Harpies and the Suicides are a pencil, ink and watercolor on paper artwork by the English poet, painter and printmaker William Blake (1757–1827). The work was finished between 1824 and 1827 and illustrates a passage from the Inferno canticle of the Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (1265–1321).The work is part of a series which was to be the last set of watercolors he worked on before his death in August 1827. It is held in the Tate Gallery, London.

Blake was commissioned in 1824 by his friend, the painter John Linn ell (1792–1882), to create a series of illustrations based on Dante's poem. Blake was then in his late sixties, yet by legend drafted 100 watercolors on the topic "during a fortnight's illness in bed”. Few of them were actually colored, and only seven gilded. He sets this work in a scene from one of the circles of hell depicted in the Inferno (Circle VII, Ring II, Canto XIII), in which Dante and the Roman poet Virgil (70–19 BCE) travel through a forest haunted by harpies—mythological winged and malign fat-bellied death-spirits who bear features of human heads and female breasts.

The harpies in Dante's version feed from the leaves of oak trees that entomb suicides. At the time Canto XIII (or The Wood of Suicides) was written, suicide was considered by the church as at least equivalent to murder, and a contravention of the Commandment "Thou shalt not kill". Many theologians believed it to be a deeper sin than murder, because it constituted a rejection of God's gift of life. 

Dante describes a tortured wood infested with harpies, where the act of suicide is punished by encasing the offender in a tree, therefore denying eternal life and damning the soul to an eternity as a member of the restless living dead, and prey to the harpies. Blake's painting shows Dante and Virgil walking through a haunted forest at a second when Dante tears a leaf from a bleeding tree. He drops it in shock on hearing the disembodied words, "Wherefore tear’s me thus? Is there no touch of mercy in thy breast?”

In Dante's poem, the tree contains the body of Pietro Della Vigna (1190–1249), an Italian jurist and diplomat, and chancellor and secretary to the Emperor Frederick II (1194–1250). Pietro was a learned man who rose to become a close advisor to the emperor. 

However, his success was envied by other members of Frederick II's court, and charges that he was wealthier than the emperor and was an agent of the pope were brought against him. Frederick threw Pietro in prison, and had his eyes ripped out. In response, Pietro killed himself by beating his head against the dungeon wall. He is one of four named suicides mentioned in Canto XIII, and represents the notion of a "heroic" suicide.

History of Buckingham Palace

The Banqueting House, Whitehall, London, is the grandest and well known survivor of the architectural genre of banqueting house, and the only remaining component of the Palace of Whitehall. The building is important in the history of English architecture as the first building to be completed in the neo-classical style which was to transform English architecture.

Begun in 1619, and designed by Inigo Jones in a style influenced by Palladio, the Banqueting House was completed in 1622 at a cost of £15,618, 27 years before King Charles I of England was executed on a scaffold in front of it in January 1649.

The building was controversially re-faced in Portland stone in the 19th century, though the details of the original front wall were faithfully preserved. Today, the Banqueting House is a national monument, open to the public and conserved as a Grade I listed building. It is cared for by an independent charity, Historic Royal Palaces, which receives no funding from the Government or the Crown.

The Palace of Whitehall was largely the creation of King Henry VIII, expanding an earlier mansion that had belonged to Cardinal Wolsey, originally known as York Place. The King was determined that his new palace should be the "biggest palace in Christendom", a place befitting his newly created status as the Supreme Head of the Church of England. All evidence of the disgraced Wolsey was eliminated and the building rechristened the Palace of Whitehall.

During Henry's control, the palace had no designated banqueting house, the King preferring to banquet in a temporary structure purpose-built in the gardens. The first everlasting banqueting house at Whitehall had a short life. It was built for James I but was damaged by fire in January 1619, when workmen, clearing up after New Year's festivities, decided to incinerate the rubbish inside the building.

An immediate replacement was commissioned from the stylish architect Inigo Jones. Jones had spent time in Italy studying the architecture growing from the Renaissance and that of Palladio, and returned to England with what at the time were revolutionary ideas: to replace the complicated and confused style of the Jacobean English Renaissance with a simpler, classically inspired design. His new banqueting house at Whitehall was to be a prime example of this. Jones made no attempt to harmonies his design with the Tudor palace of which it was to be part.

Jean-Honore Fragonard Paintings

Jean-Honore Fragonard was a French painter and printmaker whose late Rococo manner was distinguished by outstanding facility, exuberance, and hedonism. One of the most prolific artist’s active in the last decades of the Ancient Regime, Fragonard produced more than 550 paintings, of which only five are dated. Among his most popular works are genre paintings conveying an atmosphere of intimacy and veiled eroticism?
Jean-Honoree Fragonard was born at Grasse, Alpes-Maritimes, and the son of Francois Fragonard, a Glover, and Francoise Petit.
 
