 |
| Halvax Gyula - Ezüst híd a Balatonon, 1974 oil on canvas, 140,5 x 180 cm |
Saturday, June 3, 2023
Joan Miró - Women and Bird in the Moonlight, 1949
 |
| Joan Miró - Women and Bird in the Moonlight, 1949 oil on canvas, 81,3 × 66 cm Tate, UK |
This work belongs to a series of paintings that Miró made in 1949–50 in Majorca. Miró’s use of simple shapes and bright colours constitutes a highly personal visual language, often charged with symbolic meaning. In this case, the women and bird of the title are easily identifiable under the moon and stars. This imagery suggests a harmonious and elemental relationship between man and nature, which the artist felt was threatened by modern civilisation. via
Frederick Richardson - Weaving the magic cloak, 1905
 |
| Frederick Richardson - Weaving the magic cloak. Illustration for L. Frank Baum book Queen Zixi of Ix, 1905 |
The fairies assembled one moonlit night in a pretty clearing of the ancient forest of Burzee. The clearing was in the form of a circle, and all around stood giant oak and fir trees, while in the center the grass grew green and soft as velvet.
If any mortal had ever penetrated so far into the great forest, and could have looked upon the fairy circle by daylight, he might perhaps have seen a tiny path worn in the grass by the feet of the dancing elves. For here, during the full of the moon, the famous fairy band, ruled by good Queen Lulea, loved to dance and make merry while the silvery rays flooded the clearing and caused their gauzy wings to sparkle with every color of the rainbow.
On this especial night, however, they were not dancing. For the queen had seated herself upon a little green mound, and while her band clustered about her she began to address the fairies in a tone of discontent.
“I am tired of dancing, my dears,” said she. “Every evening since the moon grew big and round we have come here to frisk about and laugh and disport ourselves; and although those are good things to keep the heart light, one may grow weary even of merrymaking. So I ask you to suggest some new way to divert both me and yourselves during this night.”
“That is a hard task,” answered one pretty sprite, opening and folding her wings slowly—as a lady toys with her fan. “We have lived through so many ages that we long ago exhausted everything that might be considered a novelty, and of all our recreations nothing gives us such continued pleasure as dancing.”
“But I do not care to dance to-night!” replied Lulea, with a little frown.
“We might create something, by virtue of our fairy powers,” suggested one who reclined at the feet of the queen.
“Ah, that is just the idea!” exclaimed the dainty Lulea, with brightening countenance. “Let us create something. But what?”
“I have heard,” remarked another member of the band, “of a thinking-cap having been made by some fairies in America. And whatever mortal wore this thinking-cap was able to conceive the most noble and beautiful thoughts.”
“That was indeed a worthy creation,” cried the little queen. “What became of the cap?”
“The man who received it was so afraid some one else would get it and be able to think the same exquisite thoughts as himself that he hid it safely away—so safely that he himself never could think afterward where he had placed it.”
“How unfortunate! But we must not make another thinking-cap, lest it meet a like fate. Cannot you suggest something, else?”
“I have heard,” said another, “of certain fairies who created a pair of enchanted boots, which would always carry their mortal wearer away from danger—and never into it.”
“What a great boon to those blundering mortals!” cried the queen. “And whatever became of the boots?”
“They came at last into the possession of a great general who did not know their powers. So he wore them into battle one day, and immediately ran away, followed by all his men, and the fight was won by the enemy.”
“But did not the general escape danger?”
“Yes—at the expense of his reputation. So he retired to a farm and wore out the boots tramping up and down a country road and trying to decide why he had suddenly become such a coward.”
“The boots were worn by the wrong man, surely,” said the queen; “and that is why they proved a curse rather than a blessing. But we want no enchanted boots. Think of something else.”
“Suppose we weave a magic cloak,” proposed Espa, a sweet little fairy who had not before spoken.
“A cloak? Indeed, we might easily weave that,” returned the queen. “But what sort of magic powers must it possess?”
“Let its wearer have any wish instantly fulfilled,” said Espa, brightly.
Francis Towne - A View by Moonlight in the Bunhay at Exeter, 1792
 |
| Francis Towne - A View by Moonlight in the Bunhay at Exeter, 1792 Ink and watercolour on paper, 15,9 × 19,7 cm Tate, Uk |
Edward Williams (1782–1855) - Castleman Villas, Moonlight
 |
| Edward Williams (1782–1855) - Castleman Villas, Moonlight oil on canvas, 27.5 x 51 cm Museums Sheffield, UK |
Joseph Mallord William Turner - A Villa (Villa Madama - Moonlight), for Rogers’s ‘Italy’, 1826-27
,%20for%20Rogers%E2%80%99s%20%E2%80%98Italy%E2%80%99%20-%20Turner%20tate.jpg) |
| Joseph Mallord William Turner - A Villa (Villa Madama - Moonlight), for Rogers’s ‘Italy’, 1826-27 Pencil, pen and ink, and watercolour, approximately 130 x 132 mm on white wove paper, 240 x 297 mm Tate, UK |
This vignette was engraved by Henry le Keux and appears as the end-piece for the twenty-seventh section of Rogers’s Italy, entitled ‘An interview.
Villa Madama is one of the most famous and widely imitated villas and terraced gardens of the High Renaissance. It was designed by Raphael who intended it to rival the villas of antiquity. The villa, on the Janiculum Hill in Rome, included a courtyard with a monumental flight of steps (seen here in the foreground) and an open air amphitheatre, which the poet describes at some length. Rogers’s final verses are nicely complemented by the dark and poetic exterior view shown here:
"The rising moon we hailed,
Duly, devoutly, from a vestibule
Of many an arch, o’er-wrought and lavishly
With many a labyrinth of sylphs and flowers,
When Raphael and his school from Florence came,
Filling the land with splendour – nor less oft
Watched her, declining, from a silent dell,
Not silent once, what time in rivalry Tasso,
Guarini waved their wizard-wands,
Peopling the groves from Arcady, and lo,
Fair forms appeared, murmuring melodious verse, –
Then, in their day, a sylvan theatre,
Mossy the seats, the stage a verdurous floor,
The scenery rock and shrub-wood,
Nature’s own; Nature the Architect." (Italy, pp.134–5)
In addition to the Villa Madama, Turner’s vignette also shows the Villa Mellini, which appears in the upper right of the composition. The structures have been drawn according to two different perspective systems and are lit by opposing light sources: whereas Villa Madama appears to be illuminated from within, the exterior of Villa Mellini is brightly lit by the moon. Both of these ambiguities contribute to the overall sense of other-worldly mystery that dominates the scene.
Joseph Wright of Derby - A Moonlight with a Lighthouse, Coast of Tuscany, 1789
 |
| Joseph Wright of Derby - A Moonlight with a Lighthouse, Coast of Tuscany, 1789 oil on canvas, 101,6 × 127,6 cm Tate, UK |
When journeying to and from Rome, Wright had crossed much of mainland Italy but his acquaintance with districts beyond Rome would have been brief. Years later, this imagined scene gave Wright a context in which to compare the differing effects of natural and artifical light-sources that had so long fascinated him. Here, the luminosity of the moonlight in the night sky is contrasted with the hazy beam of the lighthouse and its reflection in the water. The looming dark mass of the cliff and portentous-looking rocks in the bottom left create a sense of melodrama.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)