My current favorite artists

[The Sparrow]

American Fitz Hugh Lane

I'm just crazy over the palets of color he uses, that bronzy tinge to everything.

and...

Beatrix Potter

Because her stuff is just tooooo toooo cute. Makes me forget the evils in the world.

[I know the score]

I like a bit of Klimt and Beatrix Potter!



Margaret Stonborough-Wittgenstein



Danaë visited by Zeus



The foxy whiskered gentleman raised his eyes above his newspaper and looked curiously at Jemima...

[Vivace]

Madame Suggia by Augustus John

[The Sparrow]

I forgot, Miro as well

[The Sparrow]

Originally Posted by I know the score

The foxy whiskered gentleman raised his eyes above his newspaper and looked curiously at Jemima...

Jemima was such a silly silly duck!

[Florestan]

One of my favourite paintings:-

Bartolomé Bermejo (Spain, ca.1405-1498)

Saint Michael triumphs over the devil (1468), National Gallery, London.



This photo doesn't do it justice, but check out the devil - he is really scary and shockingly salacious as well. I think Bermejo had an extraordinary imagination.

His technique is gorgeous, too. There is a lot of gold leaf in the sumtpuous background and the way he has painted the reflection of the heavenly Jerusalem in St Michael's breastplate is truly masterly (you can't really see this in the photo but IRL it is amazing).

The other figure is the patron, Antonio Juan.

I go to see this painting often when I am working in central London.

Here is a piece about it by Guardian art critic Jonathan Jones

Oh, and check this out. It's a short animation inspired by the painting, setting St Michael's fight with the devil in Trafalgar Square - in front of the National Gallery, where the painting resides.

Click pic to see

[The Sparrow]

The male saints in some paintings are often painted kind of 'feminine', have you noticed. Facinating.

That devil is nasty cool. Kinda like a killer-sex-muppet.

Beautiful and strange painting.

[Florestan]

killer-sex-muppet. I like it

I think depictions of the saints are often supposed to be angelic and so androgynous.

St Michael here, as in Memling's Last Judgement, is the Archangel Michael - hence the wings. Not being a Catholic, I am a little confused by this as saints aren't usually archangels or vice versa. Are they?



Obviously the same guy, though in Memling's stunning triptych he is weighing the souls of humanity. The way he is doing this seems a little unfair in that, say, Bush would go to heaven if he happened to be weighed against Hitler. Everyone would be fighting to be weighed with someone worse than him/herself!!

There are some rather fine devils in the background in this one, too.

[Héctor]

Alfred Kubin (1877-1959)

[The Sparrow]

oooh. Strange...and kinda 'quiet'.