Thursday Art, collected

Off and on for the last few years, I have been posting photographs of artworks (usually taken by me) to my social media, always including Instagram and sometimes other places, with the tag #ThursdayArt (originally #ArtonThursday). Here is my archive of those posts. I will try and keep it up to date.

27/2/25: Ode to a Mountain River (sculpture), Rik Poot

30/1/25: monument to Jan Palach (sculpture), František Janda

16/1/25: Changemakers (photography), Iliyana Grigorova

2/1/25: landscape paintings, Princess Sophie von Auersperg

26/12/24: portrait of Elizabeth Meehan, John Kindness

5/12/24: St Nicholas arrives in Brussels (line drawing), Hergé

21/11/24: The Orator (painting), Magnus Zeller

14/11/24: statue of Jean Vilar, Valentine Schlegel

7/11/24: The Apotheosis of Washington (painting), Constantino Brumidi

24/10/24: L’Air (sculpture), Aristide Maillol

3/10/24: The Thinker (sculpture), Auguste Rodin

26/9/24: Distorted (painting), Erin McDaid

29/8/24: Woman with a Black Hat (painting), by Charley Toorop

1/8/24: the Beisenerbierg menhir

11/7/24: the Staffordshire Pan (souvenir pot)

10/8/23: Romulus and Seamus (sculpture), John Kindness

11/5/23: portrait of Princess Charlotte of Wales, Sir Thomas Lawrence

9/3/23: The Card Players (painting), Fernand Léger

30/3/23: paintings by my distant cousins Howard Gardiner Cushing and his daughter Lily Cushing Emmett

16/3/23: Towards Cave Hill, from Botanic (painting), Colin Davidson

23/2/23: The Virgin of the Annunciation, and St Jérôme (alabaster sculptures), by Tilman Riemenschneider

9/2/23: The Education of Mary (painting), by Michaelina Wautier

2/2/23: the Maison Cauchie (architecture), by Paul Cauchie

12/1/23: statue of Pieter de Somer, by Vic Gentils

22/12/22: Christ held by his mother (medieval fresco)

17/11/22: Promethée/Lilith aka La Grande Isis (sculpture), Maggy Stein

3/11/22: fresco believed to portray the Empress Fausta

29/9/22: John Dee performing an experiment before Queen Elizabeth I (painting), Henry Gillard Glindoni

22/9/22: The Guild Windows in the Grote Kerk, Dordrecht, Teun Hocks and Stef Hagemeier

15/9/22: C.S. Lewis gable mural, Belfast

11/8/22: Intimité (painting), Berthe Flaminé Mayné

19/5/22: Terry Bradley and two of his paintings: “Pain and Sorrow” and “Aslan”

12/5/22: Sollicitude Maternelle (sculpture), Henri Boncquet

27 February 2025

Yesterday and today, unusually, I came in to work via the Herrmann-Debroux metro station, whose platform is adorned with this impressive “Ode to a Mountain River” (1985) by Rik Poot (1924-2006). There are two other big artworks there, but this is the biggest!

30 January 2025

Monument to Jan Palach, Avenue de l’Atlantique, Woluwe-Saint-Pierre, by František Janda

16 January 2025

“Changemakers”, by Iliyana Grigorova, in the Parliamentarium exhibition space at the European Parliament. The middle panel in the top row is a mirror, though it’s tricky to photograph it at a good angle.

2 January 2025

Four oil paintings depicting the chapel, forest and ponds near where we live in Oud-Heverlee, painted in the 1870s and 1880s by Princess Sophie von Auersperg (1811-1901) who had married the much older Duke Ernest of Arenberg (1777-1857) in 1842.

The paintings feature their daughter Éléonore (1845-1919) who married her cousin Duke Engelbert d’Arenberg (1824 – 1875) in 1868, and their five children and other relatives. The painter signs herself “Princesse Ernest d’Arenberg”, commemorating her husband who had died more than 20 years earlier.

26 December 2024

The fondly remembered Elizabeth Meehan (1947-2018), painted in 2008 by John Kindness; the portrait hangs in the Great Hall at the Queen’s University of Belfast. A moment to think of everyone who is no longer around.

Kindness, John; Elizabeth Meehan; Queen’s University, Belfast; http://www.artuk.org/artworks/elizabeth-meehan-168954

5 December 2024

Most days, I walk past a large copy of this at Brussels-Luxembourg railway station; it was drawn by the 25-year-old Hergé, creator of Tintin, in 1932 to advertise the Christmas sales at the Brussels department store L’Innovation, and shows St Nicholas arriving in the city by train. Lots of characterization, and the latest news-gathering technology on display.

