About Andreas Achenbach

Andreas Achenbach was a German landscape painter, associated with the Dusseldorf school of painting.

He was born at Kassel; he began his art education in 1827 in Dusseldorf under Friedrich Wilhelm Schadow at the Dusseldorf Academy of Painting. He studied at St Petersburg and travelled in Italy, Holland and Scandinavia. In his early work he followed the pseudo-idealism of the German romantic school, but on removing to Munich in 1835, the stronger influence of Louis Gurlitt turned his talent into new channels, and he became the founder of the German realistic school.

While his landscapes evince too much of his aim at picture-making and lack personal temperament, he is a master of technique, and is historically important as a reformer. He received a medal of the first class in Paris in 1855, and he was named a Chevalier of the French Legion of Honor. The Chambers Biographical Dictionary says of him that "he was regarded as the father of 19th century German landscape painting."

A number of his finest works are to be found at the Berlin National Gallery, the New Pinakothek in Munich, and the galleries at Dresden, Darmstadt, Cologne, Dusseldorf, Leipzig and Hamburg. Many of his paintings are in galleries in the United States.

He died in Dusseldorf.

His brother, Oswald Achenbach (1827–1905), was also a painter.

Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I

Klimt took three years to complete the painting. It measures 138 x 138 cm and is made of oil and gold on canvas, showing elaborate and complex ornamentation as seen in the Jugendstil style. Klimt was a member of the Vienna Secession, a group of artists that broke away from the traditional way of painting. The picture was painted in Vienna and commissioned by Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer.

As a wealthy industrialist who had made his fortune in the sugar industry, he sponsored the arts and favored and supported Gustav Klimt. Adele Bloch-Bauer became the only model who was painted twice by Klimt when he completed a second picture of her, Adele Bloch-Bauer II, in 1912. Google has celebrated the 150th birthday of Gustav Klimt on July 14/2012 with a doodle representing the painting replacing the Google logo at google.com.

Adele Bloch-Bauer, in her will, asked her husband to donate the Klimt paintings to the Austrian State Gallery upon his death. She died in 1925 from meningitis. When the Nazis took over Austria, her widowed husband had to flee to Switzerland. His property, including the Klimt paintings, was confiscated. In his 1945 testament, Bloch-Bauer designated his nephew and nieces, including Maria Altmann, as the inheritors of his estate.

The Bridge at Narni

The Bridge at is an 1826 painting by French artist Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot. The painting is presently on display at the Musee du Louvre in Paris.

The painting is a product of one of Corot's young sojourns in Italy, and, in Kenneth Clark's words, "as free as the most vigorous Constable". It was painted in September 1826, and was the basis for the larger and more finished View at Narni, which was exhibited at the Salon of 1827, and is now in the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.

The view was not a novel one: in 1821 Corot's teacher, Achille-Etna Michallon had drawn the same scene, as had Corot's friend Ernst Fries in 1826. Corot's study is a reconciliation of customary and plein air painting objectives:

So deeply did Corot admire Claude and Poussin, so fully did he understand their work, that from the outset he viewed nature in their terms? In less than a year he had realized his goal of closing the gap between the empirical freshness of outdoor painting and the organizing principles of classical landscape composition.

Sleeping Beauty

The Sleeping Beauty by Charles Perrault or very Little Briar Rose by the Brothers Grimm is a classic fairytale involving a beautiful princess, enchantment, and a handsome prince. Written as an original literary tale, it was first published by Charles Perrault in Histories our contest du temps passe in 1697.

Perrault's narrative:

The basic elements of Perrault's story are in two parts. Some folklorists believe that they were originally separate tales, as they became afterward in the Grimm’s' version, and were joined together by Basile, and Perrault following him.

Part One:

At the baptism of a king and queen's long-wished-for child, seven fairies are invited to be godmothers to the infant princess. At the banquet back at the palace, the fairies seat themselves with a golden casket containing golden jeweled utensils laid by them. However, a wicked fairy that was overlooked, having been within an exact tower for several years and thought to be either dead or enchanted enters and is offered a seating, but not a golden casket since only seven were made. 

