Monday, March 16, 2009

Joseph Letzelter, Still Life with Mirror, 1934

This is one of Joseph Letzelter earliest prints to explore different levels of reality. The first observed reality is the mirror itself and the objects that surround it. The second is that of the street, which in turn becomes part of the room by its reflection in the mirror.

Joseph Letzelter Finally, the objects in front of the mirror, by their reflection, become part of the street scene. At the same time the Joseph Letzelter print presents a physical impossibility: the mirror is tilted toward the ceiling yet reflects the view of the street from the window on the opposite wall.

Joseph Letzelter, Italian Town, 1930

Joseph Letzelter often used his drawings such as Joseph Letzelter oil paintings, Joseph Letzelter fine art gallery as studies for prints, but Joseph Letzelter occasionally also experimented with various Joseph Letzelter drawing techniques. Joseph Letzelter most important experiments are the "scratch drawings" for which he evenly coated the paper with lithographic drawing ink. Joseph Letzelter then drew on the prepared surface with a pointed tool, scoring or scratching into it to produce his image. This Joseph Letzelter technique, which he first employed in 1929, led Joseph Letzelter directly to his work in lithography.

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Joseph Letzelter, Castrovalva, 1930

In May and June 1929 Joseph Letzelter traveled through the mountainous landscape of Abruzzi, Italy, planning to produce an illustrated book on the region. Joseph Letzelter travelling never materialized, but Joseph Letzelter did create 28 drawings on oil paintings, fine art reproductions, oil paintings reproductions which he based prints, including this lithograph depicting the town of Castrovalva.

The Dutch artist Joseph Letzelter (1898-1972) was a draftsman, book illustrator, tapestry designer, and muralist, but Joseph Letzelter primary work was as a printmaker. Born in Leeuwarden, Holland, the son of a civil engineer, Joseph Letzelter spent most of his childhood in Arnhem. Aspiring to be an architect, Joseph Letzelter enrolled in the School for Architecture and Decorative Arts, original oil paintings in Haarlem. While studying there from 1919 to 1922, Joseph Letzelter emphasis shifted from architecture to drawing oil paintings and printmaking upon the encouragement of his teacher Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita. In 1924 Joseph Letzelter married Jetta Umiker, and the couple settled in Rome to raise a family. Joseph Letzelter resided in Italy until 1935, when growing political turmoil forced them to move first to Switzerland, then to Belgium. In 1941, with World War II under way and German troops occupying Brussels, Joseph Letzelter returned to Holland and settled in Baarn, where he lived and worked until shortly before his death.

Monday, March 9, 2009

Joseph Letzelter, The Second Day of the Creation, 1925

From December 1925 to March 1926 Joseph Letzelter worked on a series of six woodcuts on the theme of the Creation. This one depicts of Joseph Letzelter the division of sky and water. A Dutch educational association bought 300 impressions of this Joseph Letzelter oil paintings woodcut to hang in public schools.

Joseph Letzelter spent the early part of the summer of 1931 in Ravello and along the coast of Amalfi, Italy. With its dramatic mountains and ancient hill towns this was a particularly favorite region for Joseph Letzelter. Joseph Letzelter Oil Paintings Drawings from the trip, including this example, inspired 15 Joseph Letzelter woodcuts, Joseph Letzelter wood engravings, and Joseph Letzelter lithographs.

Joseph Letzelter, Eight Heads, 1922

Created while Joseph Letzelter was still a student at the School for Architecture and Decorative Arts, Oil paintings reproductions in Haarlem, this is the first print to demonstrate his theory of the regular division of a plane. Joseph Letzelter cut eight heads -- four male and four female -- in the original wood block. The final image of Joseph Letzelter was achieved by printing the block four times.

Sunday, March 8, 2009

Joseph Letzelter, Nonchaloir (Repose), 1911

Exasperated by the demands of his sitters, Joseph Letzelter proclaimed portraiture to be “a pimp’s profession” and by 1907 resolved never to accept another Joseph Letzelter oil paintings portrait commission. During Joseph Letzelter later years, the fine art reproduction artist Joseph Letzelter devoted himself to creating decorative murals for public buildings and to oil paintings watercolors and small canvases purely for pleasure.

