hakanai. @h-akanai - Tumblr Blog

#akseli gallen kallela #1905 #a lake view

magictransistor

Caspar David Friedrich. Gebirgslandschaft mit Regenbogen (Mountain Landscape with Rainbow). 1810.

#caspar david friedrich #painting

artemisdreaming

“Solar System” Quilt, 1876

Ellen Harding Baker (1847-1886)

From Wikipedia: “In 1876, Ellen Harding created the Solar System Quilt to assist her during astronomy lectures. She may be the woman from local newspapers in the winter of 1883–1884, which mentioned that it took seven years for an Iowa woman to embroid the Solar System on a quilt. The quilt has a wool top embellished with wool-fabric applique, wool braid, and wool and silk embroidery. The quilt bears a striking design which resembles illustrations in astronomy books of her period. The quilt shows the sun at the center and the eight planets of our solar system (with indicated orbits around the sun), as well as the asteroid belt. The myriad of stars that exist beyond our solar system are also shown. The Galilean moons of Jupiter, as well as moons of Earth, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus are included, as are Saturn’s rings. A comet with an eccentric orbit is also present - perhaps Halley’s comet which had last been seen in 1835. The quilt is large; it measures 89 x 106 inches (225 cm x 269 cm).

The quilt is currently in possession at the Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of American History, donated by Patricia Hill McCloy and Kathryn Hill Meardon” (via: wikipedia)

smarkula

fot. Zdzisław Beksiński, 1950/1960

#inspiration #photography

sesiondemadrugada

Zdzisław Beksiński.

artisaword

Edward Hopper (1882–1967) Night Windows 1928

Oil on canvas 73.7 x 86.4 cm

Museum of Modern Art, New York

trainstationgoodbye

Rear Window (1954) + Edward Hopper

artemisdreaming

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

Martin Luther King Jr.

January 15, 1929 - April 4, 1968

nctolu

#light #photography

erikkwakkel

A colourful book

I encountered this Dutch book from 1692 in a French database today and it turns out to be quite special. For one thing, no Dutch scholar appears to have published on it, or even to know about it. Moreover, the object is special because it provides an unusual peek into the workshop of 17th-century painters and illustrators. In over 700 pages of handwritten Dutch, the author, who identifies himself as A. Boogert (Pic 2), describes how to make watercolour paints. He explains how to mix the colours and how to change their tone by adding “one, two or three portions of water”. To illustrate his point he fills each facing page with various shades of the colour in question (lower image). To top it he made an index of all the colours he described, which in itself is a feast to look at (Pics 1 and 3). In the 17th century, an age known as the Golden Age of Dutch Painting, this manual would have hit the right spot. It makes sense, then, that the author explains in the introduction that he wrote the book for educational purposes. Remarkably, because the manual is written by hand and therefore literally one of a kind, it did not get the “reach” among painters - or attention among modern art historians - it deserves.

Pic: Aix-en-Provence, Bibliothèque municipale/Bibliothèque Méjanes, MS 1389 (1228). Luckily, the entire book can be viewed here, in hi-res, zoomable images. Here is a description of the book.

Full disclosure (6 May, 2014): While this colourful book is first presented to a larger audience in this post and there are no Dutch publications devoted to it, I have since posting discovered that it is known by at least one other Dutch scholar. It is currently being studied and will be included in a PhD study to be completed in 2015 at the University of Amsterdam. While it is great that blogs such as The Colossal (here) and Gizmodo (here) have picked it up, it is important to know that I was not the one “discovering” the manuscript. I merely put it on the bigger podium it deserves, via this blog.

#art #bookhistory #watercolour #inspiration