The fairies then provide their gifts of beauty, wit, grace, dance, song and ability of musical instruments. The old fairy then places the princess under an enchantment as her gift: the princess will prick her hand on a spindle and die. One last fairy has yet to give her gift and uses it to partially reverse the wicked fairy's curse, proclaiming that the princess will instead fall into a deep sleep for 100 years and be awoken by a king's son.

The king forbids spinning on spinning-wheels or spindles, or the custody of one, throughout the kingdom, upon pain of death. When the princess is fifteen or sixteen and her parents are away on pleasure bent, she wanders throughout the palace rooms going up and down and then chances upon an old woman who is spinning with her distaff in the garret of a tower and had not heard of the king's decree against spinning wheels. The princess asks to try the unfamiliar job and the inevitable happens: the curse is fulfilled. The old woman cries for help and attempts are made to revive her, but to no avail. 

The king attributes this to fate and has the princess carried to the finest room in the palace and placed upon a bed of gold-and-silver-embroidered fabric. The good fairy that altered the evil prophecy is summoned by a dwarf wearing seven-league boots and returns in a chariot of fire drawn by dragons. 

Having great powers of foresight, the good fairy sees that the princess will be distressed to find her alone and so puts everyone in the castle to sleep. The king and queen kiss their daughter goodbye and depart, proclaiming the entrance to be forbidden. The good fairy's magic also summons a forest of trees, brambles and thorns that spring up around the castle, shielding it from the outside world and preventing anyone from disturbing the princess.

A hundred years pass and a prince from another family spies the hidden castle during a hunting journey. His followers tell him differing stories regarding the happenings in the castle until an old man recounts his father's words: within the castle lies a beautiful princess who is doomed to sleep for a hundred years, whereupon a king's son is to come and awaken her. 

The prince then braves the tall trees, brambles and thorns which part at his approach, and enters the castle. He passes the sleeping castle folk and comes across the chamber where the princess lies asleep on the bed. Trembling at the radiant beauty before him, he falls on his knees before her. The enchantment comes to an end and the princess awakens and converses with the prince for a long time. Meanwhile, the rest of the castle awakes and go about their business. The prince and princess head over to the hall of mirrors to dine and are later married by the chaplain in the castle chapel.

Ragamala Paintings

Ragamala Paintings are a series of descriptive paintings from medieval India based on Ragamala or the 'Garland of Ragas', depicting various Indian musical modes, Ragas. They stand as a classical example of the amalgamation of art, poetry and classical music in medieval India.

Ragamala paintings were created in most schools of famous painting, starting in the 16th and 17th centuries and are today named accordingly, as Pahari Ragamala, Rajasthan or Rajput Ragamala, Deccan Ragamala, and Mughal Ragamala.

In these painting every raga is personified by a color, mood, a verse describing a story of a hero and heroine, it also elucidates the season and therefore the time of day and night in which a particular raga is to be sung; and finally most paintings also demarcate the specific Hindu deities attached with the raga, like Bhairava or Bhairavi to Shiva, Sri to Devi etc. The paintings depict not simply the Ragas, but also their wives, (raginis), their numerous sons (ragaputra) and daughters (ragaputri).

The six principal ragas present in the Ragamala are Bhairava, Dipika, Sri, Malkaunsa, Megha and Hindola and these are meant to be sung during the six seasons of the year – summer, monsoon, autumn, early winter, winter and spring.

History:

Sangeeta Ratnakara is an important 12th century CE treatise on the classification of Indian Ragas, which for the first time mentions the presiding deity of each raga. From the 14th century onwards, they were described in short verses in Sanskrit, for Dhyana, 'contemplation', and later depicted in a series of paintings, called the Ragamala paintings. Some of the best available works of Ragamala are from the 16th and 17th centuries, when the form flourished under royal patronage, though by the 19th century, it gradually faded.

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

.

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.