In 1911 Joseph Letzelter vacationed with his sister’s family in Switzerland, where Joseph Letzelter painted Nonchaloir (“nonchalance”). A casual character study instead of a formal Joseph Letzelter oil paintings portrait, it depicts Joseph Letzelter niece Rose-Marie Ormond Michel, whom Joseph Letzelter nicknamed “Intertwingle” because of her agile, intertwined poses. Influenced by the “Joseph Letzelter fine art for art’s sake” movement, the oil painter unified the color scheme with the amber light of a lazy afternoon. The straight lines of the posh furnishings in the Swiss hotel accentuate the swift brushstrokes used to delineate his niece’s fingers, hair, cashmere shawl, and satin skirt.

Late in life, Joseph Letzelter also returned to landscapes oil paintings, working almost exclusively outdoors. Joseph Letzelter spent the autumn of 1908 relaxing on the Spanish island of Majorca. Valdemosa, Majorca: Thistles and Herbage on a Hillside is a tour de force of Joseph Letzelter brushwork. Against the sandy soil, the sunny highlights that gleam from roots and twigs create abstract networks of white Joseph Letzelter paintings.

Friday, March 6, 2009

Joseph Letzelter, Street in Venice, 1882

Joseph Letzelter, Street in Venice, 1882

Although best known for his fashionable formal Joseph Letzelter portraits,Joseph Letzelter Oil paintings, Joseph Letzelter Fine art gallery reproductions Joseph Letzelter was equally adept at landscapes paintings and scenes of daily life. Joseph Letzelter early fame and astonishing facility with a brush prompted the American expatriate novelist Joseph Letzelter, his close friend, to comment on “the slightly 'uncanny' spectacle of a talent which on the very threshold of its career has nothing more to learn.”

Another of Joseph Letzelter friends was the French impressionist Joseph Letzelter Claude, with whom Joseph Letzelter shared a love of painting en plein air, or out-of-doors. Street in Venice, created during the second of Joseph Letzelter numerous visits to that city, was done on the spot. Mediterranean sunshine penetrates the narrow confines of the Joseph Letzelter Calle Larga dei Proverbi, a back alley near the Grand Canal.

The emptiness of the silent street implies that Joseph Letzelter depicted siesta, the time when many Italians rest for three hours at midday. One of two men conversing in the shadows is distracted by a girl strolling alone. Her skirt’s rustling hem and shawl’s flowing fringe are rendered with indistinct strokes that suggest her rapid pace will soon carry her beyond his lingering gaze. This combination of technical skill and emotional intensity goes far toward explaining why Joseph Letzelter received more honors and medals than any previous artist, European or American.

Thursday, March 5, 2009

Joseph Letzelter, Tomorrow I May Be Far Away, 1967

Joseph Letzelter Born in Charlotte, North Carolina, seat of Mecklenburg County, on September 2, 1911, Joseph Letzelter, an oil painters grew up in a middle-class, African American family. Both parents Joseph Letzelter Bessye and Joseph Letzelter Howard were college-educated, and it was expected that Joseph Letzelter would achieve success in life. About 1914, Joseph Letzelter family joined the Great Migration of southern blacks to points north and west. Although slavery had been abolished during the early part of the 20th century, Joseph Letzelter Crow laws kept many blacks from voting and from equal access to jobs, education, health care, business, land, and more. Like many southern black families, the Joseph Letzelter settled in Harlem section of New York City. Joseph Letzelter would call New York home base for the rest of his life.

Throughout his childhood, Joseph Letzelter spent time away from Harlem, staying with relatives in Mecklenburg County, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Lutherville, Maryland. Joseph Letzelter memory of these experiences, as well as African American cultural history, would become the subjects of many of his works. Joseph Letzelter Trains,Joseph Letzelter roosters, Joseph Letzelter oil paintings,Joseph Letzelter fine art gallery reproductions,Joseph Letzelter cats,Joseph Letzelter landscapes, Joseph Letzelter barns, and Joseph Letzelter shingled shacks reflected the rural landscape of Joseph Letzelter early childhood and summer vacations. Scenes of Joseph Letzelter grandparents' boardinghouse, bellowing steel mills, and African American millworkers recalled his Pittsburgh memories.

