Alphonse Mucha (1860-1939) was a Czech painter and illustrator, famous for his images of women, particularly in theatrical posters. His style was typical of the Art Nouveau period.
Belgian Symbolist LĂ©on Spilliaert was an artist whose gloomy and mysterious early style is easy to recognise once youâve seen a couple of his pictures. Spilliaert grew up in Ostend so the Belgian coast dominates his pastels which renounce sunlit beach scenes in favour of windswept vistas.
The Impressionists flocked to the coast to paint fluffy clouds and waves and parasols; Spilliaert gives us monochrome shades and oppressively empty views. A prolific doodler and autodidact, he was predominantly a self-taught artist. Sickly and reclusive, he spent most of his youth sketching scenes of ordinary life and the Belgian countryside. When he was 21, he went to work in Brussels for Edmond Deman, a publisher of the works of symbolist writers, which Spilliaert was to illustrate. He especially admired the work of Edgar Allan Poe. At first glance the haunting black-and-white landscapes of LĂ©on Spilliaert resemble abstract works of art.
In Vertigo the hooded female echoes symbolist imagery of vampires, witches and femme fatales. Will she fall or throw herself into the dark void that awaits her under the steeply plunging steps?
I wish I could find more info in English about Spilliaert, it seems to me that he is very underestimated artist in the art world.
@MissAdventurous Nice painting of the most powerful creature in the jungle, standing in front of a lion.
Rolf Armstrong (1889-1960) was an acclaimed American pin-up artist who specialized in female portraits. His art thrived in the age when magazine covers were paintings rather than photographs.
Annie Stegg Gerard (American, born 1982) Twilight Enchantress, 2021 Oil on wooden panel 9 x 12 inches Private collection
"Me and my cat against the world" by Andrea Esposito, born in Rimini (Italy) in 1981
Just wanted to share one of my favorites I saw at the Tate museum when I lived in Bloomsburry
Ooooo love that @Janelle19 đ
Is design art? Of course!
Koloman Moser was a leading Viennese designer who co-founded the Wiener WerkstĂ€tte (1903â1932), an avant-garde design workshop in Vienna.
Before 1903, he played a crucial role in the Moderne Movement. Moser was also a founding member of the Vienna Secession, a group of young artists who had parted ways with the established Wiener KĂŒnstlerhaus, the dominant art institution of the time.
His design, Poppyheads, created three years before the Wiener WerkstÀtte's inception, anticipated the refined textile patterns he later developed there.
The elongated lines and the simplified, abstracted organic forms reflect a new aesthetic shared by artists in Vienna and Glasgow. Moser's design was produced in various colorways by the Viennese company Johann Backhausen und Söhne, a close collaborator of the WerkstÀtte, which continues to operate today.
The textile was intended for use in upholstery or curtains, complementing rooms designed as cohesive artistic environments by WerkstÀtte artists.
Lavinia Fontana was a Bolognese Mannerist painter active in Bologna and Rome. She is best known for her successful portraiture, but also worked in the genres of mythology and religious painting.
She is regarded as the first female career artist in Western Europe as she relied on commissions for her income.
Here she depicted Antonietta Gonsalvus, who with her father and siblings had hypertrichosis, which is an abnormal amount of hair growth over the body.
Antonietta's father first came to the court of Henry II, King of France in 1547. After the death of Henry II, 40 years later, he and his wife with their eight children were sent to the court of Margaret of Parma, regent of the Netherlands.
The family became an object of medical inquiry by Ulisse Aldrovandi among others. Despite living and acting as nobles, the Gonsalvuses were not considered fully human in the eyes of their contemporaries.
They eventually settled in Italy. It is believed that marriage between the parents of Antonietta, Petrus Gonsalvus and Lady Catherine, may have partially inspired the tale of Beauty and the Beast.
Elisabetta Sirani was an Italian Baroque painter and printmaker. She was quite successful in her short life; she was the most famous woman artist in Bologna, and founded an academy for women artists.
Sirani was trained by her father, who had been a student of Guido Reni and was an established painter in the Bologna school. When her father became incapacitated, she took over his workshop and studio at age sixteen.
She immediately became immensely successful. Her success was made easier by the fact that Bologna was more progressive than other Italian cities and readily welcomed women artists.
In addition to success with her own paintings, she trained a number of other painters, including some men and over a dozen women (including her younger sisters).Sirani painted, among other works, portraits, religious paintings, including the popular story of Judith and Holofernes, and a self portrait showing herself as the allegory of painting. Portia Wounding Her Thigh is a scene from Roman history. Portia Catonis was the wife of Brutus and some scholars believe she may have been involved in the plot to kill Julius Caesar, or at the very least was the only woman to know about it beforehand.
The scene illustrated here comes from Plutarch, who writes that she came upon her husband pondering the assassination but he would not confide his troubles to her, for fear that she would reveal the plot under torture.
To prove her ability to withstand physical pain, Portia cut her thigh and suffered in silence for a day (despite chills and fever). She then returned to her husband with proof that she could keep her secrets.
It could have been a political painting for Sirani, probably meant to show the lengths women must go to in order to be taken seriously.
