#american renaissance

[pagansphinx]

The Story of Madame X

John Singer Sargent (American, 1856–1925) • Madame X (Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau) • 1883-84 • Metropolitan Museum of Art

Photograph of Sargent with what is perhaps his most famous portrait – that of the very wealthy socialite, Madame Gautreau. This is not the original version, though; the one that shocked the art world in 1884 when it was shown at the Paris Salon.

Above is a sketch for the Gautreau portrait. At some point Sargent decided to paint the right strap of her dress seductively off her shoulder. When the portrait was shown in Paris, there was an uproar of disapproval. Madame Gautreau was, apparently, already rumored to be an adultress. Her Singer portrait only added emphasis to the public's criticism of her character. According to the gallery card at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (the painting was on loan from the MET), Gautreau very much liked the painting. What neither she nor Sargent predicted was that it would cause such a stir and be the cause of much conversation, mostly derisive, in the drawing rooms of Paris high society.

Sargent was so upset by the reaction at the Salon and the ensuing buzz that he took the painting back to his studio and repainted the strap in its proper place on the shoulder.

The painting was eventually sold on the condition that its subject not be revealed in the title. It was to be called Madame X.

Sources:

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Metropolitan Museum of Art

Arty: Why Madame X Scandalized the Art World by Alina Cohen

[larobeblanche]

John Singer Sargent, Portrait of Mrs. Frederick Guest (Amy Phipps) • 1905 • The Norton Museum of Art, Pasadena, California

[antoniettabrandeisova]

San Giuseppe di Castello, Venice, c.1903. John Singer Sargent (American, 1856–1925) Watercolor on paper , 30.6 x 45.8 cm

[empirearchives]

Herman Melville on Napoleon’s love for Ossian

Context: Ossian is the narrator and purported author of a cycle of epic poems published by the Scottish poet James Macpherson, originally as Fingal (1761) and Temora (1763), and later combined under the title The Poems of Ossian.

“I am rejoiced to see Hazlitt speak for Ossian. There is nothing more contemptable in that contemptable man (tho' good poet, in his department) Wordsworth, than his contempt for Ossian. And nothing that more raises my idea of Napoleon than his great admiration for him.—The loneliness of the spirit of Ossian harmonized with the loneliness of the greatness of Napoleon.”

Melville wrote this around 1862 in the margins of his copy of Hazlitt’s Lectures on the English Comic Writers and Lectures on the English Poets

Source: Hershel Parker, Herman Melville: A Biography - Volume 2, p. 436

[magnetictapedatastorage]

this dude from the 1910s hated modern architecture so bad lmao "anglo-saxon home atmosphere: 0%" he was fucking seething and gagging that it wasn't Literally Illegal to build a house looking like that. fascinating. he deserved to have a blog

[postcum]

McDonalds has fallen

[4eternal-life]

John Singer Sargent  (American, 1856–1925)

Bedouins,  1905-1906

Opaque and translucent watercolor, 18 x 12in. (45.7 x 30.5cm)

Brooklyn Museum

... Sargent considered this powerful portrait of two men to be the keynote work of his Bedouin watercolors. His earliest critics took note of the expressive force of the carefully delineated faces, set off by the play of highlights on the saturated blues of the kaffiyeh (head scarves).

Sargent otherwise described the figures, including details such as the curved khanjar (daggers) in the main figure’s belt, with the broad, expressive handling that characterizes the Bedouin subjects as a whole.

https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/objects/20367

[daughterofnature]

John Singer Sargent, Two Girls In White Dresses, 1911

[heinrichheineee]

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Representative Men “Montaigne; or, the Skeptic” (1850)

[bebs-art-gallery]

Lamb’s Head on a Plate (1880)

— by Viggo Johansen

[dcober]

Melville on drinking alcohol to ease his sea sickness on his first voyage even though he signed a sobriety pledge as a kid.

[onepeoplesproject]

Police & Proud Boys: Welcome to the 2022 American Renaissance Conference!

Let's be real: The Proud Boys did more damage to AmRen in 20 minutes what a decade of organizing against it ever could. Thanks for playing, ya bums! "Police & Proud Boys: Welcome to the 2022 American Renaissance Conference!"

Let’s be real: The Proud Boys did more damage to AmRen in 20 minutes what a decade of organizing against it ever could. Thanks for playing, ya bums! BURNS, TN – The organizers of this year’s American Renaissance (AmRen) Conference had to declare on their website that they “deplore all violence and expressions of hate” and that they had no idea the neo-fascist Proud Boys were at the Montgomery…

[larobeblanche]

JOHN SINGER SARGENT • AMERICAN, 1856–1925 • FUMÉE D'AMBRE GRIS (SMOKE OF AMBERGRIS) • 1880 Clark Art Institute - Williamstown, Massachusetts, U.S.A.

[sbrown82]

Linda Martell - "Color Him Father" (1970)

**Beyoncé's latest album 'Cowboy Carter' spotlights Linda Martell, a pioneer and trailblazer who paved the way for Black country music artists, as she was the first commercially successful Black female artist in the genre.

[empirearchives]

“It was not Bonaparte’s fault… It was the nature of things, the eternal law of man and of the world which baulked and ruined him.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson, Representative Men

[apple-blossom-jeans]

by Francisco Ribalta, 1620