A Very Slow Spring

These shots date back to the 19th of March. I was passing through Major's Hill Park, where Colonel By's statue stands. In May, the flower beds around and behind him, as well as elsewhere in the park and beyond, will be showing off tulips for the Tulip Festival.

The views out onto the Ottawa River and Parliament Hill still show the snow and ice that was around here at the time.

This view across the park looks towards the U.S. Embassy.

While this view looks towards Notre Dame Basilica.

I headed up behind the National Gallery and up to the top of Nepean Point, where the statue of Champlain looks west over the river. The views from here over both Ottawa and Gatineau are a delight. Tomorrow I'll show you what it looked like here more recently.

Sculptural Sets

I am adding in this link today, as it references the artist, Georges Braque, behind two of yesterday's paintings. Tracy was writing about the impact art has on her, and by chance, I was paying a visit to the Gallery that day and decided to track down his works.

Today I'm bringing this series from the National Gallery of Canada to a close. Alexander Calder's mobile sculpture Jacaranda dates to 1949. Wire and sheet metal, painted black, hang in this particular space, surrounded by the works of other artists.

I showed you these two sculptures last time I was here, but I thought they shared the same name. Canadian artist Brian Jungen did these two sculptures. Shapeshifter is on the right, while Vienna is on the left. The former was done in 2000, while the latter was made in 2003. Jungen used plastic chairs, cutting them up and reshaping them into whale skeletons. 

I finish this series with a look out from the balcony into the great hall of the Gallery. The Ottawa River can be seen beyond in the last light of day.

Modern Works

Dazzle Ships In Drydock At Liverpool is a 1919 oil canvas by the British artist Edward Wadsworth, depicting the First World War concept of breaking up the outline of ships by zig zag streaks of paint. 

British artist Wyndham Lewis painted A Canadian Gun Pit in 1918. Lewis was a proponent of the Vorticism movement, which was a reaction to Cubism and Futurism. He had been an artillery officer during the War, so this would have been very familiar to him.

Two works by the same artist had my attention. Georges Braque worked in the Cubist style, and this oval painting, a bit of a challenge to photograph, reflects that style. The Glass Of Absinthe is an oil painting from 1910-11, depicting a Parisien cafe scene in the Cubist style. 

Braque also painted this 1906 oil, The Port Of Antwerp, characteristic of his Fauve period of painting.

A side gallery has some very modern works, one of which I've shown before. This first one however I have not. Mark Rothko painted No. 16 in 1957. His style was very abstract.

The same applies for Voice Of Fire, the 1967 acrylic by American Barnett Newman, which caused quite a fuss back in the day among Canadians when the Gallery bought it for around a million dollars. It's apparently gone considerably up in value ever since. I don't get it, but that's modern art for you.

This one is by Jackson Pollock, viewable from two sides. No. 29, 1950 was done by the artist in 1950 on glass instead of canvas. He used black and aluminum enamel paint as his primary material, adding steel, string, pebbles, beads, and coloured glass to the work.

Masterpiece

The Waterfalls is an oil painting by the French artist Gustave Courbet, done around 1872. It was one of his last landscapes in France before seeking asylum in Switzerland.

Here we have another example of using the Gallery spaces to frame shots.

The painting at the left in the above is this one. Hay Harvest At Eragny was done in 1901 by the French artist Camille Pissarro. The oil painting depicts life along the Epte River in France.

This is a new acquisition for the Gallery. Sunshine In The Drawing Room is a 1910 oil painting by the Danish artist Vilhelm Hammershoi. It is the last of four paintings the artist did set in his living room in Copenhagen where he lived with his wife. Hammershoi was inspired by the work of Vermeer, and tended to depict the room in a spare way. By having the woman sit with her back to the artist, we're left to wonder at her identity and what story might be at play here.

Vase With Zinnias And Geraniums is the title of this 1886 painting by Vincent van Gogh.

Hope I is an oil painting done in 1903 by the great Austrian artist Gustav Klimt, leader of the Vienna Secession movement. He held this back from the movement's first exhibition, as he felt the painting, depicting a naked pregnant woman, would distract from the work of his colleagues. Klimt strongly contrasts the idea of new life with what else is on the moody canvas- the destructive forces of death and disease above and around her. The painting is influenced somewhat by the death of his infant son the previous year. I chatted with a docent about this one and some nearby paintings; given the history of other Klimt paintings and the Austrian government, the Gallery has been very careful about the provenance of this one.

Marsh Meadows, Cookham caught my eye. It's a 1943 oil painting by the British artist Stanley Spencer, depicting a country scene near Cookham, with the Cliveden Woods in the background. Spencer tended to limit the number of his landscapes, preferring figure composition, so this was the only landscape he painted that year.

Sappers At Work: A Canadian Tunnelling Company is a 1919 oil painting by the British artist David Bomberg, depicting the digging of tunnels during the First World War as a means to advance on the enemy.

The Welsh artist Augustus John painted this portrait of T.E. Lawrence in 1935. Lawrence is known to history of course as Lawrence of Arabia.

Expressions

The Bridge At Narni is the title of this 1827 oil painting by the French artist Camille Corot, depicting a scene in the Italian countryside.

Jacobina Copland is the subject for this oil painting, done at some point between 1794-98 by the British artist Henry Raeburn.