He was articled to a Paris notary when his father's circumstances became strained through unsuccessful speculations, but showed such talent and inclination for art that he was taken at the age of eighteen to Francois Boucher, who, recognizing the youth's rare gifts but disinclined to waste his time with one so inexperienced, sent him to Chardin's atelier. Though not yet a pupil of the Academy, Fragonard gained the Prix de Rome in 1752 with a painting of "Jeroboam Sacrificing to the Golden Calf", but before proceeding to Rome he continued to study for three years under Charles-Andre van Loo. In the year preceding his departure he painted the "Christ washing the Feet of the Apostles" now at Grasse cathedral.

While at Rome, Fragonard contracted a friendship with a fellow painter, Hubert Robert. In 1760, they toured Italy together, executing numerous sketches of local scenery. It was in these romantic gardens, with their fountains, grottos, temples and terraces, that Fragonard conceived the dreams which he was subsequently to render in his art.

He also learned to admire the masters of the Dutch and Flemish schools, imitating their loose and vigorous brushstrokes. Added to this influence was the deep impression made upon his mind by the florid sumptuousness of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, whose works he had an opportunity to study in Venice before he returned to Paris in 1761.

In 1765, his "Croesus et Callirhoe" secured his admission to the Academy. Hitherto Fragonard had hesitated between religious, classic and other subjects; but now the demand of the wealthy art patrons of Louis XV's pleasure-loving and licentious court turned him definitely towards those scenes of love and voluptuousness with which his name will ever be associated, and which are only made acceptable by the tender beauty of his color and the virtuosity of his facile brushwork; such works include the Blind man's bluff, Serment d'amour (Love Vow), Le Verrou (The Bolt), La Culbute (The Tumble), La Chemise enlevee (The Shirt Removed), and L'escarpolette (The Swing, Wallace Collection), and his decorations for the apartments of Mme du Barry and the dancer Madeleine Guimard.

Back in Paris, Marguerite Gerard, his wife's 14-year-old sister, became his pupil and assistant in 1778. In 1780, he had a son, Alexandre-Evariste Fragonard (1780–1850), who eventually became a talented painter and sculptor. The French Revolution deprived Fragonard of his private patrons: they were either guillotined or exiled.

About Sergei Ivanovich Osipov

Sergei Ivanovich Osipov was a soviet Russian painter, graphic artist and art teacher, lived and worked in Leningrad. He is a member of Leningrad branch of Union of Artists of Russian Federation regarded as one of the leading representatives of the Leningrad school of painting, most famous for his landscape and still life paintings.

In 1943 Sergei Osipov returned to his studies and graduated of the Leningrad Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in Alexander Osmerkin workshop. His graduation work was painting named "Partisans", dedicated to the guerrilla struggle against the Nazis in occupied territory of the Soviet Union.

Creativity Sergei Osipov was inseparably linked with the theme of Motherland - Tver land, its nature, the ancient Russian city, the peasant way of life. Since the late 1940s each year and regularly several times he visited Staritsa, Torzhok, Pskov, Old Ladoga, Izborsk, imported from these trips numerous studies, sketches and paintings. Then his work continued in the city art studio. And so, year after year for over forty years. 

This traveling enriched Osipov priceless lessons of the ancient builders of temples and forts, whose hands, intuition, and artistic tastes have created a rare beauty. Only then did he realize that the ravines, hills, ridges, river beds, trees, houses must be depicted as structural elements of the environment as small elements of an overall coherent picture of the world, expressing its essential features. Only after this appeared in landscapes of Sergei Osipov Russian soft melody, a clear rhythm, and unique proportions, which we correctly recognize the national character of the landscape.

His recognizable individual style Sergei Osipov took on gradually. By the end of 1950 in technical terms he was a well established as a master. This is evidenced by the works shown in major exhibitions: "The Gathering" (1950), "On the Volga River" (1951), "Last Snow" (1954), "Reaping field" (1954), "On the Volkhov River" (1955), "A Little Brook" (1956), "After the Rain" (1957), "The Old Ladoga", "A Bridge over Pskova River", "Pskov. Gremyachaya Tower" (all 1958), "The Saint George's Cathedral in Old Ladoga", "Pskov Courtyard", "Dovmant fortress" (all 1958), "Boats", "The Bridge" (both 1960), and others. But the mere follow to nature no longer satisfied the artist. He needs to go further.

