mystic's dream @gentlemystics - Tumblr Blog

“Fairies in a Bird’s Nest” (c. 1860), John Anster Fitzgerald

Maybe it's naive of me, but whenever I see portraits like this, with just a father and daughter, it restores my faith in humanity a little. Because people seem to love this idea that fathers never loved their daughters in the past and only saw them as bargaining chips for marriage or whatever, but look at the guy in the first portrait on the left, he loves that little girl! And the dad trying to do his work while his daughter bothers him with an Old Timey Barbie. The man teaching his daughter geography, his expression is so soft! The way the man in the last portrait holds the little girl's hand! And none of these are incidental, these aren't photographs, someone (probably the father) paid good money and sat down for hours so that they could have a painting of themselves and their daughter. Probably because they loved their daughter.

From left to right: 1795 Michał Jerzy Mniszech with his daughter Elżbieta - Marcello Bacciarelli; Christopher Anstey and his daughter Mary Ann by William Hoare 1776; A Musician and His Daughter by Thomas de Keyser 1629; The Geography Lesson (Portrait of Monsieur G. and His Daughter), 1812; Jean-baptiste Isabey And His Daughter; Portrait of a Young Girl and Older Man by William Harrison Scarborough

(this is probably somewhat related to my other favourite genre of painting, Husband With Multiple Kids Making Come Hither Eyes At His Wife)

janeeyreofmanderley

oh I love those! People being people is one of my favourite kinds of paintings and an important reminder that people in past times were not all that different. There were dads who loved their daughters fiercely. There were fathers who happily looked after their babies too. The German reformer Philip Melanchton for example had a cradle in his office. His wife was busy organising a household for 20 people- she was out and about, he mostly worked in his office, it made sense for him to look after their babies too babies while she dropped by at snack time.

in fact often if it was kind of safe dads had the babies in their workshops for just that reason as we can see in these paintings:

The left is “the busy father” by Theodore Weber, the right one is “At the china repairer’s “ by Wenzel Tornoe. All dads who are actively involved in childcare and a painter who thought it was a cute topic rather than anything ridiculous.

obi-troll-kenobi

I raise you:

First Lesson by Akseli Gallen-Kallela (1865 - 1931)

Un Coup De Main (The Helping Hand) by Émile Renouf (1845 – 1894)

Italian Winegrower And His Daughter by Francesco Baratta (1590-1666)

#humanity #art

smsomah

Navajo bride and groom in Hogan, 1975. John Running

#humanity

flickrhorses

☆ june 13, 2014 ☆

#animals #look at them!!!

baejax-the-great

Somewhere out there on a planet very far away is a civilization that has included our sun in a beloved constellation of some animal we couldn't dream up if we tried

asteroidtroglodyte

I like your brain

#humanity #divine mystique

pmamtraveller

Double-Sided Votive Relief, Egypt, Greco-Roman period (332 BCE–395 CE), Ptolemaic dynasty

#art #forest of veils

epiphainie

people get so mad when you tell them that their lowbrow entertainment they enjoy is actually lowbrow

epiphainie

everyone wants their self-indulgent romantasy to be considered high literature and whatever new mainstream pop boy/girl to be treated as the next beethoven and their gay fluff show on streaming apps to be revolutionary art changing the world and like, they're not. and that's okay. i'm literally watching the stupidest show right now and it's fine. it doesn't have to be more.

epiphainie

there's also the argument of how pop culture used to be the trickle down from high culture for the longest time but now it's an ouroboros eating itself as access and willingness to engage with high culture have been systematically destroyed and diminished through the last decades so your popcorn flick moviemaker now only gets inspiration from other popcorn flicks when their foreparents used to actually read literature and see art of all kinds and your pop musicians used to listen to all sorts of new and old music rather than just their contemporaries/competition and maybe this absence of any sort of culture outside of our easy algorithms is why everyone's so defensive of what they passively consume and so attached to it as a part of their identity but that's a discussion for another day

#this is it #the passively consuming part is so true!!#it is okay if you do - just be aware of that reality #politics