Category: Fine Art

Ever since I took a few Art Appreciation classes during my belated university career*, I have been an admirer of Corot’s landscapes — sheesh, okay, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot — because for some reason, they seem to me to straddle the hyper-realism of the Academy and the later swirling Impressionists like Monet.  Here are a few which typify this part of his work:

A Farmyard near Fontainebleau

A Farmyard in the Nievre

The Path leading to the House

Trees and a Swamp

A View Near Volterra

Smyrna, A Boat

A Sudden Gust Of Wind

I love this last one most of all, because it’s almost a photograph, so well does he capture the effect of wind on both the trees and the walker.  But I would be happy to hang all the above on my walls.

In fact, what I think I’d do is get four small 18″x12″ Corot landscapes from, say, iCanvas and arrange them on a wall, thus:

Hey, it’s not too bad a dream, is it?

Corot also did portraits and such, but to be honest, I don’t care for them at all.  Here’s one which I think is his best:

…and another more like his others:

Sorry, but no.  I have high standards when it comes to portrait paintings, what can I say?

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*The appreciation of art was truly a neglected part of my education.  Art classes at high school gave me an understanding of movements such as Impressionism, Dadaism, Surrealism and so on, but I never learned to appreciate art properly.  So when I went back to university in my early 50s, I took one such class, realized that I needed to take another, and then took a couple more.

I just wish I’d taken them earlier on in life, because I’ve missed so much.

I have always been fascinated, not to say turned on, by the appearance of the female form when loosely covered with soft, diaphanous materials such as silk, satin or linen.  Here’s an example of what I mean, that of a statue of Callipygian Venus, in the Louvre:

The nineteenth-century American sculptor William Wetmore Story specialized in the form, seen here with his Cleopatra Reclining:

…and Semiaramis:

That last pic I took myself when the statue was on display at the Dallas Museum of Art, and I stared at it for ages.

Story, by the way, had this to say about sculpture in general:

Quite so.

Nowadays, of course, such wondrous sights are few and far between, and pretty much confined to photography.  Although there is this lovely picture of Mr. and Mrs. David Bowie:

…wherein even the bony Angela looks quite appealing, most such pictures seem to need backlighting:

…while most (shall we say) are more prurient:

Honestly?  I prefer Story’s sculptures to all of them.

I need some help, and I have no idea where to start.  Observe this oil painting:

All I know about it is mostly supposition:

• the unknown artist is supposedly Iranian (or perhaps Persian, back when it was painted)
• he was supposedly a court painter for the Shah of Iran/Persia
• the painting is one of a small series — this one is called, I think, “Green”, and others are likewise entitled “Blue”, “Red”, etc.
• it’s quite large:  60″x48″
• it was purchased sometime during the 1980s, from a gallery in Los Angeles.

That’s all I know.  I’ve looked and looked all over Teh Intarwebz, but nada.

If anyone can shed light on the piece, or tell me where I can look further, I’d be eternally grateful.