Re: Mrs Figg's Art History Thread

[Mrs Figg]

[azriel]

oooh I do like a bit of Rennie.........

[Eldorion]

My first thought when seeing the town on the hillside was that it looked kinda like Tolkien's painting of Hobbiton. I think it's the patchwork of colors in the fields that made me think of that, as well having a hill in the background.

[Mrs Figg]

yes you are right Eldo it does.
I love Rennie too

[halfwise]

Looks more like Saruman's version of Hobbiton, though.

[azriel]

This is one man I never get tired of listening to or watching He is so passionate about history & his Genteel ways make him so easily watchable

[halfwise]

Beautiful exploration and explanation of a building everyone knows...but sort of doesn't.

Funny how the size of the enclosure was such that they had to wait decades to get decent ventilation. I had no idea Westminster was on the forefront (and initial failure) of ventilation engineering.

[Forest Shepherd]

Looks more like Saruman's version of Hobbiton, though.

You mean Sharkey? 

[Mrs Figg]

[azriel]

[Mrs Figg]

oooh I like that. its a bit spooky though.

[azriel]

Yeah, I was wondering where it was going ?

[azriel]

https://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1138&bih=687&ei=FsJ1WoSPKMzHgAbwuaioAw&q=Ernst+Haeckel+&oq=Ernst+Haeckel+&gs_l=img.12..0l10.3424.3424.0.6545.3.3.0.0.0.0.85.85.1.1.0....0...1ac..64.img..2.1.83.0...0.ZRRpYdIGFrI#imgrc=_

Beautiful art work by Ernst Haeckel. I couldn't just pick one so, you got them all And when I read about him I thought, Oh gawd, I cant write that lot so, this is what Wikki says about him

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Haeckel

[Mrs Figg]

nice, very detailed work

[halfwise]

Tim's Vermeer. Watch it.

There have long been theories about the Renaissance artists using optics to do their work: as these historians point out it's no more "cheating" than drawing perspective lines. But if you project a picture on a canvas you can't just match colors: blue paint only looks blue in white light, not in the blue light you are trying to match!

A guy who made his fortune on television technology had the realization that if you instead have the image in a small mirror above the canvas, you can shift your head around and see different parts of the image, then just match the colors along the border of the small mirror: when the edge disappears you've matched it. He was always fascinated by Vermeer who seemingly came out of nowhere with no apprenticeship, and suddenly started producing photo quality paintings.

So he took a year off, built a set to match one of Vermeer's paintings (the Music Lesson), and set about reproducing it. He had no art training, but as far as we know neither did Vermeer. All you had to do was match colors dot by dot.

Took him 4 months, but he reproduced it. He was also friends with Penn and Teller, who documented the project. Fascinating and totally convincing. Vermeer was an optical copyist. Doesn't take away from his genius, just changes the focus of it.

[David H]

I saw that a few years ago. A fascinating bit of speculative detective work! If you're like me you'll find yourself needing to tinker with hand mirrors afterwards.

[Mrs Figg]

sounds very interesting

[halfwise]

I forgot how much good stuff was on this thread. I'll be coming here as a way to spend time. It's a shame about 1/3 of the links have broken over the years but that's life.

[Mrs Figg]

[halfwise]

Been slowly working my way through this thread, made a bit easier because half the links are broken (feels as painful as the burning of the library of Alexandria). On page 2 there's Berlin in color in 1900, and I'm amazed at how clean it is, and how many automobiles and electric trolleys there are (the two may be linked). I didn't realize automobiles were so popular this early.

[halfwise]

My contribution - a rather strangely presented collage of the portraits of roman egypt with some of the incriptions that go with them. From the NY metropolitan museum of art.

https://www.metmuseum.org/150/from-the-vaults?v=the-fayum-portraits-funerary-painting-of-roman-egypt-1988-from-the-vaults&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Museum&utm_campaign=2020_1204_MetNews&cs=

[azriel]

Absolutely beautiful !

[halfwise]

That set of Egyptian portraits is famous because there are so many of them, and they are all so alive! You can totally see yourself hanging out with them.

[halfwise]

Just watched "who killed Caravaggio?" (page 2). What a story, that swept me right along.

[halfwise]

Enjoyed the heck out of "Paris, a tale of 3 cities".

Somehow it never dawned on me that Hemingway's style came from being an overseas news reporter in the age of telegraph.