Mustard goes back thousands of years, with references in ancient Indian, Sumerian, Greek and Roman texts, and in the Bible. If you’re a mustard fan, here’s a brief history and a summary of different mustard types. I was struck by…
inspiration
Break The Cycle – A Poem
The Art Institute Chicago tells us that this painting is from a much larger portrait of a family that Manet decided to cut into sections. La Régalade means “to pour liquid from a bottle down the throat without touching the…
Strawberries, Nuts, &c. – A Poem
Riddle Me This How is it possible –Orange, so fresh the leaf is intactRuby-red strawberries that if wild would collapseTogether with nuts and raisins, to beIn the same still life in a nineteenth centuryComposition? What, summer and winter?Unless, if not…
A Pomegranate, Siena – A Poem
George Henry Hall was considered a “master of fruit, vegetable and flower still-life painting”, although that’s not all he painted. Here’s a selection of some of his works. A Pomegranate, Siena is a beautiful example of the artist’s renowned realism….
For the People Waiting – A Poem
So many still lifes of previous centuries feature abundance. As The Met points out, for this particular painting by Severin Roesen: “Nineteenth-century improvements in cultivation and shipping practices enabled the extravagant assortment.” It was about status, and fortune, and horticulture,…
Cherries – A Poem
This project of mine, writing poems as a response to food-themed art, has the added benefit of making me more mindful of small things. Like cherries. They have associations beyond, well, cherries. I remembered Marcel Proust and his madeleines. They…
Fruits of Midi – A Poem
In France, the southern regions along the Mediterranean Coast are known colloquially as le Midi. It’s thought Renoir may have painted this still life somewhere in le Midi on his way to study classical paintings in Italy. There’s a more…
Figs – A Poem
Figs are one of my favourite fruit. When I was in Greece, I was thunderstuck by the amount of figs fallen to the footpaths from overhanging trees. Fallen figs were underfoot. All that gorgeous bounty, gone to waste. I was…
Beyond the Fireplace – A Poem
If you follow the source link in the caption below the image, you’ll discover that this painting was used as a screen in a fireplace. The idea was to make it look like there was another room beyond the hearth….
Grapes, Lemons, Pears and Apples – A Poem
I was inspired to write this poem by the intensity of van Gogh’s colours, and in particular the brushwork of the tablecloth. It seemed to me as if the fruit are falling into hyperspace, or are themselves experimenting with gravity…
For the Cubists – A Poem
The artist here, Ben Benn was a pioneering modernist. Born in 1884 in what is now known as Ukraine, he migrated to America with his family and settled in New York, where he first exhibited in the early 1900s with…
Apple Haiku
I was particularly struck, not just by the concentration in this young woman’s face and demeanour, but by the notes on The Met website (see link in Source in the caption below). The painter Nicolaes Maes deliberately veered away from…
