Saturday, May 5, 2018

Gainsborough Hogarth Morland Romney Stubbs

Thomas Gainsborough
Rocky Landscape
ca. 1783
oil on canvas
National Galleries of Scotland

Thomas Gainsborough
Portrait of Mrs Hamilton Nisbet
ca. 1777-88
oil on canvas
National Galleries of Scotland

William Hogarth
Before
1731
oil on canvas
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

William Hogarth
After
1731
oil on canvas
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

from A Hymn

          When I fall into the abyss, I go straight into it, head down and heels up, and I'm even pleased that I'm falling in just such a humiliating position, and for me I find it beautiful. And so in that very shame I suddenly begin a hymn.
                    – Fyodor Dostoevsky

I traveled to the page where scripture meets fiction.
The paper slept but the night woke me up.

Black letters were now alive
and collectible in a material crawl.

I could not decipher their intentions anymore.
To what end did their shapes come forth?

To seduce or speak truth?

While birds swept over the water
like pot-bellied angels

beautiful bells rang to assist the hoist.

Up they went to slake their thirst,
drinking from the mist

for the sound of bells seemed to free
as well as hold them.

Then down to scavenge the surf
and eat the innocent.

– Fanny Howe (2010)

George Morland
Landscape with Figures
ca. 1790-93
oil on canvas
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

George Morland
Morning, or, The Benevolent Sportsman
1792
oil on canvas
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

George Morland
The Public House Door
1792
oil on canvas
National Galleries of Scotland

George Morland
The Smugglers
1792
oil on canvas
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

from At Night the States

At night the states
accompany me while I sit here
          or drums
there are always drums what for
          so I
won't lose my way the name of
          a
personality, say, not California
          I am not
sad for you though I could be
          I remember
climbing up a hill under tall
          trees
getting home. I was
going to say that the air was
          fair (I was
always saying something like
          that) but
that's not it now, and that
          that's not it
isn't it either

– Alice Notley (2006)

George Romney
Portrait of Jane Maxwell, Duchess of Gordon and her son George, Marquess of Huntly
1778
oil on canvas
National Galleries of Scotland

George Romney
Portrait of Mary Bootle, Mrs Wilbraham Bootle
1781
oil on canvas
National Galleries of Scotland

George Romney
Portrait of Mrs Beal Bonnell
1780
oil on canvas
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

from To Fashion

Gay Fashion thou Goddess so pleasing,
     However imperious thy sway;
Like a mistress capricious and teasing,
     Thy slaves tho' they murmur obey.

The simple, the wise, and the witty,
     The learned, the dunce, and the fool,
The crooked, straight, ugly, and pretty,
     Wear the badge of thy whimsical school.

Tho' thy shape be so fickle and changing,
     That a Proteus thou art to the view;
And our taste so for ever deranging,
     We know not which form to pursue.

Yet wave but thy frolicksome banners,
     And hosts of adherent we see;
Arts, morals, religion, and manners,
     Yield implicit obedience to thee.

– Elizabeth Moody (1737-1814)

George Stubbs
Portrait of Joseph Smyth Esq, Lieutenant of Whittlebury Forest, Northamptonshire on a dapple-grey horse
ca. 1762-64
oil on canvas
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

George Stubbs
The Marquess of Rockingham's Arabian stallion led by a groom at Creswell Crags
ca. 1780
oil on canvas
National Galleries of Scotland

George Stubbs
Gimcrack with John Pratt up, on Newmarket Heath
ca. 1765
oil on canvas
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Poems from the archives of Poetry (Chicago)