#reading in museum artwork

[avaquartz]

In a warm, golden-lit museum hall filled with towering dinosaur skeletons and ornate railings, a young visitor sits quietly, absorbed in a book. Surrounded by glass cases of fossils and the looming presence of ancient bones, the calm curiosity of the moment contrasts with the primal history around them. It is a peaceful pause among giants, where the past and present meet in a quiet study of wonder.

[charmedchapters]

collections

[royalty-nobility]

Comtesse de la Chatre, Marie Charlotte Louise Perrette Aglae Bontemps

Artist: Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun (French, 1755-1842)

Date: 1789

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, United States

Description

The portrait depicts the Comtesse de la Châtre, wife of the Comte de la Châtre and future wife of François Arnail de Jaucourt. She had a penchant for wearing white muslin dresses, both for daily purposes and for portraits.

[stardotnet]

yes, there will be singing

[galleryofart]

The Fair Student (Girl Reading)

Artist: Daniel Huntington (American, 1816-1906)

Date: 1858

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: Smithsonian American Art, Museum, Washington, DC, United States

Description

An interior scene depicting a profile image of a young woman seated at a table, her attention directed to a large book resting on the table in front of her. She wears a historical costume featuring an off-the- shoulder dress with wide sleeves adorned with lace cuffs, a beaded necklace, and a lace cap. Hanging on the wall in the background is a painting depicting a man wearing a wide-brimmed hat and a white ruff around the neck.

[moonlight7]

Admont Abbey library, Admont, Austria

(Stift Admont - Bibilothek und Museum)

Built in 1776, known for Baroque art and architecture. The secret door leading to the balcony

The beauty and the beast library

[portrait-paintings]

Elizabeth Matthews Jayne

Artist: Adolphe Borie (American, 1877-1934)

Date: 1913

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA, United States

[beaucereza]

"faith in oneself is the best and safest course"

[dustofmuseums]

The Shepherdess, 1899

— Myles Birket Foster

[artemlegere]

Hermia and Helena

Artist: Washington Allston (American, 1779-1843)

Date: Before 1818

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC, United States

Description

Washington Allston said that this painting represented "the singleness and unity of friendship." He posed the two women so that they suggest one figure, and they read from a shared book.

In Shakespeare's comedy A Midsummer Night's Dream, Helena eloquently describes her friendship with Hermia in the third act: "So we grew together, / Like to a double cherry . . . / Two lovely berries moulded on one stem."

Like many Americans of his time, Allston was educated in the classics. He painted Hermia and Helena in England when the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge was reviving Shakespeare's plays. A friend of Allston's, Coleridge felt that Shakespeare expressed human sentiment perfectly.

[allegorypaintings]

Philosophy and Christian Art

Artist: Daniel Huntington (American, 1816-1906)

Date: 1868

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA, United States

Description

Although most of Huntington’s long career was taken up in painting more than one thousand portraits, he also painted landscapes and probably thought of himself as a painter of allegories and ideal subjects. His interest in religious and allegorical painting had been kindled by the Raphaelesque Italian and German ideal subjects he had seen in Rome on his first trip to Europe in 1839. By the 1860s his models were the Venetian artists of the High Renaissance, especially Titian (c. 1488-1576), whose example can be seen in the costumes and figure types depicted in Philosophy and Christian Art. The model or the type of the old man also appears in Huntington’s Sowing the Word, 1868 (New-York Historical Society). The influence of the Venetian school can also be seen in the rounder forms and richer palette of his paintings of this period. Even the half length format seems to echo Venetian examples. The model for the painting to which the young lady gestures, however, appears to be The Adoration of the Shepherds, 1650, by José Ribera (1588-1652) in the Louvre, Paris. The painting is conceived as a conversation between embodiments of opposing, but equally worthy points of view. The wisdom of the aged scholar, reading a book by lamplight, is contrasted with the intuitive perceptions of the young woman who examines a work of art by the daylight signified by the window.

[yumartist]

Find the good in others. 🌟☺︎

[millylouedward]

it’s the little things

[secondaryafter]

Adam and Eve by: Jon Gossaert (1478-1532)

[galleryofart]

Serena

Artist: After George Romney (British, 1734-1802)

Date: Non dated

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, CA, United States

[meisterdrucke]

Girl Reading, 1874 by Pierre Auguste Renoir (1874, Öl auf Leinwand)