St. Patty’s Roundup, #2
Posted: March 18, 2012 Filed under: art, Ireland, statues 2 CommentsThe statue of Molly Malone in Dublin is basically a sculptural softcore boobie pic for dudes who fetishize fishmongers, right?
Also of note in Dublin statuary, Oscar Wilde. I mean, c’mon dude. Sit up! :
Fitzhugh Lane
Posted: March 15, 2012 Filed under: art, books, fitzhughlane, livesoftheheroesofboston, museum, New England Leave a comment
Fitz Hugh Lane: When he was eighteen months old, in his father’s yard, Fitz Hugh Lane grabbed a handful of some kind of weed and put it in his mouth. John J. Babson’s History of the Town of Gloucester (1860) says it was “apple-peru.” It may have been jimsonweed. No matter. Fitzhugh “was so unfortunate as to lose the use of his lower limbs in consequence, owing to late and unskillful medical treatment.” He was paralyzed.
Apprenticed to a printmaker in Boston, he soon became famous for his paintings of ships and sunsets. He decided to go back home. On a peninsula called Duncan’s Point in Gloucester, he designed and built his own home. He didn’t like the name Fitz Hugh and with some difficulty had it changed legally to Fitz Henry. So in catalogs or museum signs he’s sometimes called that. He was well-known and loved in Gloucester.
Fitz Hugh had a very close friend, all his life, Joseph Stevens, who was from an old Gloucester family. The story’s told that one day, when they were boys, Joseph Stevens rigged up a special contraption of ropes and pulleys to lift Fitz Hugh high up in the masts and rigging of a ship, so he could look out at the harbor.* Fitz Hugh died in Joseph Stevens’ house, with Joseph Stevens at his bedside.
– from Crawley’s Lives of The Heroes Of Boston (1958), which I cannot recommend highly enough. Get yourself the reissued 1998 paperback for like a dollar on Amazon.
Once in winter I drove up to Gloucester to the Cape Ann Museum (got the top picture from their website) to view the Fitz Hugh Lanes.** On the streets of Gloucester with the wind I was as cold as I can ever remember being.
Fitz Hugh Lanes: good name for a Gloucester bowling alley.
*Crawley notes here that he is citing John Wilmerding‘s book Fitz Hugh Lane. Crawley always acknowledges, often at tedious length, that he has done no scholarship of his own and relies on the work of others.
** Much like the Scottish guy Indiana Jones pretends to be in “Last Crusade” drives up to the castle “to view the tapestries.”
More Kubrick
Posted: February 16, 2012 Filed under: pictures Leave a comment
Got that from loverofbeauty, who always hits home runs, although lately I can’t even keep up. A correspondent in our Pittsburgh office tipped me off to his fine work.
He (?) got it from here.
Lighthouse at Two Lights by Edward Hopper (1929)
Posted: February 16, 2012 Filed under: art, New England, painting, pictures Leave a comment
Met’s Artwork of The Day a couple back. Cape Elizabeth, Maine.
More C. W. Peale, and the Falkirk Wheel
Posted: February 10, 2012 Filed under: art, from wikipedia, painting, pictures, science Leave a commentThe Exhumation of the Mastodon 1805-1808:
The wheel pictured reminded one correspondent of The Falkirk Wheel:
Good new term I learned
Posted: February 9, 2012 Filed under: from wikipedia, pictures Leave a comment
A fancy cancel is a postal cancellation that includes an artistic design. Although the term may be used of modern machine cancellations that include artwork, it primarily refers to the designs carved in cork and used in 19th century post offices of the United States.
– from Wikipedia, which also informed me about the Waterbury Running Chicken (a famed fancy cancel) and that I should be vy suspicious of fancy cancels on Confederate postage stamps.
The Artist In His Museum, by Charles Wilson Peale, 1822
Posted: February 9, 2012 Filed under: art, painting, pictures Leave a comment
“To Peale, the behavior of animals served as a model for a moral, productive, and socially harmonious society,” says Wikipedia, citing David R. Bingham in the Huntington Library Quarterly.
Helytimes 