Sunday, December 30, 2012

Robert Anning Bell (1863-1933

Robert Anning Bell (1863-1933), English painter and mosaicist.
Robert Anning Bell, A Flight of Fairies, 1901
Robert Anning Bell, A Flight of Fairies, 1901
Robert Anning Bell, La Belle Dame sans Merci
Robert Anning Bell, La Belle Dame sans Merci
Robert Anning Bell, Le roi et la reine des coeurs, triptyque, 1896_1
Robert Anning Bell, Le roi et la reine des coeurs, triptych, 1896
Robert Anning Bell, Le roi et la reine des coeurs, triptyque, 1896_2.jpg
Robert Anning Bell, Le roi et la reine des coeurs, triptych, 1896
Robert Anning Bell, Le roi et la reine des coeurs, triptyque, 1896_3.jpg
Robert Anning Bell, Le roi et la reine des coeurs, triptych, 1896
Robert Anning Bell, Mary In the House Of Elizabeth, 1917.jpg
Robert Anning Bell, Mary In the House Of Elizabeth, 1917
Robert Anning Bell, Music by the Water, 1900
Robert Anning Bell, Music by the Water, 1900
Robert Anning Bell, The Peacock's Feather
Robert Anning Bell, The Peacock's Feather
Robert Anning Bell, untitled
Robert Anning Bell, title unknown

Thursday, December 27, 2012

Vasily Alexandrovich Kotarbinsky (1849-1921)

Vasily (Wilhelm) Alexandrovich Kotarbinsky, Russian painter.
Vasily (Wilhelm) Alexandrovich Kotarbinsky, Cleopatra
Vasily Alexandrovich Kotarbinsky, Cleopatra
Vasily (Wilhelm) Alexandrovich Kotarbinsky, Mythological Scene
Vasily Alexandrovich Kotarbinsky, Mythological Scene
Vasily (Wilhelm) Alexandrovich Kotarbinsky, Spirit of Springtime
Vasily Alexandrovich Kotarbinsky, Spirit of Springtime
Vasily (Wilhelm) Alexandrovich Kotarbinsky, Roman Beauty with Doves
Vasily Alexandrovich Kotarbinsky, Roman Beauty with Doves
Vasily (Wilhelm) Alexandrovich Kotarbinsky, Evening Silence
Vasily Alexandrovich Kotarbinsky, Evening Silence
Vasily (Wilhelm) Alexandrovich Kotarbinsky, Morning Silence
Vasily Alexandrovich Kotarbinsky, Morning Silence

Sunday, December 23, 2012

Cecil William Rea

Cecil William Rea is an artist about whom I know nothing at all.
Cecil William Rea, Elysian Fields, 1906
Cecil William Rea, Elysian Fields, 1906
Cecil William Rea, Nude
Cecil William Rea, Nude
Cecil William Rea, Nude2
Cecil William Rea, Nude
Cecil William Rea1
Cecil William Rea, title unknown
Cecil William Rea2
Cecil William Rea, title unknown

Thursday, December 20, 2012

John Dickson Batten (1860-1932)

John Dickson Batten (1860-1932), English artist.
John Dickson Batten, Eve and the Serpent
John Dickson Batten, Eve and the Serpent
John Dickson Batten, Pandora
John Dickson Batten, Pandora
John Dickson Batten, Atalanta’s Race – Atalanta And Milanion
John Dickson Batten, Atalanta’s Race – Atalanta And Milanion
John Dickson Batten, Connla and the Fairy Maiden, 1892
John Dickson Batten, Connla and the Fairy Maiden, 1892

Monday, December 17, 2012

William Stott (1857-1900)

William Stott of Oldham (1857-1900), British artist.
William Stott of Oldham, The Nymph
William Stott, The Nymph
William Stott, Leontium and Ternissa in the Garden of Epicurus
William Stott, Leontium and Ternissa in the Garden of Epicurus
William Stott, Queen Iseult, 1891
William Stott, Queen Iseult, 1891

Friday, December 14, 2012

Alice Kaub-Casalonga (1875-1948), French painter.

Alice Kaub-Casalonga (1875-1948), French painter.
Alice Kaub-Casalonga, Nude With Roses
Alice Kaub-Casalonga, Nude With Roses
Alice Kaub-Casalonga, Portrait of a woman with a yellow rose
Alice Kaub-Casalonga, Portrait of a Woman with a Yellow Rose

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

A Surfeit of Mirrors

Henri Régnier (1864-1936) was the most commercially successful of all the French Symbolist writers of the 1890s. A Surfeit of Mirrors, published by Black Coat Press, is a collection of most of his important short fiction.