21 November 2024

The Orator (~1920) by Magnus Zeller (1888-1972), seen in LACMA in February 2024.

14 November 2024

Attending the Paris Peace Forum at the Palais de Chaillot on Monday I found this lovely depiction of actor Jean Vilar (1912-1971), created by his sister-in-law Valentine Schlegel in 1985. Near the entrance, he watches everyone coming and going.

7 November 2024

The Apotheosis of Washington, by Constantino Brumidi (1865), in the eye of the U.S. Capitol Building’s Rotunda.

George Washington ascends to the heavens in glory, flanked by female figures representing Liberty and Victory/Fame and surrounded by six groups of figures. The fresco is 55 metres above the Rotunda floor and covers an area of 433 square meters.

24 October 2024

L’Air, by Aristide Maillol.

Modeled from the 19-year-old Dina Vierny in 1938, it was not actually cast until 1962, 18 years after the sculptor Maillol had died. There are six copies, four in the USA (Yale, Getty, Norton Simon, Kimbell), one in Paris, and this one in the Kröller-Müller Museum in the Netherlands, where I photographed it in 2006.

3 October 2024

The Thinker, and fan.

26 September 2024

“Distorted” by Erin McDaid, winner of the 14-18 category in this year’s Bradley Art Prize. I had the pleasure of seeing the painting and meeting Erin last week.

29 August 2024

Woman with a Black Hat (1928) by Charley Toorop, in the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem

1 August 2024

This is the Beisenerbierg menhir, the one and only intact megalithic monument in the whole of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. Some people think it has been shaped to look like a human figure, but I am not so sure. See also blog post.

11 July 2024

I haven’t done this for a while, but here’s some #ThursdayArt. This is the Staffordshire Pan, a copper bowl which appears to be a Roman-era souvenir of Hadrian’s Wall. It is decorated with mock Celtic motifs and under the rim are written the names of the four westernmost forts of the Wall, and the name ‘Aelius Draco’, presumably the person for whom the bowl was made. Originally it had a handle as well, though I can’t imagine actually cooking with a saucepan this lovely. It was found in Staffordshire in 2003 and is currently on display in Carlisle.

10 August 2023

Romulus and Seamus, by John Kindness (also did the Big Fish in Belfast).

11 May 2023

Portrait of Princess Charlotte of Wales (1796-1817) by Sir Thomas’s Lawrence (1769-1850) in the British Ambassador’s Residence in Brussels, snapped by me last night at a Eurovision reception.

It’s one of the might-have-beens of British history; if the unfortunate princess had not died in childbirth, along with her baby boy, she would have become Queen Charlotte after the death of George IV, and there would have been no Queen Victoria. (Queen Victoria’s father married her mother as a direct reaction to Charlotte’s death, which left George III otherwise with no legitimate grandchildren.)

Charlotte’s bereaved husband, Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, who would have been Prince Consort if she had lived, hung around London after her death until becoming the king of newly independent Belgium in 1831 (he turned down Greece in the meantime). This striking portrait of his first wife followed him to Brussels.

Sir Thomas Lawrence was one of the leading portrait painters of his day and specialised in the royals. His picture of the young Princess Charlotte and her mother Princess Caroline was so striking that rumours spread that he and Caroline were romantically involved (she was estranged from the future George IV, her husband). He painted Charlotte several times, and this must have been the last one completed in her lifetime – the portrait he was working on at the time of her death was widely circulated by mourners.

In the Ambassador’s residence last night, a Beatles tribute band was performing classic hits, below her and to her left, just where she is looking. Popular culture of different modes, 150 years apart.

9 March 2023

Fernand Léger, The Card Players (1917). “The crudeness, variety, humour and downright perfection of certain men around me, their precise sense of utilitarian reality and it application in the middle of the life-and-death drama we were in … made me want to paint in slang with all its colour and mobility.”

30 March 2023

Today I’m celebrating Howard Gardiner Cushing and his daughter Lily Cushing Emmett, both distant cousins of mine.

Howard was born in 1869 in Boston, studied in Harvard and Paris, and made a career of his art. In 1903 he married Ethel Emerson Cochrane. She is the subject of a lot of his best work, including “The Shower of Gold”, the first picture here.

The next painting features Ethel with a red-haired child. Going by the dates, it is probably their oldest, Olivia, who died in 1908 three months after her third birthday.

One morning in 1916, Ethel found the Howard had died in the night. He was only 47, and their three surviving children were all under ten. The largest collection of his work is held at the Newport Art Museum in Rhode Island.

