Mike,
I'd bet that the one eyed fat man said it with passion and conviction.!!! ....see it's the execution that makes it art. :)

Allan,

You are right, John Wayne, as Rooster Cogburn in "True Grit," said it with so much passion and conviction that it got him an academy award. Robert Duvall as Ned Pepper has also won an academy award for "Tender Mercies." He's also the one that said: "I love the smell of Napalm in the morning" in the movie "Apocolypse Now."

I believe, as Ned Pepper came to realize, that you should never come between a man and his passionately held convictions. Unless of course there's a woman involved then all bets are off.

I like these compositions:

The first is presumably a Russian painter. I found it among the ones that SB posted, but couldn't find a name to associate with it. I like the subtle offsets in the pose, like the cocked head and just the suggestion of the right hand which breaks up the line of the right side.

The second is by Arthur Hughes - A music party, 1864. This is a clever four person composition, I think.

The third is from Leon Perrault,1832-1908 - The flower vendor. A pleasant head and shoulder with some tricky hand work.

This last one is more for the interesting nature of the scene. Maybe scenes like this are played out now somewhere, but I've never seen one ... have you? I think the two guys sword fighting are using paint brushes and have palettes and mahl sticks in the other hand. This is the way combat should be.

Actually, I think they are using swords. Looks like some kind of battle scene is being reinacted for a painting.

Horace Vernet, The Artists Studio, 20x25, 1820.

You can get a better look here:
http://www.artrenewal.org/asp/databa...e.asp?id=27956

I found out this is a piece by Yaroshenko, who incidentally did some of the famous pieces found on this website.
http://www3.nccu.edu.tw/~mfchen/pain...yaroshenka.htm

Thanks for that information Marcus.

*****

Thanks to Enzie for posting that fabulous J.S. Sargent going up for auction at the end of this month. Below is an excerpt from her post regarding some of the history of the painting and in particular a comparison to Boldini. I've posted one of Boldini's portraits here along side of this Sargent portrait for the comparison which the author suggests.

I had pulled out this Boldini painting prior to Enzie's post but could not find the right words to describe the feeling that it stirred. I think this excerpt articulates very well what I could not:

"In part due to his "instinctive refinement," Sargent became the most sought-after portraitist of his age. In 1902, Charles Caffin wrote in American Masters of Painting comparing Sargent's work to his well-known contemporary Giovanni Boldini, "It would be quite impossible for him to have any feelings toward his [Sargent's] subjects other than those of a true gentleman; and, though he may represent in a lady a full flavour of the modern spirit, he never allows the modernity to exceed the limits of good taste. For the same reason Sargent's pictures, though many of them have a restlessness of their own, seem quiet alongside Boldini's. The latter makes a motive of nervous tenuosity, and his pictures, if seen frequently, become wiry in suggestion, and defeat their own purpose of being vibrative; but Sargent's, controlled by a fine sobriety of feeling, another phase of his unfailing taste and tact, retain their suppleness. Their actuality is all the more convincing because it is not the motive, but an incident." (as quoted in G.A. Reynolds, "Sargent's Late Portraits," John Singer Sargent, New York, 1986, p. 176)"

J. S. Sargent - Mildred Carter, 40x30
Giovanni Boldini - Consuelo Marlborough and Son

Love that this has cropped up (no pun here), as a friend and I have had a running Boldini vs. Sargent argument going on over beers for a while now, in part because here in NC, Biltmore Mansion has portraits of the Vanderbilt family by both artists.

Sargent is timeless, while Boldini is already nothing but a vapor.

Or in reference to Boldini, might I also suggest the shopworn but still serviceable term, "creepy" ?

So there.

Certainly "flamboyant" comes to mind.

Here are a few compositions by the Italian Renaissance painter, frescoist, sculptor, architect, poet & archaeologist, Raphael 1483 - 1520.

I don't know how a fella gets all that done in just thirty seven years. At thirty seven I was still trying to master the ham and cheese omlette. I don't know much about his poetry or his archaeology, but he certainly had a body of work in his paintings.

Joanna of Aragon
Bindo Altoviti 23x17
Saint Michael and the Dragon 4 3/4" x 4 1/2"

And finally - Raphael experiencing a "time out."

Here are the paintings of John Waterhouse, 1849-1917.

From his Obituary:

"Mr Waterhouse was an eclectic painter. He painted Pre-Raphaelite pictures in a more modern manner. He was in fact a kind of academic Burne-Jones [1833-1898], like him in his types and moods, but with less insistence on design and more on atmosphere. His art was always agreeable, for he had taste and learning as well as considerable accomplishments; he was one of those painters whose pictures always seem to suggest that he must have done better in some other work. This means that he never quite

And a couple more for the heck of it ...

This first is obviously not the full composition. I would sure like to see the full image, this slice sure looks interesting.

The Magic Circle 72x50
Windswept 45x31

Mike,
I think that Waterhouse's strength is his sense of decorative composition. He lived in the period when Art Nouveau was popular and I guess that was his luck. The persons are types, all young and beautiful, a sort of idealized, without too much personal character.