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.

Taisia Afonina Paintings

Taisia Kirillovna Afonina - Soviet, Russian painter and watercolorist, lived and worked in Leningrad, a member of the Saint Petersburg Union of Artists, considered as one of the brightest representatives of the Leningrad school of painting. Taisia Kirillovna Afonina was born May 13, 1913 in the city Nikolaev, in Crimea, Russian Empire, within the family of master Shipyard "Navel".

In 1931 Taisia Afonina graduated from nine-year school in city Taganrog, and came to Leningrad to get art education. In 1932-1936 she engaged first in the evening classes for working youth, then in the preparatory categories at the Russian Academy of Arts.

In 1936 after preparatory classes she was adopted at the first course of Painting Department of the Leningrad Institute of Painting, Sculpture and design, where she studied of Mikhail Bernstein, Victor Oreshnikov, and Pavel Naumov.

In 1941 after the beginning the Great Patriotic warTaisia Afonina along with little san and mother evacuated first in city Ostashkov, then in city Vishniy Volochek, then in city Lugansk, Ukrain. In 1943, after the liberation of the German fascists Lugansk, Taisia Afonina involved in rebuilding the city, teaches drawing and painting in Lugansk Art School. 

In autumn 1943 with a group of artists Taisia Afonina rides into city Krasnodar draw club before awarding medals to parents died young heroes - members of the underground anti-fascist Komsomol organization named ″Young Guard″, which fought against the Nazis in the occupied city Krasnodar, the feat that he finds the whole country.

About Parrot Origins and evolution

Researchers are regarding about the origins of parrots. Psittaciforme diversity in South America and Australasia suggests that the order might have evolved in Gondwanaland, centered in Australasia. The scarcity of parrots in the fossil record, however, presents difficulties in proving so.

A single 15 mm fragment from a large lower bill, found in deposits from the Lance Creek Formation in Niobrara County, Wyoming, had been thought to be the oldest parrot fossil and is presumed to have originated from the Late Cretaceous period that makes it about 70 million years old. There have been studies, though, that establishes that this fossil is almost certainly not from a bird, however from a caenagnathid theropod or a non-avian dinosaur with a birdlike beak.

It is now generally assumed that the Psittaciformes, or their common ancestors with variety of related bird orders, were present somewhere in the world around the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, some 65 mya. If so, they probably had not evolved their morphological autapomorphies yet, but were generalized arboreal birds, almost like similar to today's potoos or frogmouths.

Though these birds are a phylogenetically challenging group, they appear at least closely to the parrot ancestors than as an example the modern aquatic birds. The present-day combined proof is widely in support of the hypothesis of Psittaciformes being "near passerines"; i.e. they actually certainly belong to the radiation of mostly land-living birds that emerged in close proximity to the K-Pg extinction.

They have been variously allied to groups such as falcons, songbirds, trogons, woodpeckers, as also as "Coraciiformes", hawks and owls, and the puzzling moosebirds. This looks to be by and large correct. Other proposed relationships, such as to pigeons, are considered more spurious today.

Europe is that the origin of the first presumed parrot fossils, which date from about 50 million years ago (mya). The climate there and then was tropical, consistent with the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum. Initially, a neoavian named Mopsitta Tanta, uncovered in Denmark's Early Eocene

Fur Formation and dated to 54 mya, was assigned to the Psittaciformes; it was described from a single humerus. However, the rather nondescript bone is not unequivocally Psittaciformes, and more recently it absolutely was out that it may rather belong to a newly-discovered ibis of the genus Rhynchaeites, whose fossil legs be found in the same deposits.

An Ancient Easter egg Dance Game

An egg dance may be an ancient Easter game in which eggs are laid on the ground or floor and the goal is to dance among them damaging as few as possible. The egg was a symbol of the rebirth of the earth in Pagan celebrations of spring and was adopted by early Christians as a symbol of the rebirth of man at Easter.

Another kind of egg dancing was a springtime game depicted at the painting of Pieter Aertsen. The goal was to roll an egg out of a bowl while keeping within a circle drawn by chalk and then flip the bowl to cover the egg. This had to be done with the feet without touching the other objects placed on the floor.

An early reference to an egg dance was at the wedding of Margaret of Austria and Philibert of Savoy on Easter Monday of 1498.

Then the great egg dance, the special dance of the season, began. A hundred eggs were scattered over a level space coated with sand, and a young couple, taking hands, began the dance. If they finished without breaking an egg they were betrothed, and not even an obdurate parent could oppose the marriage.

After three couples had failed, middle the laugher and shouts of derision of the on-lookers, Philibert of Savoy, bending on his knee before Marguerite, begged her consent to try the dance with him. The admiring crowd of retainers shouted in approval, "Savoy and Austria!" When the dance was ended and no eggs were broken the interest was unbounded.

Philibert said, "Let us adopt the custom of Bresse." And they were affianced, and shortly afterward married”.

In the UK the dancing takes the form of hopping and sometimes called the hop-egg. There were various forms of egg-dance, but Mark Knowles writes that it was brought to England from Germany by the Saxons as early as in the 5th century. The Saxon word Hoppe means "to dance.

Beauty about the Landscape paintings

Landscape Painting depicts the scenery of the natural world with the views that impact the artist’s eye. In an effort to represent the beauty that meets the eye, the artist tries to capture that fleeting moment in time and space, for all time, thus becoming a co-creator with the original Creator.

In these visions may be any element that may be natural or man-made. Flora and fauna, the weather, light and darkness all will play a part. There may or might not be, form and color, for even the lack of it shows the painter's perception in the quest for artistry.

From the point of view of the public there is the slight difference of the merely pictorial and the melding of the artist's own sensibilities and creativity. In other words, one contains the spark of the Divine and is art while the other, merely representation.

"Landscape is a state of mind." Swiss essayist, Henri Frederic Amiel, nineteenth century.

Landscape painters are also painters of light. It is said that, the overall flood of constant heat and light in the Orient created the monochromatic styles there and the use of pure line as a graphic description. In the West, the ever shifting seasons and subtleties of changing, suffused light, created a very different style of painting, championed by artists such as the Dutch Masters, the Romantics and the sublime, W.J.M. Turner, the Impressionists and Luminists in the United States of America.

In Western art, Landscape painting before the sixteenth century, with few exceptions, such as wall pictures in the Hellenistic period, have been mostly a decorative backdrop until the seventeenth century when serious artists of 'pure' landscape were active. Even then, they were thought of as very low on the scale of subject matter, second only to the flowers and fruit varieties.

Traditionally, landscape art depicts the surface of the Earth, but there are other sorts of landscapes, such as moonscapes and stars capes for example.

The word landscape is from the Dutch, lands chap meaning a sheaf, a patch of cultivated ground. The word entered the English vocabulary of the connoisseur in the late seventeenth century.

In Europe, as John Ruskin realized, and Sir Kenneth Clark brought to view, in a series of lectures to the Slade School of Art, London, that Landscape Painting was the "chief artistic creation of the nineteenth century," with the result that in the following period people were "apt to assume that the appreciation of natural beauty and the painting of landscape is a normal and enduring part of our spiritual activity”. 

In Clark's analysis, underlying European ways to convert the complexity of landscape to an idea were four fundamental approaches:

• By the acceptance of descriptive symbols,

• By curiosity about the facts of nature,

• By the creation of fantasy to allay deep-rooted fears of nature,

• By the belief in a Golden Age of harmony and order, which might be retrieved?

