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Voltaire at the residence of Frederick II in Potsdam,Prussia. Partial view of an engraving by Pierre Charles Baquoy, after N. A. Monsiau.
Voltaire at the residence of Frederick II in Potsdam,Prussia. Partial view of an engraving by Pierre Charles Baquoy, after N. A. Monsiau.
Such a nice compliment coming from you… I am all gung ho for starting a mutual admiration club; I love the way you pursue an idea through visual images.
Wilhelm Sasnal was born in Tarnów, Poland, in 1972. He studied architecture for two years at the Polytechnic, Kraków, beginning in 1992, and then became a painting student at the Akademia Sztuk Pięknych w Warszawie, Kraków. While there, he helped form an artist’s collective that exhibited together as the Ładnie Group until 2000. Ironically named after the Polish word meaning “pretty” or “nice,” the members made paintings of their contemporary, often banal surroundings, using a deskilled aesthetic that countered the style valued by their instructors. Sasnal finished his studies in 1999, and then worked briefly for advertising companies in Kraków while also making paintings, graphic novels (his strips are regularly published in “Machina” and “Przekroj”, two Polish periodicals), photographs, and films.
Born in Tarnow, Poland, in 1972, Wilhelm Sasnal comes across as an unlikely new star of the contemporary art world. But for the last few years his paintings have beguiled critics, curators and collectors alike with their peculiar range of imagery and styles.
John Brown
Portrait of William Kerr (1763-1824), Earl of Ancram, 6th Marquess of Lothian
Agnew’s, London
Unidentified artist, sometimes attributed to James Jefferys
Drawing of a Prison Scene circa 1779
Pen and black ink and grey washes on paper, 374 x 563 mm
Lent by the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
Great site!
Henry Fuseli
Study of a figure (ca.1774-1778, British Museum)
This appears to be a study for the drawing of ‘Buoncante da Montefeltro’. Fuseli’s figures defy gravity and logic, and it is almost impossible to tell which way up this design should be viewed. An early commentator wrote that one of Fuseli’s compositions showed ‘such incomprehensible sublimity’ that it was said to have been hung upside down at the Royal Academy!
Antoine Watteau
Woman Wearing a Mantle over her Head & Shoulders (c.1718-19)
Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts, USA
Francois boucher/landscape with kirschpflückerin-1768
Street Art of the Day: An anamorphic graffiti tree grows under an overpass.
Watch the TSF crew’s latest masterpiece come to life below: