Maxfield Parrish - Daybreak

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Inspired by - Maxfield Parrish  - Daybreak

Daybreak was commissioned in 1920 for the sole purpose of reproduction. It was distributed to the American public as a color lithographic print. It went on to be the most reproduced painting in American history. One 1925 survey estimated that as many as one in every four American households had a "Daybreak" print on its wall. The naked figure in "Daybreak" is Parrish's eleven-year-old daughter Jean. The reclining figure is Kitty Owen Spence, the eighteen-year-old granddaughter of William Jennings Bryan. Bryan was a three-time presidential candidate for the Democratic party. He bought the original, and it was held by his family until 1974. In preliminary drawings, there was third character. The model for which was Susan Lewin, Maxfield’s housekeeper and lover. Before the painting was released, daughter Jean asked that Lewin be removed.

On May 25, 2006, Daybreak was purchased by Mel Gibson's wife, Robyn at auction at Christie's for $7.6 million. This set a record price for a Parrish painting. When they divorced three years later, it was sold again, but this time for $5.2 million. 

See original painting:  https://bit.ly/4qOOhDS

The Dance

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Inspired by Henri Matisse - The Dance

The Dance was commissioned by a Russian businessman and art collector Sergei Shchukin, with whom Matisse had a long association. This painting hung together with Matisse’ Music on the staircase of Shchukin's Moscow mansion. A year after the Russian Revolution his house and collection was confiscated via a decree signed by Lenin. His home then became the State Museum of New Western Art. In 1948, Stalin signed the decree which closed it down because of its “bourgeois artwork”. The contents were then split between the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts and the Hermitage Museum.

A second Dance was commissioned by a businessman and art collector Albert Barnes with whom Matisse also had a long association. It hung above the windows in the main gallery of his home (which housed 24 other Matisse paintings). After a lengthy lawsuit following his death, the Barnes Foundation collection was appropriated by the city of Philadelphia, and relocated to the Parkway near the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

A third version (which was a study for the first) was acquired by Nelson Rockefeller, a businessman and art collector, and donated to the MOMA. I guess businessmen just “Wanna Dance”.

To see original: https://bit.ly/4tG2yp8

Golconda

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Inspired by René Magritte - Golconda

Magritte got the name for this painting from his poet friend Louis Scutenaire, who often helped him find names for his paintings. All of the faces are different, but he included a likeness of Scutenaire in the middle of the center row. The name he chose, Golconda, refers to a city in India, which was considered the world’s diamond capital. Bowlers were designed for the British middle class, in the second half of the 19th century. It denoted informality and practicality, juxtaposed to the more formal top hat. This ubiquitous piece of fashion, worn by bourgeois men, was the definition of anonymity. This painting is peppered with bowler-hatted gents who represent the common man, the sort who would not stand out. Magritte said, “The bowler poses no surprise. It is a headdress that is not original. The man with the bowler is just middle-class man in his anonymity. I wear it, because I am not eager to singularize myself.”

To see original: https://bit.ly/45JwhmM

Washington Crossing the Delaware - Emanuel Leutze

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Inspired by Emanuel Leutze - Washington Crossing the Delaware

There are three versions of this painting. The first was painted when Leutze lived in Germany. It was damaged during a fire in his studio, but was subsequently restored. It was acquired by the Kunsthalle Bremen, but during World War II, it was destroyed in a British Royal Air Forcebombing raid  FDR said the raid was Britain's final retaliation for the American Revolution. A full-sized replica of the first canvas, was painted and

placed on exhibition in New York in 1851. At this showing Marshall 0. Roberts, collector and Board member of the Met, bought the canvas for the then enormous sum of $10,000. There was an additional copy painted, which is in the West Wing of the White House. It was recently sold for $45,000,000

One of the bow oarsmen is Black. He is probably William Lee who was Washington’s slave and at his side through most of the revolution. He was the only one of Washington’s slaves set free by decree in Washington’s will.This boat is filled with hardened militiamen. America’s woodsman gone to war. But they are all clean-shaven, there is not a whisker on any face.  Also, this American Flag did not exist at the time of the crossing. It was designed six months later.