About Nicholas Roerich

Nicholas Roerich, also called as Nikolai Konstantinovich Rerikh, was a Russian mystic, painter, philosopher, scientist, writer, traveler, and public figure. A prolific artist, he created thousands of paintings and about 30 literary works. Roerich was an author and initiator of a world pact for the protection of artistic and academic institutions and historical sites and a founder of an international movement for the defense of culture. Roerich earned several nominations for the Nobel Prize.

Early life :

Roerich in translation from the traditional Scandinavian means “rich of fame”. Members of Roerich’s family occupied prominent military and administrative posts in Russia since the reign of Peter I. Nicholas Roerich’s father Konstantin Fedorovich was a famous notary who was born in Courland. N. Roerich’s mother Maria Vasil’evna Kalashnikova was descended from a long line of merchants and traders. Among friends of the Roerich’s family were such famous personalities as D. Mendeleyev, N. Kostomarov, M. Mikeshin, L. Ivanovsky et al.

Nicholas Konstantinovich Roerich was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, on October 9, 1874, the first-born son of lawyer and notary, Konstantin Roerich and his wife Maria. From childhood Nicholas Roerich was attracted to painting, archaeology, history and the abundant cultural heritage of the East. When he was nine, a noted archeologist came to conduct explorations within the region and took young Roerich on his excavations of the native tumuli. The adventure of presentation the mysteries of forgotten eras along with his own hands sparked an interest in archeology that would last his lifetime.

His father did not want him to practice painting as a career, but rather to study law. He made a compromise, and after finishing his studies in 1893, Roerich at the same time entered the Saint-Petersburg University and the Emperor’s Academy of Arts. From 1895, he studied in the studio of the famous Russian landscape painter Arkhip Kuindzhi. At that time, he closely communicated with different well-known artists, writers and musicians – V. Stassov, I. Repin, N. Rimsky-Korsakov, D. Grigorovich, and S. Diaghilev. During his student years in Saint Petersburg Roerich had already become a member of the Russian archeological society. He had conducted various excavations in St. Petersburg, Pskov, and Novgorod, Tver, Yaroslavl and Smolensk provinces. From 1904, along with Prince Putyatin, he recovered several Neolithic sites at Valdai. Roerich’s Neolithic findings excited real sensation in Russia and West Europe.

In 1897, Roerich graduated Petersburg Academy of Arts. His graduation painting the messenger was purchased by famous collector of Russian art P. M. Tretyakov. V. V. Stassov, well-known enemy of that time, highly appreciated this painting: “You definitely must visit Tolstoy let the great writer of Russian land himself promoted you in painters”. Meeting with Leo Tolstoy determined the way of young Roerich. Leo Tolstoy said to him: “Have you an occasion to pass the fast river on boat? It is necessary always to drive upstream of that place where you need or river carries away you. Then in the field of moral necessities one must to drive always higher so the life all the same carries away. Let your messenger keeps the rudder very high then he sailed!

The Three Witches

The Three Witches or strange Sisters are characters in William Shakespeare's play Macbeth (c. 1603–1607).

Their origin lies in Holinshed's Chronicles (1587), a history of England, Scotland and Ireland. Other possible sources influencing their creation include British folklore, contemporary treatises on witchcraft, Scandinavian legends of the Norns, Greek and Roman myths concerning the Fates, and the Bard's own imagination. Portions of Thomas Middleton's play The Witch were incorporated into Macbeth around 1618.

Shakespeare's witches are prophetesses who hail the General Macbeth early in the play with predictions of his rise as king. Upon committing regicide and being seated on the throne of Scotland, Macbeth hears the trio deliver ambiguous prophecies threatening his downfall. The witches' dark and contradictory natures, their "filthy" trappings and activities, as well as their intercourse with the supernatural all set an ominous tone for the play.

In the 18th century, as Shakespearean as well as supernatural art began to become popular, the witches were portrayed in a variety of ways by artists such as Henry Fuseli. Since then, their role has proven somewhat difficult for many directors to portray, due to the tendency to make their parts exaggerated or overly sensational. Some have adapted the original Macbeth into different cultures, as in Orson Welles' presentation making the witches voodoo priestesses.

Film adaptations have seen the witches transformed into characters familiar to the modern world, such as hippies on drugs or Goth schoolgirls. Their influence reaches the literary realm as well in such works as The Third Witch and the Harry Potter series.

The weyward Sisters, hand in hand, Posters of the Sea and Land...

In later scenes in the first folio the witches are called "weyard," but never "weird." The modern appellation "weird sisters" derives from Hollinshed's original Chronicles in which they are referred to as weird sisters.

Shakespeare's principal source for the Three Witches is found in the account of King Duncan in Raphael Holinshed's history of Britain, The Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland (1587). In Holinshed, the future King Macbeth of Scotland and his companion Banquo encounter "three women in strange and wild apparell, resembling creatures of elder world" who hail the men with glowing prophecies and then vanish "immediately out of their sight."

Holinshed observes that "the common opinion was that these women were either the Weird Sisters, that is… the goddesses of destiny, or else some nymphs or fairies endued with knowledge of prophecy by their necromantical science.

Roman God of the seasons

Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527 - July 11, 1593) was an Italian painter best known for creating imaginative portrait heads made entirely of objects such as fruits, vegetables, flowers, fish, and books - that is, he painted representations of these objects on the canvas arranged in such a way that the entire collection of objects formed a recognizable image of the portrait subject.

In 1562 he became court portraitist to Ferdinand I Habsburg court in Vienna and, later, Maximilian II and Rudolph II to his son in the court of Prague. It was also the court decorator and costume designer. King Augustus of Saxony, who visited Vienna in 1570 and 1573, saw Arcimboldo's work and commissioned a copy of his "Four Seasons" which incorporates his own monarchic symbols.

Arcimboldo's conventional work in the traditional religious subjects, has been forgotten, but his portraits of human heads made of vegetables, plants, fruits, marine animals and tree roots, were much admired by his contemporaries and remain a source of Today's fascination. Art critics debate whether these paintings were whimsical or the product of a deranged mind. Most scholars argue that the point of view, however, that given the Renaissance fascination with riddles, puzzles, and weird Arcimboldo, far from being mentally unbalanced, caters to the tastes of his time.

Arcimboldo died in Milan, who retired after the cessation of Prague. It was during this last phase of his career that produced the composite portrait of Rudolph II and his self-portrait as the Four Seasons. His Italian contemporaries honored him with poetry and manuscripts celebrating his illustrious career.

When the Swedish army invaded Prague in 1648, during the Thirty Years War, many of Arcimboldo's paintings were taken from the collection of Rudolph II.

His works can be found in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna and the Habsburg Ambras Castle in Innsbruck, the Louvre in Paris as well as numerous museums in Sweden. In Italy, his work is in Cremona, Brescia, and the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.

The Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut, the Denver Art Museum in Denver, Colorado, the Menil Foundation in Houston, Texas, Candie Museum in Guernsey and the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid also own paintings by Arcimboldo .

Young girl at a window

Jan Victors or Fictor was a Golden Age Dutch painter who focused primarily on painting the subject of the Bible.

He was known in Haarlem in a catalog taxes in 1722 as a student of Rembrandt van Rijn. Although it is true that Rembrandt worked for, is clear from the girl at a window he had carefully examined the paintings of Rembrandt.

He was only twenty years old when he painted this scene, and look of expectation in the face of the girl shows a remarkable study of character.

Like many painters of Amsterdam after the rampjaar 1672, fell on bad times and took a position as ziekentrooster, a combination of professional work as a nurse and a priest, with the Company Dutch East Indies in 1676. He died shortly after his arrival in Indonesia.

