 Today’s ArtDrop is an impressionist oil painting from 1893 by Walter L. Palmer titled ‘Administration Building in Twilight at the World’s Columbian Exposition.
The painting features a stately domed Beaux Arts style building. In front of the building is a lovely twilight lagoon with fountains in it reflecting the sunset. Although the building was white, the artist has captured it in the shadowy cool colors of dusk.
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 Today’s ArtDrop is an oil painting from circa 1790 by Henry Raeburn, ‘The Reverend Robert Walker Skating on Duddingston Loch’.
The image shows a man all in black winter clothes and hat ice skating on a loch in Scotland. His right foot is lifted fairly high behind him as he skates. There are inscribe circles in the ice showing where he has been making little circles with his strap-on skates. The background is hazy with cloud-covered mountains and hills. It is hard to tell if the painting needs a cleaning or if the light is fading into a midwinter early sunset.  Today’s ArtDrop is a 20th century tapestry designed by Mark Adams and woven by M. & Mme. Avignon from 1962.
The image shows a semi-abstract wool and cotton textile featuring disembodied wing shapes and almond shaped rainbow flames on a bright yellow ground.  Today’s ArtDrop is a painted scroll on silk by an unknown Japanese artist titled ‘Nehan: Death of the Buddha’. The scroll is dated between 1600 and 1700.
The image shows a very large painting on silk with more detail than is usually associated with more minimal Japanese art. The viewer may be surprised to find some similarity in style to middle eastern or Indian miniatures. Perhaps the artist was a visiting Buddhist artist or a Japanese practitioner who came home after studying Buddhism and Buddhist art on the Asian continent. The work is charming either way. The image shows the momentous occasion of the death of Buddha. The body is laid out in a forest under a full moon on a bier and covered in a yellow cloth. Surrounding the bier are scores of mourners in a variety of emotional states. (At least one is sleeping on the ground.) In the foreground, wild and domesticated animals are also mourning the passing of the Buddha. A tiger, horse, pig, leopard, geese, etc. are all looking distraught. An elephant in the bottom left appears to be trumpeting while sobbing uncontrollably. This piece is on display at the Art Institute of Chicago’s exhibition “On Loss and Absence: Textiles of Mourning and Survival.” https://www.artic.edu/exhibitions/9772/on-loss-and-absence-textiles-of-mourning-and-survival  Today’s ArtDrop is ‘Mourning Weave’ created from Velcro, velvet fuzz, and frame by Angela Hennessy from 2014.
The image shows a 61 x 51 cm weaving in a gold oval frame. The piece is meant to approximate mourning hair weavings from Victorian times, but with materials that more closely weave like African-American hair. The result is a beautiful and loving relic. In person, viewers can see that the weaving is convex similar to the blown convex glass that encased many antique woven hair mementos. This piece is currently on view at the Art Institute of Chicago’s 'On Loss and Absence: Textiles of Mourning and Survival.’  Today’s ArtDrop is a Japanese folk artwork Kokeshi doll. Early Kokeshi dolls were crafted on lathes, colored with inks, and sealed in wax.
The image shows an antique lathe-formed doll with a cylindrical body without arms or legs. The spherical head features a delicately brush-painted face with tiny red mouth, U for a nose and double arch of eyes and eyebrows. Black hair frames the face but the rest of the spherical head is left unpainted. There are three hair ornaments or flowers in the hair. The cylindrical body is painted with a floral motif and some red stripes at the lathed edges of the base, shoulder, and neck.  Today’s ArtDrop is a color lithograph by Thomas Nast titled ‘The Coming of Santa Claus’ from 1872.
The image shows the parlor of a home with six cats and dogs lounging near an enormous fireplace. Emerging into the room from within the hearth is Santa Claus in his red suit and beard carrying a pack of toys. The mantel is decorated with evergreen garlands. Five stockings from toddler to adolescent children are hanging, as well. Four of the pets look up at Santa. Two cats remain asleep.  Today’s ArtDrop is an illustration for the Saturday Evening Post magazine ‘Tea Time’ by Norman Rockwell from 1927.
The image shows an elderly man and woman in front of a fireplace enjoying cups of tea. The lady on the right sits in profile in a comfortable wingback chair and wears a bonnet and widow’s black. A kitten is sleeping on her lap. Directly in front of her sits a male friend or relative on a wood chair in fine clothes chatting away. He is a visitor as you can see by his top hat, gloves and umbrella at his feet. Their knees are touching leading viewers to conclude that one or both of them are hard of hearing. The fireplace glows behind their laps with a copper kettle hanging above the flames. The mantel is strewn with typical objects - mantel clock, silhouette cutouts, books, vase, candlestick etc. A small round area rug helps to define the intimacy of the scene nicely.  Today’s ArtDrop is an impressionist oil painting titled ‘Peasant Woman Warming Herself' by Camille Pissarro from 1883.
The image shows a woman resting and warming herself at a hearth where the fire that is petering out. She is leaning toward the ashes with her head down in profile. The quality of the paint is grotty characterized by cool and warm zones. The cool areas define the top of the lady’s striped dress which is rendered in indigo and those indigos travel horizontally into the ashy fireplace. The woman’s work overskirt is rendered in warm dappled sepias, red and orange. There is some ochre in the woven straw seat of the chair beneath her. Behind her, Pissarro has chosen to deepen the tone of the warm colors for depth by mixing some of the cool colors on his palette. The woman wears a bright red kerchief over her hair. Above her head, Pissarro has mixed a lighter area the color of stone within the fireplace. The same color stands for the pile of glowing ashes within the hearth.  Today’s ArtDrop is a tempera painting from 2001 by Andrew Wyeth called ‘Sparks.
The painting features the spartan interior of Wyeth’s cottage with its distinctive hearth with an extra log, cooking fork, and poker. A fire is burning in the fireplace and spitting off sparks and cinders onto the stone-tiled floor. The dark grey smoke rises a little toward the room as if the wind is gusting turbulently down the chimney. On a vertical wooden beam in the foreground on the right hangs a small mirror. It is reflecting one of Wyeth’s other paintings of the neighbor’s cottage. Below the reflected image is a tall candle in a sconce with a snuffer capping it. To the left of the fireplace is a tiny table with a collection of candlesticks with candles and a red and white canvas bag under the table. |
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