Their middle child, Lily, followed her father and became an artist. The third picture is her own self-portrait (date given is 1952, but that is surely wrong; she looks younger than 43). She specialised in women, clothed and nude, but also did some streetscapes: the fourth picture here is her depiction of Guadalajara in Mexico. Her papers are in the Smithsonian.

Lily’s middle name was Dulany, in honour of our mutual ancestor Walter Dulany (1723-1773). She lived to 1969 and had two daughters, one of whom married Arthur Schlesinger and the other Anthony West (H.G. Wells’ son by Rebecca West). The fifth and last image here is a photograph of the three of them, dated 1960 but I think it must be earlier (Lily would have been 51 and the girls 27 and 23 in 1960).

And just to add one more connection: William Temple Emmet, Lily’s second husband and the father of her daughters, was descended from the Irish revolutionary Thomas Addis Emmet, and was also (by a later marriage) the grandfather of a good friend of mine, who I’ve known since 2008 without realising that we had a (weak) family link as well.

16 March 2023

By Colin Davidson. I failed to note the title, but if you know Belfast, it’s obvious what it is.

Edited to add: “Towards Cave Hill from Botanic, Belfast”, painted only last year.

A bit of Ireland for St Patrick’s Day tomorrow.

23 February 2023

Two late 15th century alabaster figures by the sculptor Tilman Riemenschneider (~1460-1531). I just love the faces on the Virgin of the Annunciation and St Jérôme. She has a case of books, he has a lion.

(Seen at the alabaster exhibition in Leuven, whose last day is this Sunday.)

9 February 2023

The Education of Mary (1656), by Michaelina Wautier (1604-1689).

Saw this in the Mauritshuis in 2021. I love the eye roll of the young Mary and the tolerant but determined expression of St Anne. (Though what’s up with Joachim? Educating your daughter by staring into space?)

Michaelina Wautier is one of the forgotten painters of the Golden Age, only rediscovered fairly recently: and about time too.

2 February 2023

Façade in Rue des Francs / Frankenstraat #ArtNouveauForTheWin

12 January 2023

Statue of Pieter De Somer (1917-1985), biologist, medic and Rector of the Catholic University of Leuven 1966-1985; as the university’s first lay rector, he oversaw the split between its Dutch and French speaking parts.

The statue was created in 1989 by Vic Gentils (1919-1997), and it is in his typical style of abstract bronze. You can find it off the Charles Deberiotstraat in Leuven (50.8762 N, 4.7028 E).

22 December 2022

Christ held by his mother, 11th century (though much restored), Church of St Sophia, Ohrid, North Macedonia.

17 November 2022

This intriguing sculpture, with somewhat feminine curves, sits just to the south of the Notre Dame Cathedral. There is no plaque explaining what it is called or why it is there.

It turnes out that it has two names, “Promethée/Lilith” and “La Grande Isis”, created by Maggy Stein (1931-1999), commissioned by the government of Luxembourg as a monumental sculpture in 1978. I find it a fascinating piece.

I also found this commentary: “As a woman, a mother, a divorcee, an artist and a sculptor, she faced constant resistance. She was largely denied the prizes and public commissions which her work deserved. Probably her most important public work is the sculpture near the cathedral in the center of the city of Luxembourg: it is the only one of its kind.”

3 November 2022

One of four female figures from the ceiling fresco in Trier thought to have been commissioned for the bishop’s palace by the empress Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, around 320 AD. This lady is thought to be the empress Fausta, Constantine’s second wife.

29 September 2022

John Dee performing an experiment before Queen Elizabeth I, by Henry Gillard Glindoni, 1852-1913.

The scene is the house at Mortlake of Dr John Dee (1527-1608). At the court of Queen Elizabeth I, Dee was revered for the range of his scientific knowledge, which embraced the fields of mathematics, navigation, geography, alchemy/chemistry, medicine and optics. He was a Fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge, and later one of the original Fellows of Trinity College (he declined a lecturing post at Oxford), and he had an international reputation. In the painting he is showing the effect of combining two elements, either to cause combustion or to extinguish it. Behind him is his assistant Edward Kelly, wearing a long skullcap to conceal the fact that his ears had been cropped as a punishment for forgery

Queen Elizabeth I paid several visits to Dee’s house in Mortlake and supported his researches. In the picture the Queen sits in the left middleground, Sir Walter Raleigh is on her left, and behind him, holding a staff, is the Lord Treasurer William Cecil, 1st Lord Burghley

The painting originally showed Dee standing in a circle of skulls on the floor, stretching from the floor area in front of the Queen (on the left) to the floor near Edward Kelly (on the right). The skulls were at an early stage painted over, but have since become visible.