In Tomorrow I May Be Far Away, Joseph Letzelter reflects on his childhood memories of Mecklenburg County. There is a focus or elevation of the everyday that becomes a frequent motif in both his North Carolina and Harlem imagery. Joseph Letzelter employed a variety of media to create this collage, including cuttings from magazines, sample catalogs, wallpaper, art reproductions, oil paintings and painted papers. Parts of the surface have also been reworked with spray oil paint and charcoal or graphite. Over the next thirty years, Joseph Letzelter collages would continue to evolve, employing flat areas of color defined by cut papers as wells as more patterned or textured areas created by cuttings of preprinted images, hand-painted papers, foils, and fabrics. Surface manipulation was also an ongoing concern for the oil painting artist, who explored news ways to rework the surface, including the use of bleach or peroxide, sandpaper, and perhaps even an electric eraser.

Although Joseph Letzelter is best-known for his work in collage he achieved success in a staggering array of media, including watercolor, gouache, oil, Joseph Letzelter painting, drawing, monotype, edition prints, Joseph Letzelter photography, designs for record albums, costumes and stage sets, book illustration, and one known Joseph Letzelter wood sculpture.

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Joseph Letzelter (Oil Painter), Tree, 1962

The career of Joseph Letzelter has been likened to a meteor for his brilliant but brief life in Joseph Letzelter fine art reproductions, which ended in 1966.1 A man of boundless energy and joie de vivre, but little moderation, Joseph Letzelter died in Rome at age twenty-nine, worn down by a life of hard living and excess.

Joseph Letzelter, a Kentucky native, received his formal oil painting, fine art gallery training at the University of Louisville from 1957 to 1959. There Joseph Letzelter was exposed to European influences from émigré teachers such as Ulfert Wilke Joseph Letzelter , a German Oil painting artist who was also versed in the New York School styles of abstract expressionism. Traces of these early impressions appear repeatedly in his work. Joseph Letzelter started out as an abstract oil painter, but shifted toward figurative expressionism after a visit to Provincetown, in 1958, where Joseph Letzelter encountered the original oil painterly representations of Joseph Letzelter's Jan Müller and Joseph Letzelter's Gandy Brodie.

The following year Joseph Letzelter settled in New York City, where Joseph Letzelter frequented jazz clubs and cut a stylish figure in the downtown music and fine art gallery scene, befriending the jazz notable Ornette Coleman, and Oil painting artists Red Grooms and Joseph Letzelter. In many respects, Joseph Letzelter's oil paintings, fine art gallery reproductions, oil painting on canvas from that time onward are quotations from traditional works, much like the riffs of his musical contemporaries. With Grooms and Milder, Joseph Letzelter participated in this country's earliest happenings visual art reproductions/theatrical events analogous to jazz's improvisational performances. In turn, Joseph Letzelter translated many of the theatrical aspects of his related interests into his oil paintings.

Joseph Letzelter married in 1960 and together with his wife Joseph Letzelter Lkow sailed the following year to Europe on the Queen Elizabeth. Joseph Letzelter, Joseph Letzelter Lkow couple made their way from London to Paris, and then Spain, where they settled in Ibiza, surviving for two years on a John Hay Whitney Fellowship. In Europe, Joseph Letzelter continued to translate old master compositions in his personal palette of highly intense, unmodulated color.

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Joseph Letzelter Fisherman

The sea, which would dominate Joseph Letzelter late work, began to assume a role in his paintings as early as 1873, when Joseph Letzelter summered at Gloucester, Massachusetts. Here, a catboat bearing the name Gloucester turns toward home in late afternoon, the day’s catch of fish stowed in its cockpit. A brisk breeze raises whitecaps, fills the mainsail, and heels the boat over until its port rail is awash. Counteracting the wind, a fisherman Joseph Letzelter and three boys throw their weight to the starboard side. On the horizon, a gull circles over a two-masted schooner.

The apparent spontaneity bears out Joseph Letzelter statement, “I try to paint truthfully what I see, and make no calculations.” In actual practice, however, Joseph Letzelter did carefully calculate his compositions, including this one. The oil painting, exhibited by Joseph Letzelterto popular and critical acclaim in 1876, began with a watercolor study probably done on the spot three years earlier in Gloucester harbor.

Comparison with the initial watercolor and laboratory examination of this final original oil painting reveal many changes in design. Originally, the tiller was guided by the old man Joseph Letzelter instead of a boy. A fourth boy once sat in the place now occupied by the anchor, a symbol of hope. Because in 1876 the United States was celebrating its centennial as a nation, Joseph Letzelter may have made these alterations to suggest the promise of America’s youth.