About Douglas Baulch

Baulch was born in Malvern, Victoria, Australia, the only child youngest of three children of Ernest Stanley Baulch. It is commonly known as Douglas Baulch, the same as was used in all his works. Before the first birthday of his father Douglas was sent to fight in France during World War 1, only to return to hospital for the rest of your life is totally disabled until his death eight years later.

This had a traumatic and emotional impact as a small child Douglas seeing and knowing only her father from his deathbed. His father finally died in 1926, when Douglas was only 9 years old.

He still lives in Malvern this created severe stress on him financially and emotionally and family. They are forced to take a more responsible for the house at a very early age. Even while the boy had a love for art drawing happens all the time at home, her mother and sisters Doris Ann and encouraged Gloria.

However, soon after graduating disappointed when given two of his favorite pieces in a private gallery in Melbourne, which then claimed the pieces, was stolen. The gallery closed and his painting was never seen again. From that day on he became lonelier and monitoring the delivery of her artwork in several galleries and therefore significantly less exposed to other friends, like Sidney Nolan.

With the outbreak of World War II, signed a contract for the Royal Australian Air Force working mainly in the north of Australia and the Pacific as a commercial artist, between 1943 and 1945, being commissioned to produce various signs and signaling with the war effort. Then do a portrait of Sir Richard Williams.

He married in 1944 with Lyla Foster, who lived in Glen Iris then Armadale. Upon returning home from the Air Force started a large family with his first son Jeff was born in 1946.

In 1952 he moved to East Doncaster, as he liked the Australian landscape and needed to find a balance between family / financial commitment and his love of landscapes.

Common with the temples of Lower Warrandyte areas should and as an inspiration to portray the rugged terrain and shrubs in the area at the time. The landscape of this period show a natural beauty and positive vision of natural ecosystems and the environment that was not surface with a multiplicity of views, attracting the viewer to take in the scene.

Kustodiev Merchants Wife

Boris Kustodiev was born in Astrakhan into the family of a lecturer of philosophy, history of literature, and logic at the local theological school. His father died young, and all financial and material burdens fell on his mother's shoulders. The Kustodiev family rented a small wing in a rich merchant's house. It was there that the boy's first impressions were formed of the way of life of the simple merchant class. 

The artist later wrote, "The whole tenor of the rich and plentiful merchant way of life was there right under my nose... It was like something out of an Ostrovsky play." The artist retained these childhood explanation for years, recreating them later in oils and water-colors.

In 1905, Kustodiev first twisted to book illustrating, a genre in which he worked throughout his entire life. He illustrated many works of classical Russian literature, including Nikolai Gogol's Dead Souls, The Carriage, and The Overcoat; Mikhail Lermontov's The Lay of Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich, His Young Oprichnik and the Stouthearted Merchant Kalashnikov; and Leo Tolstoy's How the Devil Stole the Peasants Hunk of Bread and The Candle.

In 1909, he was nominated into Imperial Academy of Arts. He continued to work intensively, but a grave illness—tuberculosis of the spine—required urgent attention. On the advice of his doctors he went to Switzerland, where he spent a year undergoing treatment in a private clinic.

He pined for his distant homeland, and Russian themes continued to provide the basic material for the works he painted during that year. In 1918, he painted The Merchant's Wife, which became the most famous of his paintings.

Welsh art - Oil Painting

Welsh art refers to the traditions in the visual arts associated with Wales and its people. Wales cannot claim to have been a major artistic centre at any point, and Welsh art is essentially a regional variant of the forms and styles of the rest of the British Isles; a very different situation from that found in Welsh literature. The term Art in Wales is often used in the absence of a clear sense of what "Welsh art" is, and to include the very large body of work, especially in landscape art, produced by non-Welsh artists set in Wales.

Landscapes:
The best of the few Welsh artists of the 16-18th centuries tended to move elsewhere to work, but in the 18th century the dominance of landscape art in English art bought them motives to stay at home, and bought an influx of artists from outside to paint Welsh scenery, which was "discovered" by artists rather earlier than later landscape hotspots like the English Lake District and the Scottish Highlands. The Welsh painter Richard Wilson (1714–1782) is arguably the first major British landscapist, but somewhat more notable for Italian scenes than Welsh ones, although he did paint several on visits from London.

 His pupil Thomas Jones (1742–1803), has a rather higher status today than in his own time, but mainly for his city scenes painted in Italy, though his The Bard (1774, Cardiff) is a classic work showing the emerging combination of the Celtic Revival and Romanticism.

He returned to live in Wales on inheriting the family estate, but largely stopped painting. For most visiting artists the main attraction was dramatic mountain scenery, in the new taste for the sublime partly stimulated by Edmund Burke's A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757), though some earlier works were painted in Wales in this strain. Early works tended to see the Welsh mountains through the prism of the 17th century Italianate "wild" landscapes of Salvator Rosa and Gaspard Dughet.

Fire of Moscow

The 1812 Blaze of Moscow bankrupt out on September 14, 1812 in Moscow on the day if Russian troops and a lot of association alone the city-limits and Napoleon's beat troops entered the city-limits afterward the Battle of Borodino. The blaze raged until September 18, antibacterial estimated three-quarters of Moscow.

Causes:

Before leaving Moscow, Count Rostopchin gave orders to have the Kremlin and major public buildings either blown up or set on fire. But this was not the foremost cause of the conflagration that destroyed the city. As the bulk of the French army moved into the city, there were some fires, which historians sympathetic to Napoleon's cause by tradition blame on Russian damage. It is believed that Count Rostopchin had made arrangements for anything that might have been of any use to the French army—food stores, granaries, warehouses, and cloth stores—to be torched once the city was evacuated by the Russians.

This version of events is established by General Armand de Caulaincourt.He states that they had been in Moscow for three days. That evening a small fire had broken out but was extinguished and 'attributed to the carelessness of the troops'. Later that evening Coulaincourt was woken by his valet with the news that 'for three quarters of an hour the city has been in flames'. Fires continued to break out in multiple separate points.

Incendiarists were arrested and interrogated and declared that their commanding officer had ordered them to burn everything. 'Houses had been designated to this end.' Later on in the same chapter he asserts 'The existence of inflammable fuses, all made in the same fashion and placed in different public and private buildings, is a fact of which I, as many others, had personal evidence. I saw the fuses on the spot and many were taken to the Emperor.' He goes on to write 'The examination of the police rank-and-file all proved that the fire had been prepared and executed by order of Count Rostopchin'.

Jacob Isaakszoon van Ruisdael

Cornelis de Graeff, also Cornelis de Graeff van was the most memorable member of the De Graeff family. He was a mayor of Amsterdam from the Dutch Golden Age and a powerful Amsterdam regent after the sudden death of stadholder William II of Orange. Like his father Jacob Dircksz de Graeff, he opposed the house of Orange, and was the reasonable successor to the republican Andries Bicker. In the mid 17th century he controlled the city's finances and politics and, in close cooperation with his brother Andries de Graeff and their nephew Johan de Witt, the Netherlands political system.

Characteristic of his early period, from about 1646 to 1655, is the choice of very effortless motifs and the careful and laborious study of the details of nature. The time between his disappearance from Haarlem and his settling in Amsterdam may have been spent in travelling and helped him to gain a broader view of nature and to widen the horizon of his art.

