A friend sent me this quote attributed to Eakins. “She [the female nude] is the most beautiful thing there is in the world except a naked man, but I never yet saw a study of one exhibited … It would be a godsend to see a fine man model painted in the studio with the [...]

I found this painting “Self-Portrait (1902)” by Welsh painter and one-time student of Whistler’s  Gwendolen John on Wikipedia.  I have been to the Tate a few times but don’t remember this painting.  The technique isn’t exquisite  or anything, but I love the introspective feeling of the painting.  I like the green and red color combination [...]

well your faith was strong but you needed proof  you saw her bathing on the roof  her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you  – Leonard Cohen, “Hallelujah” The story: King David, from the roof of his palace, spied Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, taking a bath.  They got it on and she got pregnant.  The [...]

My friend, the art historian Susannah Rutherglen sent me this wonderful detail of Giorgione’s Judith.   I love the decorous and feminine way Judith is holding the sword.  The little pinky finger is priceless.  Susannah is writing on Venetian furniture paintings and wrote me that Giorgione’s Judith “originally decorated a door and had traces of [...]

Happy New Year, everyone.  I haven’t posted in a couple of weeks because of the holidays, but I’m back in the studio and in front of the computer.  I hope you passed a wonderful holiday season.  The advantage of getting out of the studio for some longish period of time (for me, about two-and-a-half weeks, [...]

Last week Wilmot Kidd, Kristin Kunc and I dropped in on the Metropolitan Museum of Art‘s exhibit “American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life: 1765-1915″.  The exhibit is small and there are only a few real gems in it given the low state of American painting technique in the 18th and 19th centuries.  I came out [...]

Peter Trippi, editor of Fine Art Connoisseur, gave a lecture at the Grand Central Academy yesterday.  Trippi helped curate “J.W. Waterhouse: The Modern Pre-Raphaelite” now on view at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. I was surprised to see how strongly feminist Waterhouse was in his choice of subject matter. Here are a couple of examples: [...]