grey line with lavender and yellow
georgia o keefe. american. ca.1923
among the most famous twentieth-century american artists, o’keeffe often painted abstract compositions in which she appears to have responded to forms in nature.
herakles the archer
antoine-emilie bourdelle. french. 1909
herakles is seen preparing to shoot at the stymphalian birds.
magnolia
james jebusa shannon. american. 1899
this painting shows the london-based artist’s daughter holding a sprig of magnolia blossoms, which in victorian literature were often a sign of a character’s love of nature.
indian warrior
alexander phimister proctor. american. ca.1898
proctor was among the preeminent chroniclers of the american west, known for his sculptural depictions of wildlife and native peoples.
tobias and the angel
thomas wilmer dewing. american. 1887
dewing’s haunting painting brings a distinctive approach to an apocryphal biblical story from the book of tobit, popular with french painters in the late nineteenth century
jungle tales
james jebusa shannon. american. 1895
"jungle tales" portrays the artist’s wife reading to their daughter, kitty, shown in profile, and another child.
joséphine-éléonore-marie-pauline de galard de brassac de béarn
jean-auguste-dominique ingres. french. 1851–53
ingres captures the shy reserve of his subject while illuminating through seamless brushwork the material quality of her many fine attributes: her rich blue satin and lace ball gown, the gold embroidered shawl, and silk damask chair, together with finely tooled jewels of pearl, enamel, and gold.
repose
john white alexander. american. 1895
alexander, who lived in paris during the 1890s, achieved international success with his studies of female figures gracefully posed in elegant interiors
pitcher
union porcelain works. american. 1875
bert harte (1836-1902) rivaled mark twain in the field of late-nineteenth-century american popular literature. the decoration on one side of this pitcher is inspired by harte’s 1870 poem, "the heathen chinee," satirizing the gambling life in california mining camps. on the front of the pitcher, the designer karl müller depicted harte’s frontiersman bill nye confronting the chinese immigrant, ah sin, during a card game. while the poem was written as an indictment of anti-chinese racism, harte’s message backfired, and the public read his emphasis on xenophobia literally. similarly, muller’s design reinforced negative stereotypes at a time of growing anti-immigrant sentiment in the country.
the temple of dendur
roman period. 10 b.c
egyptian temples were not simply houses for a cult image but also represented, in their design and decoration, a variety of religious and mythological concepts. one important symbolic aspect was based on the understanding of the temple as an image of the natural world as the egyptians knew it.