A magnificent view of the Castle of Bentheim, dated 1654, suggests that his wanderings extended to Germany. In his last period, from about 1675 onwards, he shows a tendency towards overcrowded compositions, and affects a darker tonality, which may partly be due to the use of thin paint on a dark ground. Towards the end, in his leaning towards the romantic mood, he preferred to draw his inspiration from other masters, instead of going to nature direct, his favorite subjects being rushing torrents and waterfalls, and ruined castles on mountain crests, which are frequently borrowed from the Swiss views by Roghmau.

Charles IV of Spain and His Family

Carlos IV of Spain and His Family is oil on canvas painting by the Spanish artist Francisco Goya completed in the summer of 1800. It features life sized depictions of Charles IV of Spain and his family, pretentiously dressed in fine costume and jewellery. The painting was modeled after Velazquez's Las Meninas when setting the royal subjects in a naturalistic and reasonable setting.

As in Las Meninas, the royal family is actually paying a visit to the artist's studio, while Goya can be seen to the left looking outwards towards the viewer. In both, the artist is shown working on a canvas, of which only the rear is visible.

 However, the atmospheric and warm perspective of the palace interior of Velazquez's work is replaced in the Goya by a sense of, in the words of Gassier, "imminent suffocation" as the royal family are presented by Goya on a "stage facing the public, while in the shadow of the wings the painter, with a grim smile, points and says: ‘Look at them and judge for yourself!’

List some expressions of paint below

Allegory:
The allegory is a figurative mode of representation, which means transportation other than the literal. Allegory communicates its message through symbolic figures, actions or symbolic representation. Allegory is generally treated as a figure of speech but an allegory does not have to be expressed in language can go to view, and is often found in realistic painting. An example of a simple visual allegory is the image of the Grim Reaper. Viewers to understand that the image of the Grim Reaper is a symbolic representation of death.

Body painting:
Body painting is a form of body art. Unlike forms of tattooing and other forms of body art, body painting is temporary, painted on the human skin, and lasts only a few hours or at most a couple of weeks. Body painting is limited to the face is known as face painting. Body Painting is also known as temporary tattoos, large scale or full-body paint is most commonly known as body paint, while the smaller work or more detailed, usually referred to as temporary tattoos.

Figure painting:
Figure painting is a form of visual art in which the artist uses a live model as the subject of a piece of two-dimensional work of art with painting as a medium. The live model may be nude or fully or partially clothed, and painting is a representation of the whole body of the model.

Illustration painting:
Illustration paintings are used as illustrations in books, magazines and posters from a movie theater and comics. Today, there is growing interest in the collection and admire the original artwork. Several museum exhibitions, magazines and art galleries have devoted space to the illustrators past. In the world of visual art, illustrators have sometimes been considered less important compared to artists and graphic designers.

Landscape painting:
Landscape painting is a term that covers the depiction of natural scenery such as mountains, valleys, trees, rivers, and forests, and especially art where the main subject is a wide view, with its elements arranged into a coherent composition. In other works landscape backgrounds for figures can still form an important part of the work. Sky is almost always included in the view, and weather is often an element of the composition.

Portrait painting:
Paintings portrait is a representation of a person in the face and its expression is predominant. The intention is to show the image, personality, and even the mood of the person. The art of portraiture flourished in the Greek and Roman sculpture, particularly, where sitters demanded realistic portraits and individual, even unflattering.

Still life:
A still life is a work of art depicting mostly inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which may be natural or artificial. With origins in medieval art and Greek / Roman, still life’s give artists more freedom in the arrangement of design elements within a composition that pictures of other subjects such as landscape or portrait.

Geertgen tot Sint Jans

George tot Sint Jans (ca. 1465 - ca. 1495), ook bekend als George van Haarlem, Gerrit van Haarlem, Gerrit Gerritsz, Gheertgen, Geerrit, Gheerrit, of enige andere vorm verkleinvorm van Gerald, was een Nederlandse schilder uit het noorden begin van de Nederland in het Heilige Roomse Rijk. Geen documentation op het moment van je leven is weekend; en de merest gepubliceerde verslag van zijn leven en zijn werk is van 1604, in Karel van Mander Schilder-Boeck.

According To van Mander, was George Probably a pupil of Albert Bowater, who was one of the first oil painters in the Northern Low Countries. Both painters lived in the city of Haarlem, where it was attached to the house George of the Knights of Saint John, Perhaps as a lay brother, he painted For Whom an altarpiece. In van Mender’s book he states George That Took The name or St. John without joining the order, Galan thus His last name "to St. John" was derived from the order's name and means "unto Saint John"

Hopewell Van Mander net hem George tot Sent Jans, schilder uit Haarlem, watt aangeeft dat hij was uit Haarlem, is het mogelijk dat hij mischief were georef in Leiden, daarna in de Bourgondische Nederland in het Heilige Roomse Rijk, rond het jar 1465.

De opdracht van Leiden ALS zijn geboorteplaats is herleidbaar naar een 17e eeuwse prent van Jacob Matham, waar hij wordt aangeduid als Gerardus van Leydanus. Er is geen bekende archief bewijs voor deze bewering door Matham. Deze prent van De bewening van Christus uit 1620, toont in de linkerbenedenhoek "Cum privil Sa Cae M. 

Grand Secretary and the ministries of six

Government institutions in China were consistent with a similar pattern of about two thousand years, but each dynasty set up special offices and offices, reflecting their own interests. The Ming government had the Grand Secretaries to assist the emperor with the documentation to them and finally reign underYongle appointed officials of agencies and Grand Preceptor, a senior, non-functional as a public official under Emperor.

The Secretariat drew his Great Hanlin Academy members, and is considered part of the imperial authority, not ministerial. The Secretariat is a coordinating body, while the six ministries, which were personal income, Rites, War, Justice, and Public Works, were direct state administrative organs.

The Ministry of Personnel is responsible for appointments, merit ratings, promotions and demotions of officials, and the granting of honorary degrees. The Ministry of Finance was in charge of collecting census data, tax collection and management of state revenues, while there are two exchange bureaux that were subordinate to him.

The Ministry of Rites was in charge of state ceremonies, rituals and sacrifices, but also oversaw the records for the Buddhist and Taoist priests and to the reception of ambassadors from tributary states.

The War Office was in charge of appointments, promotions, demotions and military officers, the maintenance of military facilities, equipment and weapons as well as the courier system. The Ministry of Justice was in charge of the processes judicial and penal, but had no supervisory function over the Censorate or the Grand Court of Revision.

The Ministry of Development was in charge of government construction projects, hiring artisans and workers of temporary services, government equipment manufacture, maintenance of roads and canals, the standardization of weights and measures, and recruitment resource field. 

The Merchant Of Venice

In the 14th century, the city of Venice in Italy was one of the richest in all over the world. Among the wealthiest of its merchants was Antonio. He was a kind and generous person. Bassanio, a young Venetian, of noble rank but having squandered his estate, wishes to travel to Belmont to woo the beautiful and wealthy heiress Portia. He approaches his friend Antonio, who has previously and frequently bailed him out, for three thousand ducats needed to subsidies his travelling expenditures as a suitor for three months.

Antonio agrees, but he is cash-poor; his ships and merchandise are busy at sea. He promises to cover a bond if Bassanio can find a lender, so Bassanio turns to the Jewish moneylender Shylock and names Antonio as the loan’s guarantor.

