Month: January 2026
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Eye Candy for today: Jean-Etienne Liotard pastel portrait
Portrait of Maria Frederike van Reede-Athlone at Seven Years of Age, Jean-Étienne Liotard, pastel on vellum, 22 x 18 in. (55 x 45 cm), in the collection of the Getty. 18th century Swiss artist Jean-Étienne Liotard gives a beautiful demonstration of the sensitivity and finess possible in pastel. There is a subtle teture throughout, likely…
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Serge Pelle
Serge Pellé is a French comics artist known best for his work on the science fiction series Orbital (Amazon link), along with writer Sylvain Runberg. Pellé’s dramatic scenes of futuristic structures, often in deep perspective and extensive detail, are set off by imaginative spacecraft designs intense lighting and otherworldly creatures. It’s an entertaining series available…
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Eye Candy for Today: Egyptian encaustic portrait
Portrait of the Boy Eutyches, Egypt, Roman Period, encaustic on wood panel, 15 x 8 in. (38 x 19 cm), in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. What appears at first glance to be a sophisticated contemporary oil portrait, is, in fact, an encaustic painting that is roughly 2,000 years old. Painted in…
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Dugald Stewart Walker
Dugald Stewart Walker was one of the less well known American illustrators active in the early 20th century, basically in the latter part of the “Golden Age” of illustraion. His style was in keeping with other great illustrators of the time, notably, I think, those from Europe and the UK, like Edmund Dulac, Arthur Rackham,…
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Eye Candy for Today: Charles Ethan Porter watercolor still life
Still Life with Corn, Charles Ethan Porter; watercolor on paper, 11 x 17 in, (27 x 43 cm); in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art Though watercolor and gouahe are common in botanical art, they are infrequently usesd for still life paintings. There’s something I particularly like about those that I’m familiar with,…
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Happy Leyendecker Baby New Year 2026!
As I’ve done on every New Year’s Eve for the last 20 years(!), I’ll wish all Lines and Colors readers a Happy New Year with one of J. C. Leyendecker’s New Year’s covers for the Saturday Evening Post. In most of these, Leyendecker commented on events of the time, In this one he’s marking the…