The Sleeping Gypsy

The Sleeping Gypsy is an 1897 oil painting by French Naive artist Henri Rousseau. The fantastical depiction of a lion musing over a sleeping woman on a moonlit night is one among the most recognizable artworks of modern times.

Rousseau first exhibited the painting at the 13th Salon des Independents, and tried unsuccessfully to put up for sale it to the mayor of his hometown, Laval. Instead, it entered the private collection of a Parisian charcoal merchant where it remained until 1924, when it is discovered by the art critic Louis Vauxcelles. 

The Paris-based art dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler purchased the painting in 1924, although a controversy arose over whether the painting was a forgery. It was acquired by art historian Alfred H. Barr Jr. for the New York Museum of Modern Art.

The painting has served as inspiration for poetry and music, and has been altered and parodied by different artists often with the lion replaced by a dog or other animal. In the Simpsons episode "Mom and Pop Art" Homer dreams of waking up in the artwork with the lion licking his head. A print of the work seems in the movie "The Apartment" higher than the comatose Fran Kubelik.

King Midas Story

Midas is the name of at least three members of the royal house of Phrygia.

The most famous King Midas is popularly remembered in Greek mythology for his capacity to turn everything he touched into gold. This came to be called the Golden touch, or the Midas touch. The Phrygian city Midaeum was most possibly named after this Midas, and this is probably also the Midas that according to Pausanias founded Ancyra. 

According to Aristotle, legend held that Midas died of famine as a result of his "vain prayer" for the gold touch. The legends told regarding this Midas and his father Gordias, credited with founding the Phrygian capital city Gordium and tying the Gordian knot, indicate that they were believed to have lived sometime in the 2nd millennium BC well before the Trojan War. However, Homer does not mention Midas or Gordias, while instead mentioning two other famous Phrygian kings, Mygdon and Otreus.

King Midas was a really kind man who ruled his kingdom fairly, but he was not one to think very deeply about what he said. One day, while walking in his garden, he saw an elderly satyr asleep in the flowers. Taking shame on the old fellow, King Midas let him go without punishment. When the god Dionysus heard about it, he rewarded King Midas by granting him one wish. The king thought for only a second and then said I wish for everything I touch to turn to gold." And it absolutely was.

The beautiful flowers in his garden turned toward the sun for light, but when Midas approached and touched them, they stood rigid and gold. The king grew hungry and thin, for every time he tried to eat, he found that his meal had turned to gold. His beautiful daughter, at his loving touch, turned hard and fast to gold. His water, his bed, his clothes, his friends, and ultimately the whole palace were gold.

King Midas saw that soon his entire kingdom would turn to gold unless he did something right away. He asked Dionysus to turn everything back to the way it had been and get back his golden touch. Because the king was ashamed and very sad, Dionysus took pity on him and granted his request. Instantly, King Midas was poorer that he had been, but richer, he felt, in the things that really count.

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.

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.