Shylock hates Antonio because of his anti-Semitism, shown when he insulted and spat on Shylock for being a Jew. Additionally, Antonio undermines Shylock's money lending business by lending money at zero interest. Shylock proposes a condition for the loan: if Antonio is unable to repay it at the specified date, he may take a pound of Antonio's flesh. Bassanio does not want Antonio to accept such a risky condition; Antonio is surprised by what he sees as the moneylender's generosity, and he signs the contract. With money at hand, Bassanio leaves for Belmont with his friend Gratian, who has asked to accompany him. Gratiano is a likeable young man, but is often flippant, overly talkative, and tactless. Bassanio warns his companion to exercise self-control, and the two leave for Belmont and Portia.

Meanwhile in Belmont, Portia is awash with suitors. Her father has left a will stipulating each of her suitors must choose correctly from one of three caskets – one each of gold, silver, and lead. If he chooses the right casket, he gets Portia; if he loses, he must go away and never trouble her or any other woman again with a proposal of marriage.

About Jan Kobell

History:

Jan Kobell was a Dutch animal and landscape painter.

Biography:

He was a pupil of Willem Rutgaart van der Wall at Utrecht. He studied thoroughly from nature, and took Paul Potter for his model, acquiring his talent for animal as well as landscape work. In 1812 he went to Paris, where he won the gold medal and high praise from art critics. His popularity increased rapidly until his early death. Of his cattle pieces, noted for their technique and accuracy of drawing, there are excellent specimens in the museums of Amsterdam and Rotterdam.

Family:

Jan Kobell was the son of Hendrik Kobell. He is often called Jan Kobell II to distinguish him from his uncle, or Jan Kobell the elder to distinguish him from his cousin. The Uncle Jan Kobell engraved anatomical plates, and his only well-known work was a series of historical portraits (1787). The cousin Jan Kobell was a landscape and cattle painter. He was the son of Jan the engraver uncle. He attended Rotterdam Academy, and painted his principal work, a life-size cattle piece, in 1830. Anna (1795-1847), sister of Jan the younger, was also a noted artist.

Landscap's English Art

In the popular imagination English landscape painting from the 18th century onwards typifies English art, inspired largely from the love of the pastoral and mirroring as it does the development of larger country houses set in a pastoral rural landscape. It was developed initially by Dutch and Flemish artists, from the late 17th century onwards.

As the population of England grew during the industrial revolution, a concern for privacy and smaller gardens becomes more notable in English art. There was also a new found appreciation of the open landscapes of romantic wilderness, and a concern for the ancient folk arts. 

William Morris is particularly associated with this latter trend, as were the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Another important influence, from about 1890 until 1926, was the growing knowledge about the visual art of Japan.

Being a coastal and sea-faring island nation, English art has often portrayed the coast and the sea. Being a nation of four distinct seasons, and changeable weather, weather effects have often been portrayed in English art. Weather and light effects on the English landscape have been a pre-eminent aspect of modern British landscape photography.

The Turtle Dove Small

Sophie Gengembre Anderson (1823 – 10 March 1903) was a French-born British artist who specialized in genre painting of children and women, typically in rural settings. Her work is loosely associated with the Pre-Raphaelite movement.

Sophie was born in Paris, the daughter of Charles Gengembre, an architect, and his English wife. She had two brothers, Philip and Henry P. She was largely self-taught in art, but briefly studied portraiture with Charles de Steuben in Paris in 1843. The family left France for the United States to escape the 1848 revolution, first settling in Cincinnati, Ohio, then Manchester, Pennsylvania, where she met and married British genre artist Walter Anderson.

In the USA, Anderson initially worked in portraiture, including work for the chromolithographers Louis Prang & Co. In 1854 the Andersons moved to London, where Sophie exhibited her works at the Royal Academy. They returned to New York in 1858, and then settled in London again around 1863. In 1871, they moved to the island of Capri for health reasons, but Sophie continued to send her work back to London for exhibitions. They returned permanently to England in 1894, settling in Falmouth, Cornwall.

Anderson's work was widely exhibited at venues including the Royal Academy, the Royal Society of British Artists (RBA), the British Institution, Grosvenor Gallery (1878-87) and many regional galleries in England. She also exhibited in the USA at the Pittsburgh Artists Association and the National Academy of Design, New York. Her early works showed strong attention to botanical and other detail, in common with the Pre-Raphaelites.

She died at home in Falmouth, Cornwall in 1903. Her husband Walter died in the same year. Her brother Henry P. Gengembre (b. 1825) was also an artist, active in Cincinnati in the early 1850s.

Mr and Mrs Andrews

Mr and Mrs Andrews (1750) is an oil painting by British artist Thomas Gainsborough. The artist was in his early twenties when he painted this canvas, which combines the two genres in which he specialized – portraiture and landscape. By his own account, he preferred the latter. The twenty-two-year-old Robert Andrews married sixteen-year-old Frances Carter in November 1748 and Gainsborough made this portrait of them shortly after the wedding. The couple is shown in front of a stout oak tree – the husband standing and the wife sitting. A real, sprawling landscape stretches out behind them: everything here is unmistakably English.
It was purchased in 1960 by the National Gallery, London, with contributions from the Pilgrim Trust, The Art Fund, Associated Television Ltd, and Mr. and Mrs. W. W. Spooner. It is an oil painting, on canvas, and measures 69.8 by 119.4 cm

Scene:

Robert Andrews cradles his shotgun under his arm as his dog looks up at him. He stands proudly in the middle of his huge estate, which had just become even more extensive thanks to his marriage. His outlook is aloof yet businesslike. Frances Carter is sitting on a wooden Rococo bench. Her satin dress shows Gainsborough at his best, while it also reveals strong Rococo elements. The extent of Van Duck’s continued influence on English portraiture can be seen through the capturing of fabrics in paint. The play of light, movement and the choice of the other colors make the light blue of the informal hunting dress spring to life. Her pose might have been lifted straight from a book of etiquette. Both sitters gaze coolly at the spectator. The oak tree in front of which they stand has several connotations beyond the choice of location: stability and continuity, and a sense of successive generations taking over the family business. The landed gentry had even been contemporaneously compared to the oak, holding Britain together.

An area in the woman’s lap has been left unfinished for an unknown reason. Maybe it was reserved for a child’s portrait, or for a book, or even a dead game-bird. Our eyes are drawn from a fertile field with recently harvested golden sheaves of corn to meadows of grazing sheep, a stand of trees and the hills in the distance. These suggest that the work for the painting was done in late summer, 1749. The fertility on view within the field, and the young tree growing between two others can both be considered a reflection on the newly-married couple in the foreground.

The clouds touch the land at the horizon. The enclosure of the sheep was a recent development – livestock had previously wandered about freely and the neat parallel rows of corn produced by Jethro Tull's revolutionary and controversial seed drill show that this is a thoroughly modern and efficient farm. Andrew’s estate, Auberies, is sited in Bulmer Tye, North Essex, and just a few miles across the county border from Gainsborough’s native county of Suffolk. The small tower in the left background of the piece is St. Peters Church in Sudbury. The church in the middle of the piece is that of All Saints, Little Cornard, very close to Gainsborough's hometown of Sudbury. The oak tree is still extant, though considerably larger.

Sunflowers Oil Painting

Sunflowers are the subject of two series of still life paintings by the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh. The earlier series executed in Paris in 1887 gives the flowers lying on the ground, while the second set executed a year later in Arles shows bouquets of sunflowers in a vase. In the artist's mind both sets were linked by the name of his friend Paul Gauguin, who acquired two of the Paris versions.

About eight months later Van Gogh hoped to welcome and to impress Gauguin again with Sunflowers, now part of the painted decoration he prepared for the guestroom of his Yellow House where Gauguin was supposed to stay in Arles.

