A wedding exit

I know nothing about this photograph, but isn't this happy pair marvelous?  His faultless tailoring and the wonderfully extravagant pretensions of her couturier have conspired with Nature - and the photographer - to create the most glamorously windswept post-nuptial descent.

Fearless color, compulsive detail - Frederick Sandys

Anthony Frederick Augustus Sandys (born Antonio Frederic Augustus Sands), (1 May 1829 – 25 June 1904), one of the English Pre-Raphaelites.

Mary Margaret

 Isolde and the Love Potion

Perdita

Mary Magdalene

 

Grace Rose

Helen of Troy

Vivien

Mary Magdalene

Medea

Miranda

Queen Hedwig's wedding dress

Hedwig Elisabeth Charlotte of Holstein-Gottorp (22 March 1759 – 20 June 1818), Queen of Sweden and Norway.  Married in 1774 at the age of fifteen to the future King Charles XIII and II.

The future queen Hedwig in her wedding gown, 1774, portrait by Alexander Roslin.

The original gown; the engageants and other lace trim have been removed.

Cloth of silver, silver embroidery, silver lace.

Arkhip Kuindzhi - the greenest green....

A selection of paintings by the Russian landscape artist Arkhip Ivanovich Kuindzhi, (January 27, 1842(?) – July 24, 1910)

Jérôme-Martin Langlois (Paris, March 11, 1779 - Paris, December 28, 1838), "Portrait of the Comte de M.", 1831

One of my favorite paintings at the Portland Art Museum.  The subject has such character; his smiling eyes and the way his lower lip tucks in under the upper is so charming, touching somehow.  And he looks ready to speak to the viewer - the voice would be basso, certainly, with a rumbling, rolling French.

Pauline Astor by John Singer Sargent, 1898

And the Dog?  Sargent's portraits are usually so seriously glamorous; there isn't much humor to be found in his work.  But then there's this charming little Spaniel, and the bright gaze and tight chin of its mistress, who looks to be stifling a laugh.

Stealing Ideas From Ingres, or: The Harem, Redecorated

Two years ago I finished a painting I'd started nine years before and then abandoned.  "Le Fumeur - after Ingres".  It was based on Ingres' famous "Grande Odalisque" of 1814 that resides in the Louvre.  The model for my painting, a good friend, posed for the preparatory photographs back in 2002.   

I didn't want to reproduce the original Orientalist details, so I came up with a vaguely Fin de siècle decor; Fabergé-style enameled cigarette case and matchbox, Art Nouveau silver and enamel vase.  And since my friend was quite the smoker, I used that to my advantage, replacing the original's waft of incense with the more pedestrian trail of drifting cigarette smoke.  Oh, and the cigarette butts....

Le Fumeur - After Ingres - acrylic on panel - 14x22 - 2002-11

Personnes royales, en privées....

Pauline Bonaparte, Princess Borghese, at the Château de Neuilly.

The Empress Eugénie in her study at the Tuileries by Giuseppe Castiglione.

Le Cabinet de travail du roi Louis-Philippe à Neuilly, 1845 by James Roberts.

Portrait de jeune homme en buste, by Henri-Pierre Danloux (or the circle of)

Maria Isabel de Bragança, Infanta of Portugal, Queen of Spain - by Vicente López y Portaña, circa 1816-18

Maria Isabel Francisca de Bragança (19 May 1797 – 26 December 1818), Infanta of Portugal, Queen of Spain as the second wife of Ferdinand VII.  She was the major force behind the founding of what came to be the Museo del Prado.  She died, horrifically, in childbirth at the age of twenty-one, a year before the museum opened to the public.

"Maria Isabel of Portugal in front of the Prado" by Bernardo López y Piquer (1799-1874), 1829.  This portrait was painted eleven years after the queen's 
death, and commemorates her important involvement in the founding the Museo del Prado.  The artist obviously used the portrait by López y Portaña -  
who was López y Piquer's father - as the model for the deceased queen.