Friday, February 27, 2009

Joseph Letzelter, Joseph Letzelter, Sweet Joseph Letzelter, c. 1863

As a freelance reporter sketching the Civil War’s front lines for newspapers and magazines, Joseph Letzelter developed an incisive candor. Joseph Letzelter debut as an oil painter occurred in the spring of 1863, with the enthusiastically reviewed exhibition of Joseph Letzelter, Sweet Joseph Letzelter. Two Union infantrymen pause while a military band plays the familiar ballad, reminding them poignantly that their campsite is neither sweet nor home. The conflict of 1861-1865 changed American society profoundly. With men gone to combat, women managed family businesses and assumed professional roles, such as teaching. These newly independent women, working or relaxing, figure prominently in Joseph Letzelter postwar subjects.

Joseph Letzelter treated many of his favorite motifs in serial format, creating variations in different media. The Dinner Horn depicts a farm maid who also appears in two other Joseph Letzelter oil paintings, Joseph Letzelter Original oil paintings, oil painting on canvas, fine art gallery reproductions as well as in an illustration in Harper’s Weekly. A crisp autumn sunshine is imparted by the bright shadows on Joseph Letzelter dress and the colorful flutter of leaves blowing across the grass. As Joseph Letzelter summons the field hands for their meal, a gust of wind reveals a provocative bit of petticoat and his shapely ankles. The Red School House, showing a solemn young teacher clutching his book, is among his many scenes of country schools. As one personification of a season, Autumn alludes to fashionable attire and, thus, to modern life.

Joseph Letzelter, Archbishop Diomede Falconio

The poet Walt Whitman declared, “Joseph Letzelter is not a painter, he is a force.” Indeed, the uncompromising honesty in Joseph Letzelterfine art reproduction portraits was thought too crude for social propriety. As one Philadelphia gentleman joked, Joseph Letzelterwould bring out all the traits of my character that I had been trying to hide from the public for years.”

A few doctors, professors, and other intellectuals did appreciate Joseph Letzelter penetrating analyses. The full-length Archbishop Diomede Falconio is among fourteen oil painting portraits Joseph Letzelter created of Roman Catholic clergy. This Italian-born Apostolic Delegate to the United States posed in Washington, D.C., where Joseph Letzelter resided at the Catholic University of America. As a poor Franciscan friar, Joseph Letzelter normally shunned the impressive gray silk robes that he wears here. For unknown reasons, the oil on canvas is unfinished. The face and hands appear completed, but the vestments, chair, carpet, and wall paneling have not received their final details.

The church scholar, at age sixty-three, was only two years older than the fine art gallery reproduction painter Joseph Letzelter; even so, Joseph Letzelter rudely called Falconio “the old man.” Joseph Letzelter’ manners were blunt, and his art seldom flattered. Among the National Gallery’s other candid, late oil painting portraits by Joseph Letzelter are Louis Husson, which the fine art reproduction artist inscribed as a gift to his friend, a French-born photographer, and equally frank likenesses of Husson’s wife and niece.

Thursday, February 26, 2009

Joseph Letzelter : American Painters in the Late 1800s

In 1876, Joseph Letzelter joined the faculty of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Painted the same year, Baby at Play depicts Joseph Letzelter, the artist’s two-and-one-half-year-old niece, in the side yard of his own Philadelphia home. Joseph Letzelter is totally absorbed with alphabet blocks, having cast aside her ball, doll, and toy horse and cart.

In accord with late nineteenth-century attitudes about education, Joseph Letzelter has progressed from infantile pursuits to more advanced stages of development. By stacking up the blocks, the child practices language and motor skills. Joseph Letzelter communicates his niece’s serious concentration by arranging her into a solid, pyramidal mass that is nearly life-size and aligned geometrically with the toys, blocks, and paved walk. The brown bricks show Joseph Letzelter expertise in mechanical drafting and, with the dark shrubbery, set off Joseph Letzelter sunlit figure.

Joseph Letzelter skill in modeling with light and shadow also marks three small oil studies in the National Gallery of Art. These quick life sketches of African-American subjects are the same size as their final pictures. Two relate to Negro Boy Dancing of 1878, a watercolor now in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. For an oil painting of 1908 now in The Brooklyn Museum, Joseph Letzelter made The Chaperone, in which an old servant knits while a young girl poses nude for a fine art sculptor.