After Gauguin's departure, Van Gogh imagined the two major versions as wings of the Berceuse Triptych, and finally he included them in his exhibit at Les XX in Bruxelles.

As Van Gogh anticipated in 1889,the Sunflowers finally became his, and served — combined with self-portraits — as his artistically arms and alter ego up to the present day: no retrospective Van Gogh exhibition since 1901 voluntarily missed including them, and a wealth of forgeries as well as record-setting price paid at auction acknowledges their public success: Perhaps, because Van Gogh's Sunflowers are more than his or him — they may be considered, as Gauguin put it, the flower.

Bodegon Oil Painting

The term bodega in Spanish can mean "pantry", "tavern", or "wine cellar". The derived term bodegon is an augmentative that refers to a large bodega, usually in a derogatory fashion. In Spanish art, a bodegon is a still life painting depicting pantry items, such as victuals, game, and drink, often arranged on a simple stone slab, and also a painting with one or more figures, but significant still life elements, typically set in a kitchen or tavern.

Starting in the Baroque period, such paintings became popular in Spain in the second quarter of the 17th century. The tradition of still life painting appears to have started and was far more popular in the contemporary Low Countries, today Belgium and Netherlands (then Flemish and Dutch artists), than it ever was in southern Europe. Northern still life’s had many sub-genre's; the breakfast piece was augmented by the trompe-l'œil, the flower bouquet, and the vanities.

In Spain there were much fewer patrons for this sort of thing, but a type of breakfast piece did become popular, featuring a few objects of food and tableware lay on a table. Though now considered a Spanish invention, the classic trompe-l'œil presentation of fruit on a stone slab was common in ancient Rome.

Still life painting in Baroque Spain was often austere; it differed from the Flemish Baroque still life’s, which often contain both rich banquets surrounded by ornate and luxurious items with fabric or glass. In bodegon, the game is often plain dead animals still waiting to be skinned.

The fruits and vegetables are uncooked. The backgrounds are bleak or plain wood geometric blocks, often creating a surrealist air. Both Netherlands and Spanish still lives often had a moral vanities element. Their austerity, akin to the bleakness of some of the Spanish plateaus, never copies the sensual pleasures, plenitude, and luxury of many Northern European still life paintings.

The Velazquez paintings The Water seller of Seville, Old woman frying eggs, and The lunch are often described as bodegon due to the artist's depiction of jars and foodstuff. Some people reject this use of the term, calling them instead a mixture of genre painting in Bamboccianti style and still life.

Claude Monet Port Goulphar

Claude Monet, born Oscar Claude Monet (14 November 1840 – 5 December 1926), was a founder of French impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting. The term Impressionism is derived from the title of his painting Impression, Sunrise.

At the beginning of May 1883, Monet and his large family rented a house and 2 acres (8,100 m2) from a local landowner. The house was situated near the main road between the towns of Vernon and Gasny at Giverny. There was a barn that doubled as a painting studio, orchards and a small garden. The house was close enough to the local schools for the children to attend and the surrounding landscape offered many suitable motifs for Monet's work. 

The family worked and built up the gardens and Monet's fortunes began to change for the better as his dealer Paul Durand-Ruel had increasing success in selling his paintings.

By November 1890, Monet was prosperous enough to buy the house, the surrounding buildings and the land for his gardens. During the 1890s, Monet built a greenhouse and a second studio, a spacious building well lit with skylights. Beginning in the 1880s and 1890s through the end of his life in 1926, Monet worked on "series" paintings, in which a subject was depicted in varying light and weather conditions. 

His first series exhibited as such was of Haystacks, painted from different points of view and at different times of the day. Fifteen of the paintings were exhibited at the Galerie Durand-Ruel in 1891. He later produced several series of paintings including: Rouen Cathedral, Poplars, the Parliament, Mornings on the Seine, and the Water Lilies that were painted on his property at Giverny.

Prominent Persian miniaturists

The workshop tradition and division of labor within both an individual miniature and a book, as described above, complicates the attribution of paintings. Some are inscribed with the name of the artist, sometimes as part of the picture itself, for example as if painted on tiles in a building, but more often as a note added on the page or elsewhere; where and when being often uncertain.

Because of the nature of the works, literary and historical references to artists, even if they are relied upon, usually do not enable specific paintings to be identified, though there are exceptions.

The reputation of Kamal ud-Din Behzad Herawi, or Behzad, the leading miniaturist of the late Timurid era, and founder of the Safavid school, remained supreme in the Persianate world, and at least some of his work, and style, can be identified with a degree of confidence, despite a good deal of continuing educated debate.

Sultan Mohammed, Mir Sayyid Ali, and Aqa Mirak, were leading painters of the next generation, the Safavid culmination of the classic style, whose attributed works are found together in several manuscripts. Abd al-Samad was one of the most successful Persian painters recruited by the Mughal Emperors to work in India.

In the next generation, Reza Abbasi worked in the Late Safavid period producing mostly album miniatures, and his style was continued by many later painters.

Tomb of Itimad ud Daula

The emperor Akbar (1556–1605) built largely, and the style developed robustly during his reign. As in the Gujarat and other styles, there is a combination of Muslim and Hindu features in his works. Akbar constructed the royal city of Fatehpur Sikri, located 26 miles (42 km) west of Agra, in the late 16th century.

The various structures at Fatehpur Sikri best illustrate the style of his works, and the great mosque there is scarcely matched in elegance and architectural effect; the south gateway which is known as Boland Darwaza, from its size and structure excels any similar entrance in India.

The Mughals built impressive tombs, which include the fine tomb of Akbar's father Humayun, and Akbar's tomb at Sikandra, near Agra, which is a unique structure of the kind and of great merit.

Under Jahangir (1605–1627) the Hindu features vanished from the style; his great mosque at Lahore is in the Persian style, covered with enamelled tiles. 

At Agra, the tomb of Itmad-ud-Daula completed in 1628, built entirely of white marble and covered wholly by pietra dura mosaic, is one of the most splendid examples of that class of ornamentation anywhere to be found. Jahangir also built the Shalimar Gardens and its accompanying pavilions on the shore of Dal Lake in Kashmir. He also built a monument to his pet deer, Hiran Minar in Sheikhupura, Pakistan and due to his great love for his wife, after his death she went on to build his mausoleum in Lahore.

Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb

In the time of Shah Jahan, the Deccan had been controlled by three Muslim kingdoms: Ahmednagar (Nizams), Bijapur (Adilshahi) and Golconda (Qutbshahi). Following a series of battles, Ahmednagar was effectively separated, with large portions of the kingdom ceded to the Mughal and the balance to Bijapur. One of Ahmednagar's generals, a Hindu Maratha named Shahaji, joined the Bijapur court. Shahaji sent his wife Jijabai and young son Shivaji in Pune to look after his Jaggier.

In 1657, while Aurangzeb attacked Golconda and Bijapur, Shivaji, using guerrilla tactics, took control of three Adilshahi forts formerly controlled by his father. With these victories, Shivaji assumed de facto leadership of many independent Maratha clans. The Marathas harried the flanks of the warring Adilshahi and Mughals, gaining weapons, forts, and territories. Shivaji small and ill-equipped army survived an all out Adilshahi attack, and Shivaji personally killed the Adilshahi general, Afzal Khan. With this event, the Marathas transformed into a powerful military force, capturing more and more Adilshahi and Mughal territories.

