Miss Heyneman recalls: “When he was dissatisfied he never hesitated to destroy what he had done. He spent three weeks, for instance, painting Lady D’ Abernon in a white dress. One morning, after a few minutes of what was to be the final setting, he suddenly set to work to scrape out what he had painted. The present portrait in a black dress (above), was done in three sittings.”
The end stages of anyone’s life are likely to be somewhat chaotic. Ailments consume one’s thoughts, strength wanes, memory fades, and the ability to take care of ordinary activities, albeit work or just shopping for food, declines. Those with jobs are apt to retire – the business will go on – and devote the remainder of their lives to a less stressful existence. In 1996, multimedia sculptor Nam June Paik (1932-2006) suffered a stroke that largely curtailed his ability to create new installations, but his career was far from over. Exhibitions of his work were being planned, new pieces were still being fabricated and existing works continued to be put up for sale at galleries. What’s more, a series of…
Socially ambitious but aloof Vanderbilt heiress, Florence Adele Vanderbilt Spource: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-henry-adams/thomas-hoving-wendy-burde_b_533089.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-henry-adams/reading-amanda-one-black_b_202819.html
This famous lake, according to Herodotus, with whose account Diodorus Siculus and Mela agree, was entirely an artificial excavation, made by king Moeris, to carry off the overflowing waters of the Nile, and reserve them for the purposes of irrigation. It was, in the time of Herodotus, 3,600 stadia or 450 miles in circumference, and 300 feet deep, with innumerable canals and reservoirs. Denon, Belzoni, and other modern travelers, describe it at the present time as a natural basin, thirty or forty miles long, and six broad. The works, therefore, which Herodotus attributes to King Moeris, must have been the mounds, dams, canals, and sluices which rendered it subservient to the purposes of irrigation. These, also, would give it the…
When Madame X was shown at the Salon of 1884 it became instantly a salacious painting and a scandal in French society as a result of its sexual suggestiveness of her pose and the pail pasty color of her skin. The “X” ofMadame X was actually Madame Gautreau (1859-1915) who’s reputation was apparently destroyed and John left France shortly to never truly regain his former standing as the darling of Paris. The size of the painting is enormous, measuring 82 inches by 43 inches or nearly seven feet tall (2 meters) — and with the underlying sensuality of the painting, in the time that it was done (if it isn’t still to some degree today), almost threatening to the viewer. When I…
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Palomino says that when Titian’s famous painting of the Last Supper arrived at the Escurial, it was found too large to fit the panel in the refectory, where it was designed to hang. The king, Philip II., proposed to cut it to the proper size. El Mudo (the dumb painter), who was present, to prevent the mutilation of so capital a work, made earnest signs of intercession with the king, to be permitted to copy it, offering to do it in the space of six months. The king expressed some hesitation, on account of the length of time required for the work, and was proceeding to put his design in execution, when El Mudo repeated his supplications in behalf of…