Mabel Tainter Memorial Building, 1889 by architect Harvey Ellis, Menomonie, WI
The style of this building is called Richardsonian Romanesque, but the architect was a strong behind-the-scenes influence on the American Arts & Crafts movement. Harvey Ellis worked with Gustav Stickley and has been credited with many of the company’s furniture designs and undoubtedly influenced Stickley’s Craftsman style.
Henry Fuseli, The Nightmare, 1781.
From the first time this painting was exhibited, the scene has intrigued audiences as they work to understand the scene and the figures.
The Treachery of Images by Rene Magritte.
Surrealist Magritte has written “This is not a pipe” underneath an image of a pipe. His point is to remind the viewer that although you might be tempted to call this a pipe when you see it, is just a painting of a pipe.
Mount Sainte-Victoire, 1904-1906 by Paul Cézanne, Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Cézanne is considered to be the father of modern painting. His use of loose brush strokes and flattened planes led to Impressionism and Cubism. His bright palette influenced the Fauvist painters, as well.
Le chat (The Cat at the Window), 1857-58 by Jean Francois Millet.
Millet’s illustration of “The Cat Who Became a Woman,” a fable by the seventeenth-century French writer Jean de La Fontaine. According to the story, a man becomes infatuated with his cat and convinces Destiny to change her into a woman. He marries her, but on their first night together she springs from the marriage bed to chase a mouse across the bedroom floor. The fable’s moral is “The truth will out”: no matter how much one’s outward appearance changes, one’s essential character remains.
L’etoile [La danseuse sur la scene] (The Star [Dancer on Stage]) 1878, by Edgar Degas.
Degas did a large series of paintings and sculptures of ballet dancers, all levels of dancers and on the stage and behind the scenes. When I was a child, a print of this painting was in my bedroom. I remember the eyes freaked me out because they were all black.
Iris Tree by Augustus John.
Tree was a poet and artist’s model probably better known in a famous portrait by Amedeo Modigliani. John had a very robust career being one of the most well known artists in the UK in the early 20th century.
The Precious Book , c.1920 by Gwen John.
John studied under James McNeill Whistler in Paris and at the Slade School in London where she developed her agitated style. Her brother Augustus John was also a painter and quite popular during his day, overshadowing his older sister.
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