If you ever want to fall down an internet hole, then may I recommend the coffee houses of old London? Here are some of the links I poured through to get a feel for what life may have been like…
For a Minute There, the Internet was a 17th-Century Coffee House โ A Poem
My Bae’s Eyes are Nothing like the Sun โ A Poem
Well, this was fun. Marcellus Laroon the Younger was trained in painting by his father, Marcellus Laroon the Elder, a portraitist and history painter. Apparently, the Younger, who specialised in genre scenes and conversation pieces, was “a colourful character who…
Delivering Grapes to a Prospective Lover โ A Poem
There’s not a lot to be said about this glorious painting of abundance โ enjoy! The form is Italian, a stornello, which I though appropriate for the Italian artist, Luca Forte, who was an innovator, introducing landscapes as backdrops for…
Just Right โ A Poem
William Rickarby Miller was a watercolorist, a magazine illustrator, and also a painter of still life. He particularly loved to paint peaches. I enjoyed looking at this foray into apples. For Just Right, I was particularly interested in the old…
National Vanilla Ice Cream Day โ July 23
Vanilla ice cream is my favourite. Is it yours too? For more on vanilla, including a vanilla cake recipe click here. For the full poem “Contentment” by Oliver Wendell Holmes click here.
Celebrating 100 Poems
You may have already read that the reason I began this website was because my daughter asked for my favourite recipes. Since then, everything has grown โ the site, my daughter’s cooking repertoire, the scale of the project! I started…
Blue and Green Bottles and Oranges โ A Poem
The Yale Center for British Art writes that the artist here, Spencer Gore, was influenced by Paul Cรฉzanne and Andrรฉ Derain in using “bright, undiluted colour and seemingly prosaic subject matter“. I was stuck in particular by the blue and…
Morning, Noon, Night โ A Poem
The idealised English cottage scenes in Morning, Noon and Night were painted the same year that saw the end of the French Revolution (1789-99), not that long after the American Revolution (1763-83). Britain was at war with France (1793-1815); in…
Mr. and Mrs. Hill โ A Poem
At first glance, all I saw in this painting was a couple preparing to receive guests for tea. But there’s so much more to Mr. and Mrs. Hill! Here’s a great video from the Yale Center for British Art which…
Brothers – A Poem
Susan C. Waters was not just a portrait artist, who also painted animals and still lifes, but a woman who supported herself and her husband with her paintings, and an animal activist and suffragette. More on the artist, and her…
Woman and Dog at Table – A Poem
I love dogs, and there was something about the expression in this dog’s face in Woman and Dog at Table that I recognised well. As for the painting, it, too, appears to be a real scene from artist Pierre Bonnard’s…
Woman Walking in an Exotic Forest – A Poem
In Woman Walking in an Exotic Forest, Henri Rousseau takes a woman, better suited for promenading in Parisian parks, and places her tropically, and absurdly, out of her element. “Gazing at the viewer with a look of vague surprise, the…
