ladies on beds - four paintings by Francis Gruber

Femme sur un lit rouge, 1946.

Femme étendue sur un lit, 1948.

Le Lit rouge, 1944.

Femme sur un canapé, 1945.

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Francis Gruber (15 March 1912, Nancy - 1 December 1948, Paris), French painter, founder of the Nouveau Réalisme school. The son of stained glass artist Jacques Gruber, he first exhibited at the age of 18. While other artists were embracing abstraction, he preferred to paint the figure, being influenced by Hieronymus Bosch, Albrecht Dürer, Matthias Grünewald, and the engraver Jacques Callot. Asthmatic since childhood, he died of tuberculosis at the age of thirty-six. He was buried in the village cemetery in Thomery, Seine-et-Marne, where he had lived for some years; his close friend Alberto Giacometti contributed a sculpture (now missing) for his grave and poet Louis Aragon gave his funeral oration.

Her daughters in the garden - Autochromes by Etheldreda Laing, circa 1910s

With the Autochrome process, images taken in an interior - like these next few - could require an exposure of up to one minute.

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Etheldreda Janet Laing (née Winkfield, 1872, Ely– 22 December 1960, London), British photographer remembered for her color photographs using the early Autochrome process. The daughter of Richard Winkfield, head of the King's School, she went on to study drawing in Cambridge. She married the barrister Charles Miskin Laing in 1895, after which the couple lived in Oxford. In 1899, they moved to Bury Knowle House in the Oxford district of Headington. Enthralled with photography, which it appears she practiced since the late 1890s, Etheldreda had her own darkroom built in the house. She showed an immediate interest in the Autochrome color process when it first became available in 1907. From 1908 she took many photographs of her daughters Janet and Iris - born in 1898 and 1903, respectively - in the garden. The couple moved to London in 1923 where she took up miniature painting and joined the Royal Miniature Society. Her husband died in 1939, but she lived another twenty-one years, passing away at the age of eighty-eight. Bury Knowle House where these images were taken is now Headington Library, and the grounds Laing captured so vividly are a public park.

A self-portrait.

Half a century - Gigi's birthday card "reveal"

It doesn't seem possible, but my sweet wife turns fifty years old today. If you knew her, if you could see her in person, you'd be every bit as incredulous; she barely looks out of her twenties. And more than her youthful appearance, it's her vivacity and curiosity and humor. In countless ways, she's really quite a remarkable human. And I'm so grateful that I get to share my life with her; how I got so lucky I'll never understand. Gigi - Eugenia Bain Little, ma belle Eugénie - I salute you!

But one more thing about that "eternally youthful" business? If people start asking if she's my daughter, I'm going to be very cross...!

Nicholas salutes her, too.

And the image of Nicholas as used in the card? A bit of cotton wool for the doggy ears; Nicholas adores Gigi, but loathes fireworks.

Tomfoolery - exhibit A

Courtesy Stephen Rutledge.

Sweden, 1955.

Courtesy Stephen Rutledge.

Sweden, circa 1900.

Sweden, 1953.

Circa 1930s.

Courtesy Stephen Rutledge.

Swedish tram driver, 1944.