The top of the Osipov's creation falls on the 1970 - early 1980s. During this period he created a number of outstanding works, mainly in the genre of still life and landscape. Among them "Still Life with a Balalaika" (1970), "A House with the arch" (1972), "Autumn branch" (1974), "Staritsa town in winter" (1974), "Still Life with White Jug" (1975), "Cornflowers" (1976), "A Forest River" (1976), "Izborsk's slopes" (1978), "A Little rick in rainy day" (1981), "Early greens" (1982), "Dandelions" (1985), and others. His style of this time similar of a light semi-Cubism. These paintings are nominated Osipov of the leading artists of the Leningrad school, who made his own contribution to its identity and significance.

German Quarter

German Quarter also known as the Kukuy Quarter was a neighborhood in the northeast of Moscow, located on the right bank of the Yauza River east of Kukuy Creek within present-day Basmanny District of Moscow.

The German quarter appeared in the mid 16th century and was populated by foreigners from Western Europe by the Russian people and prisoners, taken during the Livonian War of 1558-1583. 

The residents of the German Quarter were mainly engaged in handicrafts and flour-grinding business. In the early 17th century, the Old German Quarter was ravaged by the army of False Dmitri II and did not recover afterwards, since many residents relocated closer to Kremlin or fled the country.

New German Quarter:

After the end of Time of Troubles, downtown Moscow attracted many European settlers, serving the royal court and the numerous foreign soldiers of muscovite troops. In 1640s, however, the clergy persuaded the tsar to limit foreign presence in Moscow, and in 1652 Alexis I of Russia forced all Catholic and Protestant foreigners to relocate to German Quarter, which became known as the New German Quarter, located east of present-day Lefortovskaya Square, above the mouth of the Chechera River. By 1672, it had three Lutheran and two Calvinist churches and numerous factories, like Moscow's first Silk Manufactory, owned by A.Paulsen. In 1701, J.G.Gregory, based in German Quarter, obtained a monopoly patent for a public pharmacy.

The quarter was populated by merchants, store owners, and foreign officers of the Russian army. Among them were future associates of Peter the Great, such as Patrick Gordon and Franz Lefort. Peter the Great was a frequent guest in the German Quarter, and he met his mistress Anna Mons there. Deceased residents were buried at the Vvedenskoye Cemetery, also known as German Cemetery, located across Yauza in Lefortovo; this tradition persisted among Lutherans and Catholics until 20th century.

In the early 18th century, the usual way of life in the German Quarter started to change. Its territory gradually turned into a construction site for palaces of the nobles, notably Lefort and later Alexander Bezborodko. At the same time, foreigners, not bound by former restrictions, migrated to center of Moscow, for example, the French community settled in Kuznetsky Most.

About Victor Borisov-Musatov

Victor Musatov was born in Saratov, Russia. His father was a minor railway official who had been born as a serf. In his childhood he suffered a spinal injury that made him humpbacked for the rest of his life. In 1884 he entered Saratov real school, where his skills as an artist were discovered by his teachers Fedor Vasiliev and Konovalov.

He was enrolled in the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and design in 1890, transferring the next year to the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint-Petersburg, where he was a pupil of Pavel Chistyakov. The damp climate of Saint-Petersburg was not good for Victor's health and in 1893 he was forced to come back to Moscow and re-enroll to the Moscow School of painting, sculpturing and architecture. 

His earlier works like May flowers, 1894 were labeled decadent by the school administration, which sharply criticized him for making no distinction between the girls and the apple trees in his quest for a decorative effect. The same works however were praised by his peers, who considered him to be the leader of the new art movement.

In 1895 Victor once again left Moscow School of painting, sculpturing and architecture and enrolled in Fernand Cormon's school in Paris. He studied there for three years, returning in summer months to Saratov. 

He was fascinated by the art of his French contemporaries, and especially by the paintings of "the father of French Symbolism" Pierre Puvis de Chavannes and by the work of Berthe Morisot.

Borisov-Musatov was a member of the Union of Russian Artists and one of the founders and the leader of the Moscow Association of Artists, a progressive artistic organization that brought together Pavel Kuznetsov, Peter Utkin, Alexander Matveyev, Martiros Saryan, Nikolai Sapunov, and Sergei Sudeikin.

The most famous painting of that time is The Pool, 1902. The painting depicts two most important women in his life: his sister, Yelena Musatova and his bride (later wife), artist Yelena Alexandrova. The people are woven into the landscape of an old park with a pond.

Another famous painting is The Phantoms. 1903 depicting ghosts on the steps of an old country manor. The painting was praised by the contemporary Symbolist poets Valery Bryusov and Andrey Bely.

In 1904 Borisov-Musatov had a very successful solo exhibition in a number of cities in Germany, and in the spring of 1905 he exhibited with Salon de la Society des Artistes Français and became a member of this society.

The last finished painting of Borisov-Musatov was Requiem. Devoted to the memory of Nadezhda Staniukovich, a close friend of the artist, the painting may indicate Borisov-Musatov's evolution towards the Neo-classical style.