Régnier’s life was as unusual as his fiction. He and his friend (and fellow writer) Pierre Louÿs were rivals for the affections of the same woman. Régnier married her and Louÿs promptly began an affair with her. Marie Régnier would have many offer affairs while Régnier would have a series of intense platonic relationships with married women.

Régnier was an aristocrat whose family had been ruined by the Revolution. Régnier maintained an aristocratic pose throughout his life.

This collection includes Régnier’s two most popular volumes of short fiction, La Canne de jaspe (1897) and Histoires Incertaines (1919). Translator Brian Stableford’s title for this volume, A Surfeit of Mirrors, is well chosen. Mirrors figure in just about all of Régnier’s tales. These are stories of obsessive self-analysis, of introspection taken to an extreme. Régnier’s characters are profoundly alienated from real life. They have a horror of real life and their lives are lived almost entirely internally. They are alienated from their own times as well, living in a world of the past of their own imagination.

Although not one of the characters of his stories is an artist as such art, or at least the aesthetic imagination, plays a crucial role in their lives.

These are stories that make no concessions to realism and many could be justly described as stories of the fantastic. There are women whose homes are taken over by centaurs, satyrs and fauns. Women and men whose lives seem to take place within mirrors, either literally or figuratively. Extraordinary things happen but we can never be sure to what extent these events take place within the imaginations of the characters.

There are hints of the supernatural but again we are dealing with people so alienated from reality that the world of the imagination is more real to them than real life.

Régnier spent a great deal of time in Venice and this city plays a key role in many of his stories. Marcelline; Or, The Fantastic Punishment is a particularly fine story about a marionette theatre with some interesting properties. It’s one of several stories that involve elements of the fantastic. The Sealed Pavilion is another excellent story with a tone of gentle melancholy and regret for the past. Many of the characters in these stories live in the past; in the case of The Glimpse the past really is alive.

The Tale of the Lady of the Seven Mirrors
and The Knight Who Fell Asleep in the Snow are stories that also evoke the past and create a mood that celebrates ruin and decay.

The tone of these stories is melancholy but resigned. His characters do not love life enough to fear death.

Régnier’s tales are masterpieces of Symbolist literature and also have some affinities with decadent literature, and even the gothic.

These are exquisite little stories, strange jewels that transport the reader into a strange internal world that is more real than reality.

Saturday, December 8, 2012

Joseph Henri François van Lerius (1823-1876)

Joseph Henri François van Lerius (1823-1876), Belgian painter.
Joseph Henri François van Lerius, Idyll
Joseph Henri François van Lerius, Idyll
Joseph Henri François van Lerius, Young Girl From Rattvik In Dalarna, Sweden
Joseph Henri François van Lerius, Young Girl From Rattvik In Dalarna, Sweden
Joseph Henri François van Lerius, Lady Godiva
Joseph Henri François van Lerius, Lady Godiva
Joseph Henri François van Lerius, Portrait of a Young Woman, 1856
Joseph Henri François van Lerius, Portrait of a Young Woman, 1856

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Joseph Noel Paton (1821-1901)

Joseph Noel Paton (1821-1901), Scottish painter.
Joseph Noel Paton, The Quarrel of Oberon and Titania, 1849
Joseph Noel Paton, The Quarrel of Oberon and Titania, 1849
Joseph Noel Paton, Oberon and Titania
Joseph Noel Paton, Oberon and Titania
Joseph Noel Paton, Oberon and the Mermaid
Joseph Noel Paton, Oberon and the Mermaid, 1888
Joseph Noel Paton, Sir Galahad
Joseph Noel Paton, Sir Galahad
Joseph Noel Paton, The Bluidie Tryst, 1855
Joseph Noel Paton, The Bluidie Tryst, 1855

Saturday, December 1, 2012

Paul François Quinsac (1858-1932), French painter

Paul François Quinsac (1858-1932), French painter who was a pupil of Jean-Léon Gérôme.
Paul François Quinsac, Death Of Polyxena, 1882
Paul François Quinsac, Death Of Polyxena, 1882
Paul François Quinsac, untitled, 1889
Paul François Quinsac, untitled, 1889
Paul François Quinsac, Sculpture
Paul François Quinsac, Sculpture
Paul François Quinsac, Dreaming
Paul François Quinsac, Dreaming
Paul François Quinsac, Diane
Paul François Quinsac, Diane
Paul François Quinsac, La Tentation de Saint Antoine
Paul François Quinsac, La Tentation de Saint Antoinen
Paul-François Quinsac, Allegorie de la musique
Paul François Quinsac, Allegory of Music