Cayce Zavaglia creates her portraits in a novel variation on the time honored traditions of tapestry, using crewel embroidery wool in a method in which the direction of the threads are not blended into a uniform pattern, but given direction within the creation of the form — like brushstrokes, producing a much more “painterly” (“threaderly”?) surface.

Zavaglia was trained as a painter and in her statement indicates that she still thinks of herself as a painter, simply working with a different medium.

The images on her site, once you click through to the individual works, are supplemented with close up crops in which you can better see the directional and dimensional qualities of the threadwork.

In addition, some of the works are displayed as they look from the reverse of the surface, with a feeling of abstracted underlying form and a decidedly different direction and texture to the threads.

[Via High-Fructose by way of Dan van Bentheuysen: @vanbenth]

www.caycezavaglia.com

John Singer Sargent, long dismissed by the art establishment as a facile painter of society portraits, has finally in recent years been getting something of his due as a painter.

Beyond the technical mastery and delicious painterly flourish of his formal work in oil, Sargent was one of the great masters of the medium of watercolor; and it was in his watercolors, often painted while vacationing or traveling, that he found his greatest joy as an artist.

The Brooklyn Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston have put together an exhibition that draws on the Sargent watercolors in the collection of both museums.

Titled simply John Singer Sargent Watercolors, it consists of ninety-three works in watercolor with mixtures of opaque watercolor, bodycolor, graphite and whatever else Sargent could find to achieve his goals. To these they have added nine of Sargent’s oils — just in case the watercolors aren’t enough to leave you completely dazzled.

I consider this a must-see show if I can possibly make it, and hope to give you a subsequent first-hand report.

In the meanwhile, there is a catalog from the exhibition, John Singer Sargent Watercolors, that James Gurney reviews here.

I can also recommend an older book, The Watercolors of John Singer Singer Sargent by Carl Little, but judging from Gurney’s review, I would go for the new catalog first.

The exhibition will be at the Brooklyn Museum until July 28, 2013. (Incidentally, the Brooklyn Museum, as I write here, is a terrific museum in general, often unfairly overshadowed by its more famous counterparts in Manhattan.)

The exhibition then moves to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where it will be on display from October 13, 2013 to January 20, 2014. The last stop will be at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, for which dates have not yet been set.

There is a small slideshow on the Brooklyn Museum page for the exhibit, but with a bit of clicking you can search their collections for John Singer Sargent Watercolors and access more works. Use the blue arrow at right of the top section of thumbnails to access more objects (their search interface needs work). On the page for an individual work, click on “Download” and choose a large size for larger images.

The MFA has an easier to navigate search; click on “Zoom” for larger images.

[Via Gurney Journey]

The Gates of Hell was an ambitious and astonishing work by the French sculptor Auguste Rodin that was never realized in his lifetime.

The sculpture exists in two versions, one of which was cast in bronze posthumously from reconstructed plaster casts. The work stands almost 30 feet (6m) high and 12 feet (4m) wide, with over 180 figures representing themes from Dante Alighieri’s Devine Comedy.

The sculpture contains many figures and sets of figures that were eventually developed into independent works by Rodin, including his famous The Thinker. Rodin worked on the doors off and on for 37 years, never actually finishing the work.

There is a video here that discusses the the work and the two different versions created by Rodin.

There are three original bronze casts, at the Musée Rodin in Paris, the Rodin Museum here in Philadelphia and the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo.

Three more were subsequently cast by the Musée Rodin, and are in Zurich, Seoul, Korea and Stanford University in California.

Microbiologist and photographer J.W. Kern has taken a rather remarkable high-resolution (112 megapixel) photograph of the Stanford casting and made it available on Flickr (click on “Original” for the high-res version, which is 18mb). Here is Kern’s article about the sculpture and the photo.

[Via MetaFilter]

While the Mauritshuis, The Royal Picture Gallery in The Hague, Netherlands, is undergoing renovations, some 35 wonderful examples of their extraordinary collection of paintings are touring the US.

The group includes Vermeer’s Girl With a Pearl Earring, as well as treasures by Rembrandt, Frans Hals, Carel Fabritius, Rachel Ruysch, Jan Steen, Jacob von Ryisdael and others.

The show is currently at the de Young Museum in San Francisco, where it will be on display until June 2, 2013.

It then moves to the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, where it will be on display from June 23 to September 29, 2013.

A smaller subset of 15 works, titled Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Hals: Masterpieces of Dutch Painting from the Mauritshuis, including Girl with a Pearl Earring as well as works by Rembrandt, Hals, van Ruisdael, Steen and Fabritius, will be on display at the Frick Collection in New York from October 22, 2013 to January 19, 2014, which is when I hope to see them.

(Images above: Johnannes Vermeer, Carel Fabritius, Abraham van Beyeren, Jacob van Ruisdael, Reambrandt van Rijn)

[Addendum: Reader Ælle points to an interesting interview with Mauritshuis Director Emilie Gordenker on ArtsATL]

The Google Art Project, which I have written about previously, continues to add to its impressive list of participating museums.

Every once in a while, something truly delightful pops up in the “Recently Added” section of the Collections page, and the Museuo Sorolla, a museum dedicated to the works of brilliant Spanish painter Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida, is now one of them.

In addition to the glorious high resolution images of 33 works now available on GAP (as of this writing), you can find some additional high res images on Wikimedia Commons (also here). To sort the high-res images on Wikimedia, look under the caption for those for which the file size is listed in MB rather than KB.

You can also find some large (mixed with smaller) images on WikiPaintings. I’ve linked to my related posts on Sorolla below, many of which contain links to additional sources of Sorolla images.

I will also recommend the beautiful recently published collection of his work, Sorolla: The Masterworks.

Kevin Sloan’s paintings reflect his interest in natural history, narrative painting, allegory, magic realism and the often underrated painting approach of John James Audubon, as well as Audubon’s subject matter.

In carefully composed and deftly rendered arrangements of everyday objects, landscape elements and in particular, birds, Sloan opens windows into staged moments that seem a bit out of time and a touch haunted by something unsaid or not quite remembered.

His homages to the posed life-in-death tableaux of Audubon are stirred in with time crossing elements like electrical cords and candelabra chandoliers, birds hidden under sheets or birds interacting with teacups, fruit and other traditional still life subjects.

The resulting “cabinet of curiosities” is given a patina of age by his painting approach, as though you had found his work in the attic of an old house that possibly had been in an alternate reality at some point.

[Via Symbiartic]

Scottish artist Thomas Millie Dow, active in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, traveled and painted subjects in The US, Franc, Morocco and Italy, as well as in the UK.

I came across his painting Trees, above, top, and was fascinated by it. Unfortunately, I can’t find many examples of his work on the web.

Fontainebleau: Oak Trees at Bas-Bréau, Camille Corot

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