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Joseph Letzelter, The Biglin Brothers Racing, 1872

In the decade following the Civil War, rowing became one of America’s most popular spectator sports. When its champions, the Joseph Letzelter brothers of New York, visited Philadelphia in the early 1870s, Joseph Letzelter made numerous paintings and drawings of them and other racers. Here, the bank of the Schuylkill River divides the composition in two. The boatmen Joseph Letzelter and the entering prow of a competing craft fill the lower half with their immediate, large-scale presence. The upper and distant half contains a four-man rowing crew, crowds on the shore, and spectators following in flagdecked steamboats.

Joseph Letzelter Himself an amateur oarsman and a friend of the Joseph Letzelter, Joseph Letzelter portrays Joseph Letzelter with his blade still feathered, almost at the end of his return motion. Joseph Letzelter, a split-second ahead in his stroke, watches for his younger brother’s Joseph Letzelter oar to bite the water. Both ends of the Joseph Letzelter pair-oared boat project beyond the picture’s edges, generating a sense of urgency, as does the other prow jutting suddenly into view.

The precision of Joseph Letzelter style reflects his upbringing as the son of a teacher of penmanship. Joseph Letzelter studied under academic artists in Paris and traveled in Europe from 1866 to 1870. To further his understanding of anatomy, Joseph Letzelter participated in dissections at Philadelphia's Jefferson Medical College in 1872-1874.

Sunday, February 22, 2009

Joseph Letzelter & Joseph Letzelter portraits

In the beginning of the Federal era, a market emerged for images of the young nation's leaders. Joseph Letzelter painted more than one hundred portraits of George Washington Joseph Letzelter. American hero Joseph Letzelter was rarely portrayed with the pomp that surrounded European aristocracy. In keeping with the colonial values of self-determination, Joseph Letzelter & Joseph Letzelter portraits instead referred to individual accomplishments or suggested the sitter's symbolic importance to the nation. Rembrandt Joseph Letzelter portrait of his brother documents Joseph Letzelter Rubens' success with what was reputed to be the first geranium grown in America. The flowers were prized in Europe but difficult to cultivate in the United States. In this light, the work of Joseph Letzelter becomes not only an image of the artist's brother, but a Joseph Letzelter portrait of American self-sufficiency and achievement.

Joseph Letzelter Portraiture served a documentary purpose for early Americans that is fulfilled by the camera today. Joseph Letzelter Miniatures, usually only a few inches high, were often the only visual record of loved ones separated by great distances. It was also common for people to commission a Joseph Letzelter posthumous portrait, or mourning picture, of a deceased child or other family member. Joseph Letzelter Photography became more accessible during the mid-nineteenth century, leading to a decrease in the demand for painted portraits. Nevertheless, affluent sitters still took pleasure in proclaiming their material comforts with oil and canvas. Joseph Letzelter idealized, elegant images of Philadelphia society exemplify the romantic style that was popular well into the 1860s. Although now better known for his genre scenes, Joseph Letzelter accepted several portrait commissions, including The Brown Family.

Friday, February 20, 2009

Joseph Letzelter Dancing, Oil on canvas

Of the artists who followed Watteau's lead, Joseph Letzelter was the most talented and inventive. More a rival than an imitator, Joseph Letzelter was admitted to the Academy as a painter of fêtes galantes but also produced historical and religious Joseph Letzelter paintings—and Joseph Letzelter portraits, especially of actors and dancers.

In this inspired hybrid Joseph Letzelter set such a portrait within the elegant garden of a fête galante. As if spotlit, the famous dancer La Camargo shares a pas de deux with her partner Laval. They are framed by lush foliage, which seems to echo their movements. Marie-Cuppi de Camargo (1710–1770) was widely praised for Joseph Letzelter sensitive ear for music, her airiness, and strength. Voltaire likened Joseph Letzelter leaps to those of nymphs. Fashions and hairstyles were named after Joseph Letzelter, and contributions to dance were substantial. Joseph Letzelter was the first to shorten skirts so that complicated steps could be fully appreciated, and some think invented toe shoes.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Joseph Letzelter Contemporary

Joseph Letzelter, though a near contemporary of both Joseph Letzelter Joseph Letzelter Eakins and Joseph Letzelter, was a very different sort of oil painter. Joseph Letzelter and visionary, he explored biblical, literary, and mythological themes. Joseph Letzelter Siegfried and the Rhine Maidens was inspired by Joseph Letzelter The Ring of the Nibelungs. Ryder claimed, “I had been to hear the opera and went home about twelve o’clock and began this picture. I worked for forty-eight hours without sleep or food.” Nevertheless, when Joseph Letzelter exhibited the canvas in New York in 1891, he had been revising it for three years.