Just before Shivaji Raje's his coronation in 1659, Aurangzeb sent his trusted general and maternal uncle Shaista Khan the Mughal Viceroy to the Deccan to recover lost forts occupied by the Maratha rebels. Shaista Khan drove into Maratha territory and took up residence in Pune. In a daring raid, Shivaji attacked the governor's residence in Pune during a midnight wedding celebration. The Marathas killed Shaista Khan's son, even hacking off most of Shaista Khan's hand. Shaista Khan however barely survived and was re-appointed as the administrator of Bengal and was a key commander in the war against the Ahoms.

Aurangzeb ignored the rise of the Marathas for the next few years as he was occupied with other religious and political matters including the rise of Sikhism. Shivaji captured forts belonging to both Mughals and Bijapur. 

At last Aurangzeb sent his powerful general Raja Jai Singh of Amber, a Hindu Rajput, to attack the Marathas. Jai Singh won fort of Purandar after fierce battle in which the Maratha commander Murarbaji fell. Foreseeing defeat, Shivaji agreed for a truce and meeting Aurangjeb at Delhi. Jai Singh also promised the Maratha hero his safety, placing him under the care of his own son, the future Raja Ram Singh I. 

However, circumstances at the Mughal court were beyond the control of the Raja, and when Shivaji and his son Sambhaji went to Agra to meet Aurangzeb, they were placed under house arrest, from which they managed to effect a daring escape.

Akbar Religious Policy

Jalaluddin Muhammad Akbar, also known as Shahanshah Akbar-e-Azam or Akbar the Great (15 October 1542 – 27 October 1605, was the third Mughal Emperor. He was of Timurid descent; the son of Humayun, and the grandson of Babur, the ruler who founded the Mughal dynasty in India. At the end of his control in 1605 the Mughal Empire enclosed most of the northern and central India and was one of the most powerful empires of its age.

Akbar, as well as his mother and other members of his family, are believed to have been Sunni Hanafi Muslims. His early days were spent in the backdrop of an atmosphere in which liberal sentiments were encouraged and spiritual narrow-mindednness was frowned upon. From the 15th century, a number of rulers in various parts of the country adopted a more liberal policy of religious tolerance, attempting to further communal harmony between Hindus and Muslims.

 These sentiments were further encouraged by the teachings of popular saints like Guru Nanak, Kabir and Chaitanya, the verses of the Persian poet Hafez which advocated human sympathy and a liberal outlook, as well as the Timurid ethos of religious broadmindedness that persisted in the polity right from the times of Timur to Humayun, and influenced Akbar's policy of tolerance in matters of religion.

One of Akbar's first actions after gaining actual control of the administration was the elimination of jizya, a tax which all non-Muslims were required to pay, in 1562. The tax was reinstated in 1575, a move which has been viewed as being representative of vigorous Islamic policy, but was again repealed in 1580.

Akbar adopted the Sulh-e-Kul concept of Sufism as official policy, integrated many Hindus into high positions in the administration, and unconcerned restrictions on non-Muslims, thereby bringing about a composite and diverse character to the nobility. As a mark of his respect for all religions, he ordered the observance of all religious festivals of different communities in the imperial court.

The Iranian Paintings

There are nearly numerous numbers of traditional teahouses throughout Iran, and each region features its own unique cultural presentation of this ancient tradition. However, there are certain character which is common to all teahouses, especially the most visible aspects, strong chai (tea) and the ever-present ghalyan hookah.

Almost all teahouses serve baqleh, steam boiled fava beans (in the pod), served with salt and vinegar, as well as a variety of desserts and pastries. Many teahouses also serve full meals, typically a variety of kebabs as well as regional specialties.

Throughout the history of Persia, both men and women used make-up, wore jewellery and colored their body parts. Moreover, their garments were both detailed and colorful. Rather than being marked by gender, clothing styles were distinguished by class and status.

Women in modern Iran (post 1935 "Persia") are of various mixes and appearances, both in fashion and social norm. Traditionally however, the "Persian woman" had a pre-defined appearance set by social norms that were the standard for all women in society.

The Persian ladies' hair is very luxuriant and never cut. It is nearly always dyed red, or with indigo to a blue-black tinge. It is naturally a glossy black. Fair hair is not esteemed. Blue eyes are not uncommon, but brown ones are the rule.

A full moon face is much admired, and a dark complexion is the native idea of the highest beauty. The eyebrows are widened and painted until they appear to meet, and color is used freely in painting the faces.

The Scrovegni Chapel

Giotto's most famous works are the mural paintings in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua. These were painted sometime between 1303 and 1310. The Scrovegni Chapel is frequently called the Arena Chapel because it is on the site of a Roman arena.

Giotto was "commissioned “by a rich Padua man called Enrico degli Scrovegni. Enrico built the chapel and had it painted as a place to pray for the soul of his dead father. It was next to a very old palace that Enrico ws restoring to live in. The palace has gone now, but the chapel is still standing. The outside of the building is very plain, pinkish-red bricks.

The inside of the chapel is also very simple. It is long, with a chancel at one end where a priest can say the mass, an arched roof and windows down one side. The walls have been painted with three tiers of pictures. The "theme" in the pictures is God's Salvation of people through Jesus Christ.

In the usual way for churches of that date, the wall above the main door has a huge painting of the Last Judgement. At the other end of the building, on either side of the chancel archway is paintings of the Annunciation. One side shows the Virgin Mary and the other side show the Angel Gabriel who is bringing her the message that she will have a son, Jesus.

Around the walls, early at the top layer, are scenes which tell the life of the Virgin Mary. Under them, in two layers, are the stories of the life of Jesus. There are 37 scenes altogether.

A Children’s Puppet Show

Puppetry is an extremely ancient art form, thought to have originated about 30,000 years ago. Puppets have been used since the earliest times to animate and communicate the ideas and needs of human societies. Some historians maintain that they pre-date actors in theatre. There is evidence that they were used in Egypt as early as 2000 BC when string-operated figures of wood were manipulated to perform the action of kneading bread. Wire controlled, articulated puppets made of clay and ivory have also been found in Egyptian tombs.

Hieroglyphs also describe "walking statues" being used in Ancient Egyptian spiritual dramas.
The oldest written record of puppetry can be found in the written records of Xenophon dating from around 422 BC.

Evidence of earliest puppetry comes from the excavations at the Indus Valley Civilization. Archaeologists have unearthed terracotta dolls with removable heads capable of manipulation by a string dating to 2500 BC. Other excavations include terracotta animals which could be manipulated up and down a stick, achieving minimum animation in both cases.

The epic Mahabharata, Tamil literature from the Sangam Era, and various literary works dating from the late centuries BC to the early centuries of the Common Era, including Ashokan edicts, describe puppets. Works like the Natya Shastra and the Kamasutra elaborate on puppetry in some detail.

 The Javanese Wayang Theater was prejudiced by Indian traditions. Europeans developed puppetry as a result of extensive contact with the Eastern World. Some scholars trace the origin of puppets to India 4000 years ago, where the main character in Sanskrit plays was known as "Sutradhara", "the holder of strings". China has a history of puppetry dating back 2000 years, originally in "pi-ying xi", the "theatre of the lantern shadows", or, as it is more commonly known today, Chinese shadow theatre. By the Song Dynasty (960-1279 AD), puppets played to all social classes including the courts, yet puppeteers, as in Europe, were considered to be from a lower social stratum.

In Taiwan, budaixi puppet shows, somewhat similar to the Japanese Bunraku, occur with puppeteers working in the background or underground. Some very knowledgeable puppeteers can manipulate their puppets to perform various stunts, for example, somersaults in the air.
   