Salvador Dali Christmas card design 1960
Today is Canada Day, the national day of Canada, which celebrates the anniversary of Canadian Confederation (July 1, 1867), when the three separate British Empire colonies of the United Canadas, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick were united into a single dominion called Canada. To celebrate this, let's take a look at one of my favorite Canadian artists, Tom Thomson
Tom Thomson was a crucial figure in early 20th-century Canadian art. In a brief but very productive career, he created around 400 small oil sketches on wood panels and approximately 50 larger canvases. Focused almost entirely on landscapes, his work captured the natural beauty of Ontarioâs wildernessâits trees, lakes, rivers, and skiesâthrough bold brushwork and thick, expressive layers of paint. His iconic images have become enduring symbols of Canadian identity and landscape painting.
His mysterious death on Canoe Lake in 1917âwhether accidental, suicidal, or the result of foul playâhas fueled the ongoing speculation and mythologizing and is widely regarded as a great loss for Canadian art.
In 1912, Thomson made his first trip to Algonquin Park in central Ontario, where today's painting was created. There, he began to sketch outdoors using newly acquired painting equipment. Captivated by the wilderness, he would return year after year, dividing his time between summers in the park and winters in Toronto.
Clementina Hawarden was a pioneering and prolific 19th-century amateur photographer who created around 800 photographs, primarily luminous and intimate portraits of her daughters, within the domestic setting of her home in South Kensington, London.
She was an enigmatic figure, and much of her life remains shrouded in mystery. Most of what is known about her has been pieced together through her photographic work.
Born Clementina Elphinstone Fleeming on June 1, 1822, near Glasgow, she was the daughter of Admiral Charles Elphinstone Fleeming, noted for his role in the South American wars of independence, and Catalina Paulina Alessandro, his much younger Spanish wife.
Despite raising ten (TEN!) children, Hawarden found time to become a very productive photographer. Her work offers a rare window into the domestic life of an upper-class Victorian woman. While her male contemporaries often photographed distant places, she explored the artistic potential of her immediate surroundingsâusing light, mirrors, fabrics, and carefully composed interiors to create images that are both theatrical and tender.
Unlike contemporaries such as Julia Margaret Cameron, who emphasized facial expression, Hawarden highlighted clothing, posture, and the interplay between figure and environment. Many of her later photographs, made from around 1862, feature her daughters in costume tableauxâcombining fashionable dress with theatrical styling in ways that blur reality and fantasy.
Though some modern viewers have read these images through the lens of Victorian preoccupations with adolescence and sexuality, thereâs no evidence that Hawarden herself sought to provoke.Social conventions of the time discouraged women of Hawardenâs class from commercializing their art.
Still, she exhibited her photographs with the Photographic Society of London in 1863 and 1864 under the titles Studies from Life and Photographic Studies.
She received silver medals both years for her work, but died before she could collect themâpassing away from pneumonia in 1865 at the age of 42. It has been speculated that prolonged exposure to photographic chemicals may have compromised her health.
David Chidgey is a glass and mosaic artist in San Antonio, TX. His glass method is to build within a zinc frame, places the design underneath clear glass, glues each piece of tesserae directly to the glass, then he grouts the entire piece and cleans it off. He documents his method here:
https://artglassmosaics.blogspot.com/2013/07/my-glass-on-glass-mosaic-mandala-process.html
He has created a series of mandalas, and these are two of my favorite of his.
He's done some large mosaic work for outdoor installations, and I love this piece he did for a garden.
Loving this thread, @MissAdventurous .
@MissAdventurous .,we h a bve spoken before..but i wanted to say again how much I appreciate your positivity .unity.. and culture you bring t o thi site...you are a remarkable woman
On this day in 1830, Albert Bierstadt, a German-American painter renowned for his grand, panoramic depictions of the American West, was born. He took part in several expeditions during the era of Westward Expansion, capturing the dramatic landscapes he encountered.
While he was not the first artist to portray these regions, Bierstadt became the most celebrated painter of the Western frontier throughout the rest of the 19th century.
Bierstadt was a masterful painter who loved to make a show on his canvases. In this painting, he rearranged Rocky Mountain landmarks, amplified their grandeur, and added dramatic weather effects to captivate viewers, in the time when the North American landscape was undergoing rapid transformation.
His monumental, theatrically lit canvasesâpresented for public profitâanticipated the spectacle of modern cinema.Bierstadt began the work in 1863 with studies made on location, later completing the painting in his New York studio. The scene held personal meaning: he named Mt. Rosalie (now Mount Blue Sky) in honor of Rosalie Osborne Ludlow, the wife of his traveling companion. Following her divorce, Bierstadt would marry her in 1866.
@Sideon mmmm beautiful mosaics indeed! I love stained glass in general but these are gorgeous.
Alex Garant - 1992 (2024) I try not to give too much weight to tangible objects, but this is without a doubt one of the most cherished items I own.
@moonlightmuse i believe the title of that painting is âShaken not Stirredâ, part of the âBond in Rehabâ triptych.
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I am pulling your leg @moonlightmuse. Cool painting of a person in a chair during an earthquake. So many stories you can give it.