Rosa Bonheur was perhaps the most famous artist in all of Europe and North America during her lifetime. Required to obtain a cross-dressing permit in order to venture into the world of men — for the sake of her art — she took that world by storm!

My earliest art-related memory is my mother telling me that her favorite painter was the 19th-century French artist, Rosa Bonheur. She was an “animalier” — a painter of animals — and her work appealed to young sensibilities. Mom showed me a handful of reproduction images of Bonheur’s paintings, and she instantly became my favorite artist too.

Some years later, though, I began to think that something didn’t compute.

I studied art history in high school and college. Rosa Bonheur was never mentioned. I seldom found anyone else who had ever heard of her. …

Have you ever wondered how a painting comes into being? We asked guest blogger and life-long artist Stede Barber to tell us about her painting process. Here she outlines three iterations — from beginning to completion — of a recent landscape painting, titled High Summer.

When I was a young girl, I did my first plein air oil painting. I had received the gift of a little oil paint set, and decided I would walk down the sandy road to paint the Pemaquid lighthouse. Somehow, I thought that a finished painting would flow right off my paintbrush onto the canvas! …

As the world slowly, tentatively, begins to emerge from lockdown, people are wondering what the new social order will look like. A few folks are determined to hang on to their old ways, but most accept that things will be different for some time to come. The question is, “How different?”

As art geeks, we wondered about the re-opening of museums. What did Scott Stulen, Director of the Philbrook Museum of Art, mean when he said, “the museum we closed will not be the museum we reopen”?

We’ve looked into it, and we’re glad to say that this is one beloved familiar thing that will be just as rewarding as before! …

As a young man, the great American sculptor Isamu Noguchi (1904–1988) was almost diverted from the path of his true calling, his artistic aspirations squashed by really bad advice from a very big name in the field.

After completing high school, Noguchi apprenticed to Gutzon Borglum — the well-known American sculptor who is best known today for the four presidential portraits of Mt. Rushmore. The relationship didn’t last long; Borglum-old-school, opinionated and authoritarian-told Noguchi that he was not talented enough to become a sculptor. Discouraged, in 1923 Noguchi enrolled in the pre-med program at Columbia University.

Luckily-while most parents are more likely to encourage their son to become a doctor over becoming an artist-his mother urged him not to give up his dream. Four years later he was moving to Paris on a Guggenheim scholarship where he gained an apprenticeship to work with the abstract sculptor Constantin Brancusi. That relationship was a far better match and Brancusi became a major influence on Noguchi. …

This is the second of two articles. In the first piece we explored Ruben’s magnificent Baroque altarpiece, the Raising of the Cross (1610). Now we’ll take a close look at his Descent From the Cross (1612), which is of similar scale but quite distinct in composition and artistic sensibility.

Although I normally focus on art sites in the US, during this week leading up to Easter I want to consider two monumental Rubens altarpieces that are in the Cathedral in Antwerp, Belgium. …

There are two art treasures in Antwerp’s Cathedral of Our Lady that stand out above all the rest, both painted by Peter Paul Rubens: The Raising of the Cross and The Descent from the Cross.

While I normally focus on art sites in the US, this seems like a good opportunity — this being Easter week — to take a look at these two magnificent triptych paintings. I studied them in depth 15 years ago, when I was preparing my audio guide to Our Lady Cathedral, Antwerp, one of ten audio-tour titles in the Jane’s Smart Art Guides series.

In this first of two articles, we’ll explore the Raising of the Cross. In size, composition, and iconography it is resplendent with the artistic ideals of the Counter-Reformation. …

With little in the way of health science to call upon for deliverance from devastating epidemics, the Christian faithful of old turned to Patron Saints for hope. We see these saints in Medieval and Renaissance art, but can we fully grasp the profound meaning embedded in the works?

Without deep faith, and the agonizing fear and desolation wrought by unbridled contagion, perhaps full comprehension will always be beyond us. But today’s coronavirus pandemic may help us better understand the context that spawned these Patron Saints in art.

More than a dozen saints have been thought to provide protection and succor in times of pestilence. St. Roch is perhaps the most widely-recognized Patron Saint of the plague, but there are others who were — and still are — revered regionally. …

The First 3500 Years

More often than not, the paintings that really grab my attention are landscapes, and I like to think I’m a somewhat knowledgeable about them in terms of art history. So, I was surprised to learn recently that the word “landscape” — an anglicization of the Dutch landschap — was only introduced into the language — purely as a term for works of art — around the start of the 17th century. That is not to say that landscapes didn’t exist in art before then … apparently there just wasn’t a word for them.

In Western art, the earliest extant example of a painted landscape is a fresco in Akrotiri, an Aegean Bronze Age settlement on the Greek island of Santorini. The walls of one room are covered with stylized lilies (or papyrus) sprouting from colorful volcanic rocks, with swallows flying among the flowers. Beautifully preserved under volcanic ash from 1627 BC, it was only rediscovered about 50 years ago. …