Vintage Art Appreciation: Donkey with Cart by Hanns Bolz

Donkey with Cart, 1903
by Hanns Bolz (1885-1918)

Being faithful in the smallest things is the way to gain, maintain, and demonstrate the strength needed to accomplish something great.
― Alex Harris

We have to recognise that there cannot be relationships unless there is commitment, unless there is loyalty, unless there is love, patience, persistence.
― Cornel West, Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black Intellectual Life

The road must be trod, but it will be very hard. And neither strength nor wisdom will carry us far upon it. This quest may be attempted by the weak with as much hope as the strong. Yet it is oft the course of deeds that move the wheels of the world: Small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere.
― J.R.R. Tolkien


Digitally enhanced reproductions of public domain paintings are shared under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Vintage Art Appreciation: Hydrangeas by Philip Wilson Steer

Hydrangeas, c1901 by Philip Wilson Steer (1860–1942).
Oil on canvas. Public domain, colours enhanced.

The model for this painting was probably Miss Ethel Warwick, as may be deduced from a portrait of her in the National Gallery of South Africa, Cape Town, also of 1901, in which she is apparently wearing the same lace-edged jacket. Related drawings are in the Victoria and Albert Museum, Steer sketchbooks. (Source: The Fitzwilliam Museum)

Ethel Warwick, 1924
Ethel Maude Warwick (1882–1951) who likely posed for the painting abov became an artists model to help pay for her tuition at the London Polytechnic where she herself was studying to be an artist. This led to her meeting Herbert Draper; Draper used her as a model for several of his paintings, including The Lament for Icarus. Through him she became a favoured model for several artists, including John William Godward and Linley Sambourne, for whom she posed nude in a series of photographic studies. She was also sketched by James McNeill Whistler.

Ethel Warwick, 1930

Digitally enhanced reproductions of public domain paintings are shared under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Printable Vintage Art: East River Park by William James Glackens

East River Park, c1902
by William James Glackens (1870–1938)

Walkers are 'practitioners of the city,' for the city is made to be walked. A city is a language, a repository of possibilities, and walking is the act of speaking that language, of selecting from those possibilities. Just as language limits what can be said, architecture limits where one can walk, but the walker invents other ways to go.
― Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking

Sources:
[1] Original image from Wikimedia.
[2] The Real Victorian's enhanced version of the painting (seen above), downloadable as a 8" x 10" @ 300 ppi JPEG. Please note this is a large file of roughly 30mb.


Digitally enhanced reproductions of public domain paintings are shared under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Printable Vintage Art: A Trio of Ladies Looking

And I go looking looking for you in the streets
And I never find you
I never find you at all.
― Dorothea Lasky, Rome: Poems

Sources:
[1] Looking Across the Seine, 1884
by Paul Chocarne-Moreau (1855–1930)
Original image from Wikimedia
[2] The Real Victorian's enhanced version of the public domain painting,
downloadable as a 5" x 7" @ 300 ppi JPEG

They say when you are missing someone that they are probably feeling the same,
but I don't think it's possible for you
to miss me as much as I'm missing you right now.
― Edna St. Vincent Millay

Sources:
[1] Graziella, 1878
by Jules Lefebvre (1834–1912)
Original image from Wikimedia
[2] The Real Victorian's enhanced version of the public domain painting,
downloadable as a 4" x 7" @ 300 ppi JPEG

My feelings are too loud for words and too shy for the world.
― Dejan Stojanovic

Sources:
[1] Longing (Reverie), c1900
by Heinrich Vogeler (1872–1942)
Original image from Wikimedia
[2] The Real Victorian's enhanced version of the public domain painting,
downloadable as a 4" x 5" @ 300 ppi JPEG


Digitally enhanced reproductions of public domain paintings are shared under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Printable Vintage Art: Autumn 1905

Fall has always been my favorite season.
The time when everything bursts with its last beauty,
as if nature had been saving up all year for the grand finale.
― Lauren DeStefano, Wither

No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace
as I have seen in one autumnal face.
― John Donne, The Complete Poetry and Selected Prose

Vintage illustration of a lady surrounded by autumn leaves from 1905.
Download 12" x 12" @ 300 ppi JPEG without a watermark here.

Digitally enhanced reproductions of public domain paintings are shared under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Vintage Art Appreciation: The Ferry by Emanuel Phillips Fox

The Ferry, c1910
by Emanuel Phillips Fox (1865–1915)

About the artist: Emanuel Phillips Fox was an Australian impressionist painter. He was born on 12 March 1865 to the photographer Alexander Fox and Rosetta Phillips at 12 Victoria Parade in Fitzroy, Melbourne, into a family of lawyers whose firm, DLA Piper New Zealand still exists. He studied art at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School in Melbourne from 1878 until 1886 under G. F. Folingsby; his fellow students included John Longstaff, Frederick McCubbin, David Davies and Rupert Bunny.

In 1886, he travelled to Paris and enrolled at the Académie Julian, where he gained first prize in his year for design, and École des Beaux-Arts (1887–1890), where his masters included William-Adolphe Bouguereau and Jean-Léon Gérôme, both among the most famous artists of the time. While at the Beaux Arts, he was awarded a first prize for painting. He was greatly influenced by the fashionable school of en plein air Impressionism.

About the painting:The Ferry is the artist’s masterpiece. It was developed from rapid sketches that Fox painted outdoors at Trouville, a favourite beach resort in the north of France, and was completed in his Paris studio the following winter. Fox positions the viewer as if peering down to the elegant boating party and immerses us in a sumptuous, genteel world of vibrant colours, luscious fabric textures and warm summer atmosphere.

Originally exhibited in Paris and London, The Ferry also influenced a younger generation of Australian modernist artists when it was exhibited in Sydney in 1913.

Sources:
[1] Original image from Google Art Project
[2] Artist description
[3] Painting description