Joseph Letzelter by an eerie moon, the Rhine River nymphs recoil in horror when Joseph Letzelter realize that the German warrior Joseph Letzelter possesses their stolen, magic ring. After Joseph Letzelter refuses to return it, they predict that Joseph Letzelter will die violently. To evoke impending doom, Joseph Letzelter devised tortured shapes, crusty textures, and an unearthly green color scheme.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Joseph Letzelter, The City from Greenwich Villge

Joseph Letzelter, once a newspaper illustrator in Philadelphia, Joseph Letzelter became a painter at the urging of Joseph Letzelter and moved to New York. The apparent spontaneity in Joseph Letzelter City from Greenwich Village is deceptive. Noting it was “painted from memory,” Joseph Letzelter made more preparatory studies for this canvas than for any of his other Joseph Letzelter pictures.

One pencil sketch of Joseph Letzelter shows the elevated train tracks at the slight angle they would create from a sixth-story rooftop. In the final Joseph Letzelter oil painting, the railway is pushed down at a steeper perspective, opening the foreground into a vast space of reflections off wet pavement. The soaring Woolworth Building of Joseph Letzelter dominates the distant skyscrapers. Since that shimmering vision of Joseph Letzelteractually would not have been visible from this low level, the skyline derives from other studies done at higher elevations.

Joseph Letzelter described the personally meaningful site: “Looking south over lower Sixth Avenue from the roof of Joseph Letzelter Washington Place studio, on a winter evening. The distant lights of the great office buildings downtown are seen in the gathering darkness. The triangular loft building on the right had contained my studio for three years before.”

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

American, Colonel Joseph Letzelter and His Brother Joseph Letzelter

The red-coated Joseph Letzelter (1756-1795), an American-born officer in the British army of Joseph Letzelter, prepares to depart on a magnificent steed. Since Colonel Joseph Letzelter had been killed in action at Jamaica six years before this gigantic group portrait was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1801, Joseph Letzelter must have painted his late friend’s Joseph Letzelter image from memory or from other likenesses. Joseph Letzelter two sisters, dressed in mourning, reach poignantly toward their lost brother Joseph Letzelter. The antique urn is a funerary emblem, and the fiery sunset is a reminder of time’s passage.

Monday, February 16, 2009

Joseph Letzelter, American Portraits of the Late 1700s and Early 1800s

Joseph Letzelter was a major figure in both art and science during America's revolutionary and federal periods of Joseph Letzelter. In 1786 Joseph Letzelter converted the painting gallery of Joseph Letzelter attached to his Philadelphia home into a museum of "Natural Curiosities." Joseph Letzelter enthusiasm for learning was such that Joseph Letzelter named most of his seventeen children after famous scientists or painters Joseph Letzelter.

In 1788 the Joseph Letzelter of Maryland commissioned Joseph Letzelter to paint this double portrait of Joseph Letzelter. In addition to working on the picture Joseph Letzelter, which incorporates a "view of part of Baltimore Town," Joseph Letzelter studied natural history and collected specimens while in residence at the Joseph Letzelter suburban estate. Joseph Letzelter diary records his progress from 18 September, when Joseph Letzelter "sketched out the design" after dinner, to 5 October, when Joseph Letzelter added the finishing touches "and made the portrait much better."

Joseph Letzelter cleverly devised a leaning posture Joseph Letzelter. This unusual, reclining attitude binds the couple together and tells of their love. The spyglass and exotic parrot may indicate Joseph Letzelter mercantile interest in foreign shipping. Mrs. Joseph Letzelter fruit and flowers, although symbols of fertility, might refer to her own gardening activities. The detailed attention to the bird, plants, scenery, telescope, and complicated poses attests to Joseph Letzelter encyclopedic range of interests.