The Salutation Of Beatrice is the work of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, a British painter, dating at some point between 1859-63. It's oil and gold leaf on wood instead of canvas, depicting two scenes from Dante Aligheri's New Life and Divine Comedy.  

Windsor Castle From The Great Park is the title of this 1846 landscape by British artist David Cox the Elder.

I took another look at The Letter, an oil painting from around 1878 by the French artist James Tissot, which depicts a woman in the Dutch Garden of Holland House in London.

Last time I visited, I also photographed this, but at the time forgot to catch the display with the details. Spring is an 1873 marble bust by the French artist Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux. The playful expression is eye catching.

Today I finish with Portrait Of A Woman (After A 16th Century Florentine Drawing), an oil painting done by Edgar Degas around 1858-59. Degas paid a visit to the Uffizi Gallery in Florence in 1858, and as artists do, made copies of the works of the Old Masters in chalk, including one attributed to Leonardo. He proceeded to make a full painting of his copy from that, and here we have it.

Joyful Misery

A reminder to members of City Daily Photo: the theme day for May is Let's Eat. And have a peek at my writer's blog for today's post, as it's something of a preview for a series I'll have here in early May.

Today I'm starting with one of the passages within the world art section of the National Gallery.

Pan & Syrinx is an oil painting by the French artist Jean-Francois de Troy, dating to 1833. It draws on the Greek mythological tale of the nature god Pan and the nymph Syrinx, who rejected his advances and found safety with her river god father, who transformed her into marsh reeds to protect her from Pan. 

Greek mythology (with a Roman name) also forms the subject for this 1717 oil painting, Venus Presenting Arms To Aeneas. Jean Restout the Younger takes a passage from Virgil's Aeneid in which the goddess of love gives arms to her mortal Trojan son Aeneas.

Vulcan At His Forge is a 1750 oil painting by the Italian artist Pompeo Batoni depicting the blacksmith god of Olympus (Hephaestus in the original Greek) and husband of the goddess of love. In Virgil's tale, Venus receives the arms for Aeneas from Vulcan.

The above painting is just behind the sculpture in this shot. I always seem to get a shot of Antonio Canova's marble Dancer when I'm here.

I photographed these three paintings in the room beyond. I've featured each before. On the left is Countess Tolstoya, a 1796 oil painting by the French portrait artist Elizabeth Louise Vigee LeBrun. This is a recent acquisition for the Gallery, a legacy of the major retrospective that was held here on Vigee LeBrun in 2016. In the middle is Bacchus And Ariadne, an oil painting done circa 1821 by the French artist Antoine-Jean Gros, and which depicts part of the myth of the mortal hero Theseus, who has left his intended bride Ariadne behind on Naxos after being warned that the god of wine has chosen her for his bride. The Olympian is comforting his future bride. On the right is the portrait Madame Erneste Bioche de Misery (hence my title for this post)

This is the work of Anne-Louis Girodet, a French artist, who painted this work in 1807. Madame de Misery (what a name) was the wife of the mayor of Saint Lye, and for this portrait is dressed in Empire style. This particular painting you might remember- it was on display in a companion exhibit, The White Dress, for the Vigee LeBrun retrospective. 

This large oil painting is one I've shown you before, but I decided to frame it at a distance through the doorway. French artist Charles Meynier painted Wisdom Defending Youth From The Arrows Of Love in 1810. It is an allegorical painting with mythological influences that resonated with the idea of Napoleonic duty to country.

Portrait Halls

The British artist Joshua Reynolds painted this formal portrait of a Member of Parliament, Charles Churchill, in 1755. Reynolds shows him as a gentleman of leisure in the countryside. The artist experimented with technique, and that had its drawbacks. Churchill didn't actually look like death warmed over; the look of the painting results from unstable red pigments and glazes that have long since vanished, leaving an undercoat that leaves the subject appearing pallid.

The American artist Benjamin West, who would end up spending his productive life as an artist in Britain, painted this self portrait around 1776. It started out as a copy of another self portrait, but West took it in a different direction. The other self portrait, now in a Baltimore gallery, is featured on the panel beside the painting.

Dutch artist Peter Lely also spent most of his career in Britain, esteemed as a portrait artist. Around 1647 he produced this portrait, Sir Edward Massey. The subject, who served in the House of Commons, was a member of the Parliamentary Army during the English Civil War, before switching sides and ending up with the Royalists. 

Charles I As Prince Of Wales is an oil portrait by Dutch artist Daniel Mytens the Elder, who served as a court artist for the English court. Painted in 1624, the year before Charles ascended to the monarchy, the large portrait shows the ill fated royal in full decorated glory.

British artist Thomas Gainsborough painted The Reverend William Stevens around 1780. The minister was personal chaplain to the Duke of Cumberland, and preached at St. George's, Hanover Square.

Greek mythology inspires this dramatic painting by the Flemish artist Thomas Willeboirts, also known as Bosschaert, and his workshop. The Death Of Adonis was painted at some point after 1642, and depicts Venus mourning the death of her mortal lover Adonis, wounded by a wild boar during his hunt. Her son Cupid is close by.

I finish today with an oil landscape. View Of Lake Nemi was painted in 1748 by French artist Claude-Joseph Vernet, and depicts a lake south of Rome.