Boer War, 1900 – 1901 – Last Summer Things Were Greener, John Byam Liston Shaw

Image from the Athenaeum. Original is in the Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery.

The painting, in the detailed style associated with the Pre-Raphaelites, depicts the artist’s sister mourning her cousin, who was killed in the Boer War in South Africa.

A contrast of grief and loss in the midst of the ongoing beauty of the world.

Still life with Books, Jan Lievens.

In the Rijksmuseum.

Did someone say texture?

Giant Redwood Trees of California, Albert Bierstadt.

On Google Art Project; click in lower right of image for zoom controls.

Original is in the Berkshire Museum (no image).

Bierstadt dazzled east coast society with his large scale paintings of a largely untamed continent. Few natural wonders could match these magnificent giant plants.

Giant Redwood Trees of California, Albert Bierstadt

View from the Quai d’Orsay, Johan Barthold Jongkind.

In the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Click on “Fullscreen” and use zoom or download arrow.

What might appear, in its wonderful painterly immediacy, to have been painted by a contemporary plein air master, was in fact painted in the mid 1800′s.

Jongkind, a Dutch painter who spent much of his career in France, is often mentioned a precursor of French Impressionism. I think you can draw a pretty direct line through to the best painterly realism of today.

Beautiful.

Oak Grove, Ivan Shishkin.

On Wikipaintings. Large version here.

Original is in the Kiev National Museum of Russian Art.

See my previous Eye Candy post of a Shishkin forest scene (presumably in the same oak forest) and my post on Ivan Shishkin.

Corner of Painter’s Table, Giovanni Boldini

On Wikipaintings, high-res version here.

Perhaps not the best reproduction, with light reflecting off the surface, but what a bizarre and wonderful composition.

I don’t know the location of the original.

See my post on Giovanni Boldini.

Birds Resting on Bushes, Léon Bonvin

Watercolor with gouache and ink over graphite.

In the Walters Art Museum. Click “Explore Object” in upper left for high-res version.

Gather Ye Rosebuds While Ye May, John William Waterhouse

The title is from the famous first verse of Robert Herrick’s poem, “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time“:

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today,
Tomorrow will be dying.

On Wikipaintings. Original is in a private collection.

There is another, perhaps even better known, painting by Waterhouse with the same title.