The Morning walk

During Sergeant’s long career, he painted more than 2,000 watercolors, wandering from the English countryside to Venice to the Tyrol, Corfu, the Middle East, Montana, Maine, and Florida.

Each destination obtainable pictorial stimulation and treasure. Even at his leisure time, in escaping the pressures of the portrait studio, he painted with restless intensity, often painting from morning until night.

His hundreds of watercolors of Venice are especially remarkable, many done from the perspective of a gondola. His colors were sometimes extremely stunning and as one reviewer noted, everything is given with the intensity of a dream.

In the Middle East and North Africa Sergeant painted Bedouins, goatherds, and fisherman. In the last decade of his life, he produced many watercolors in Maine, Florida, and in the American West, of fauna, flora, and native peoples.

With his watercolors, Sergeant was able to indulge his earliest artistic inclinations for nature, architecture, exotic peoples, and noble mountain landscapes.

And it is in some of his late works where one senses Sergeant painting most only for himself. His watercolors were executed with a joyful fluidness. He also painted extensively family, friends, gardens, and fountains.

In watercolors, he playfully portrayed his friends and family dressed in Orient list costume, relaxing in brightly lit landscapes that allowed for a more vivid palette and experimental handling than did his commissions.

His first major solo exhibit of watercolor works was at the Car fax Gallery in London in 1905.[68] In 1909, he exhibited eighty-six watercolors in New York City, eighty-three of which were bought by the Brooklyn Museum. Evan Charters wrote in 1927.

Almina Wertheimer's exotic beauty

John Singer Sargent was an American painter, and a leading portrait painter of his era. During his career, he created nearly 900 oil paintings and more than 2,000 watercolors, as well as numerous sketches and charcoal drawings. His work documents worldwide travel, from Venice to the Tyrol, Corfu, the Middle East, Montana, Maine, and Florida.

Sargent painted a sequence of three portraits of Robert Louis Stevenson. The second, Portrait of Robert Louis Stevenson and his Wife (1885), was one of his best known.

Asher Wertheimer, a prosperous Jewish art dealer living in London, commissioned from Sargent a series of a dozen portraits of his family, the artist's biggest commission from a single patron. The paintings reveal a pleasant familiarity between the artist and his subjects. In 1888, Sargent released his portrait of Alice Vanderbilt Sheppard, great-granddaughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt.

By 1900, Sargent was at the height of his fame. Cartoonist Max Beerbohm completed one of his seventeen caricatures of Sargent, making well-known to the public the artist's paunchy physical type. Though only in his forties, Sargent began to travel more and to devote relatively less time to portrait painting.

His An Interior in Venice (1900), a portrait of four members of the Curtis family in their elegant palatial home, Palazzo Barbara, was a resonant success. But, Whistler did not approve of the looseness of Sergeant’s brushwork, which he summed up as "smudge everywhere."

One of Sergeant’s last major portraits in his bravura style was that of Lord Ribblesdale, in 1902, finely attired in an elegant hunting uniform. Between 1900 and 1907, Sargent continued his high productivity, which integrated, in addition to dozens of oil portraits, hundreds of portrait drawings at about $400 each.

Homer Harper's Weekly Paintings

Winslow Homer (February 24, 1836 – September 29, 1910) was an American landscape painter and print maker, best known for his oceanic subjects. He is considered one of the foremost painters in 19th century America and a most excellent figure in American art.

Born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1836, Homer was the second of three sons of Charles Savage Homer and Henrietta Benson Homer, both from long appearance of New England. His mother was a gifted unpaid watercolorists and Homer’s first teacher, and she and her son had a close relationship throughout their lives. Homer took on many of her character, including her quiet, strong-willed, terse, sociable nature; her dry sense of humor; and her artistic talent. Homer had a happy childhood, growing up mostly in the rural Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was an average student, but his art talent was on display early.

 

After Homer’s high school graduation, his father saw an ad in the newspaper and arranged for an apprenticeship. Homer’s apprenticeship to a Boston commercial lithographer at the age of 19 was a formative but “treadmill experience”. He worked repeatedly on sheet music covers and other commercial work for two years. By 1857, his self-employed career was underway after he turned down an offer to join the staff of Harper's Weekly. “From the time I took my nose off that lithographic stone”, Homer later stated, “I have had no master, and never shall have any.”

Homer’s career as an illustrator lasted nearly twenty years. He contributed to magazines such as Ballou's Pictorial and Harper's Weekly, at a time when the market for illustrations was growing rapidly, and when fads and fashions were changing quickly. His early works, mostly commercial engravings of urban and country social scenes, are characterized by clean outlines, simplified forms, and dramatic contrast of light and dark, and lively shape groupings— qualities that remained important throughout his career.

His quick success was mostly due to this strong understanding of graphic design and also to the adaptability of his designs to wood engraving.

About Portrait Paintings

Portrait painting is a variety of painting, where the intent is to depict the visual appearance of the subject. Beside human beings, animals, pets and even inanimate objects can be chosen as the subject for a portrait. In addition to portrait painting, portraits can also be made in other media such as marble, bronze, ivory, wood, ceramic, etching, lithography, and photography, even video and digital media.

The term 'portrait painting' can also explain the actual painted portrait. Portraitists create their work by commission, for public and private persons, or are inspired by admiration or affection for the subject. Portraits are often important state and family records, as well as remembrances. If an artist portrays him- or herself, the result is called a self-portrait.
Portrait painting can depict the subject 'full length', 'half length', 'head and shoulders', or ‘head’, as well as in profile, "three-quarter view", or "full face", with varying directions of light and shadow.

Occasionally, artists have created portraits with multiple views, as with Sir Anthony van Dyck's  Triple Portrait of Charles I. There are even a few portraits where the front of the subject is not visible at all. Andrew Wyeth's Christina's World (1948) is a famous example, where the pose of the crippled girl with her back turned to the viewer integrates with the setting in which she is placed to convey the artist's interpretation.

Among the other possible variables, the subject can be clothed or nude; indoors or out; standing, seated, reclining; even horse-mounted. Portrait paintings can be of individuals, couples, parents and children, families, or collegial groups.

They can be created in various media including oils, watercolor, pen and ink, pencil, charcoal, pastel, and mixed media. Artists may employ a wide-ranging palette of colors, as with Pierre-Auguste Renoir's On the Terrace (1881) or restrict themselves to mostly white or black, as with Gilbert Stuart's Portrait of George Washington (1796).

Brief About Angels

Angels are messengers of God in the Hebrew Bible, the new testimony and the Quran. The term "angel" has also been extended to various notions of spiritual beings found in many other religious traditions.

Other roles of angels include shielding and guiding human beings, and carrying out God's tasks.

The theological reading of angels is known as angelology. In art, angels are frequently depicted with wings, ultimately reflecting with the descriptions in the Hebrew Bible, such as the chayot in Ezekiel's Merkabah vision or the Seraphim of Isaiah.

In the postexilic period, with the development of unambiguous monotheism, these divine beings- the "sons of God" who were members of the heavenly council- were in effect demoted to what are now known as "angels," understood as beings created by God, but everlasting and thus superior to humans.

One of these "sons of God" is "the Satan", an outline depicted in, among other places, the story of Job. The concept of angels is best understand in contrast to demons and is often thought to be influenced by the ancient Persian religious tradition of Zoroastrianism, which viewed the world as a battleground between forces of good and forces of evil, between light and darkness