More thoughts on works by Caspar David Friedrich from the Hermitage.
The Dreamer sits on a window ledge of a ruin. He is not inside the ruin nor is he outside the ruin. Inside the ruin are dead trees, while outside life thrives. The dreamer looks sideways, neither out of the ruin nor into the ruin. Is this not true of a dreamer, of someone who lives half in the metaphysical realm
While in an art museum in the Netherlands last fall I noticed a sign on a cork board advertising a special Exhibit at The Hermitage Museum of Amsterdam. I was excited to see that it was a show of work by an nineteenth century artist whose work I have long been drawn to, Caspar David Friedrich. I was privileged to see 6 drawings and 9 paintings by the artist and spent a long time in front
In the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, the Rotterdam art museum, I saw many good works of art last fall including the interesting piece by René Magritte entitled La Reproduction Interdite. In English, the title translates to “Not to be Reproduced.” Magritte is one of the surrealist painters that I appreciate. I am intrigued by the way in which he see the world and the interest
Reflections, time, and speed are ideas that I am interested in that are elements in this photograph. I saw the idea behind this image on my first da
One cannot visit the Netherlands without coming across Vincent Van Gogh, there is even a museum named after him. On my second day in the Netherlands, my aunt, Karen Limkeman, and I went to a little city outside of Eindhoven called Nuenen. Nuenen, a village where Van Gogh’s father had a Parish from 1882-1885, is small and did not show up on my aunt’s Tom Tom. Neunen is home to
I pointed my camera to the ceiling of Sint Jan Cathedral (Saint John) to get a detail shot of a rib vault. A man approached me and began to talk about the ceiling, first in Dutch
My day in Den Bosch began by going to the Bosch museum (Noordbrabants Museum, ‘s-Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands). The museum was small, but had a number of paintings by or in the same style as the famous artist from the city, Hieronymus Bosch.
Of the older paintings in the Noordbrandts collection, several contained buildings that were cut in half resulting in the interior of the
The Mauritshuis museum in The Hague, Netherlands is designed with many protruding panels giving a room more wall space then it might otherwise have. While walking around the museum, I looked with anticipation a
There is a thread of thought that scoffs images, stories, and other communications which tell a story in a historically inaccurate way. Those who follow this thought pattern would tear apart Pieter Brueghel II’s Census at Bethlehem completed in 1605...
While walking through the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, the painting, Jerusalem (Golgatha, Consummatum Est, Crucifixion) by Jean-Léon Gérôme caught my eye. It did not catch my eye because of the style, but due to the treatment of the subject. This is an interesting painting because it is the classical crucifixion theme redone in a way that I have not seen before. The cro