To see original:  https://bit.ly/4aJCGSk

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec - At the Moulin Rouge-

Inspired by: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

A penciled inscription, in the artist's hand, on the back of this famous painting reads: "The instruction of the new ones by Valentine the Boneless." A nickname given a nimble dancer who instructed the Moulin Rouge rookies in the can-can. Many of the inhabitants of the scene are well-known members of Lautrec's demimonde of prostitutes and artists. At the far right the Irish poet William Butler Yeats leans on the bar. The owner of the Moulin Rouge liked the painting so much he hung it over the bar.

Lautrec was born with serious congenital health condition which could be attributed to aristocratic inbreeding. Even his parents, the Comte and Comtesse, were first cousins. At the age of thirteen, Henri fractured both his femurs. Neither of the breaks healed properly, because of a brittle bone genetic disorder called pycnodysostosis (try and pronounce that!) which is frequently called Toulouse-Lautrec syndrome today. The injuries permanently halted the growth of his legs causing him to develop a full adult torso, while his legs remained child sized.

Lautrec popularized the cocktail. He was known for getting drunk off “earthquake cocktails”, which were a strong mixture of absinthe and cognac. He even hollowed out his cane, so that he could fill it with liquor. One of his drinking buddies was van Gogh, who he painted sipping a glass of absinthe. One evening the two were so drunk that Lautrec challenged an equally drunken Belgian to a dual after he desrespected his Netherlandish friend. To see original: https://bit.ly/4pr4Kh2

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres - Raphael and the Fornarina

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Inspired by: Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres - Raphael and the Fornarina

For Ingres, Raphael was the pinnacle of artistic achievement. Frequently borrowing from the oeuvre of Raphael, Ingres positioned himself as the modern-day descendent of the revered painter. In this painting, we are given a glimpse of the personal life of his idol.

Raphael had a thing for a woman known as “La Fornarina”. She was his model, muse and lover and he painted her many times. According to the biographer Giorgio Vasari, who documented the lives of many of the Renaissance painters, this relationship led to the young artist’s death (aged 37) from “excessive passion”. Here we find ourselves in Raphael's studio. His latest canvas barely begun on the easel before him. La Fornarina

has risen from her pose to embrace the artist, sitting on his knee and looking out to the viewer. Her confident look says he is mine. Raphael’s gaze is firmly fixed on his painting telling us that the artist must not abandon the high calling of art to pursue the pleasures of love.

Ingres was amongst a litany of artist enamored with Raphael and his mistress. Picasso created several etchings, that depict them In flagrante delicto. He added Michelangelo spying on them from behind the draperies or under the bed. And sometimes the Pope is peeping through the keyhole.

To see the original:  https://bit.ly/4q3honz  

The Life Line

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Inspired by: Winslow Homer - The Life Line – 1884

In 1881 Homer spent a year in the coastal town of Cullercoats, England. A fishing village, and an artist’s colony, which attracted painters to its beautiful landscapes and the sea. There he witnessed the life brigade rescue of a floundering ship. It was the essence of man against the sea, the driving force of his early marine paintings.

Two years later, in Atlantic City, new Jersey, he saw a demonstration of the breeches buoy, a recent innovation in lifesaving technology. Secured firmly to ship and shore, the device permitted the transfer of stranded passengers. The following year he painted The Life Line, one of several he did at that time on the rescue theme. In 1866, the apparatus was first used when the brigantine Tenterden, escaping a hurricane, floundered at the mouth of the Tyne in England. The local life brigade rescued the crew along with the Captain’s wife and child. Could this be the wife?

To see original: https://bit.ly/3JzEHVW https://bit.ly/3JzEHVW

Winslow Homer - A Huntsman and Dogs

Inspired by: Winslow Homer - A Huntsman and Dog

Homer and his brother were avid hunters and anglers. They spent forty years in pursuit of their avocation. In 1886 they joined the Northwoods Club. An Adirondack hunting and fishing preserve for the well to do from NY and Boston. It was there that he created his sports paintings using members and their guides as his subjects.

When we think of Homer’s Adirondacks we see lush streams and forests, but that began to change. In the 1880’s a movement arose to save the Adirondacks from the spread of lumbering, railroads and factories. In many respects this painting is his protest banner.

The mountainside has been denuded, and the huntsman steps over the base of a tree felled by loggers. It was painted one year before the Forrest Preserve legislation provided for the establishment of the Adirondack Park. Two years later at the New York Constitutional Convention, they drew up a covenant which stated the Adirondack Forest Preserve would be "forever wild."