Following the internet meme of the moment, more “selfies” created without benefit of iPhone or Android device, and previously uploaded into public consciousness by way of galleries, museums, books and libraries.

See my previous post on “selfies“.

(Images above, self-portraits by: Antony van Dyck, Frida Kahlo, John Singer Sargent, Hans Holbein the Younger, Chuck Close, N.C. Wyeth, Ivan Shishkin, Peter Paul Rubens, Claude Monet)

Romona Youngquist is a painter based in Oregon whose paintings of pastoral fields and farms are rendered with a wonderful variety of textural effects.

She appears to use drybrush, scraping, stratching and a variety of painting knife effects, in addition to her painterly brushwork, to achieve a wide range of textures and passages of broken color. These work with her controlled palette to give her work an immediacy and surface appeal that compliments her subjects.

I particularly like the way she bases many of her compositions on bands of light and shadow sweeping across fields and hills. She often places our viewpoint as observers within a band of shadow, both giving the foreground weight and inviting our gaze further into the painting to the areas of lighter value.

Her work is currently on view in a two person show with Eric Jacobson titled “Silent Musings” at the Art on the Boulevard Gallery in Vancover, WA until December 31, 2013.

[Via FASO Fine Art Views blog]

I am told by the internets that “selfie” has been chosen as the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year.

Helpless as I am to swim against the mighty tide of popular culture, I give you a few interesting “selfies” done without benefit of iPhone.

I’ve started with Durer’s remarkable self-portrait at the age of 13 (above, top) along with his Christ-like self-portrait at the height of his powers. I’ve followed up with Rembrandt, both early and later in his career, and included a few more with no particular qualification other than I like them.

As I put this post together, the list quickly grew too large for a single article, so I’ll follow up with more over the next few days.

(Images above: Albrecht Durer (2), Rembrandt van Rijn (2), Elisabeth-Louise Vigée-Lebrun, Vincent van Gogh, Diego Velázquez, Anders Zorn, Cecilia Beaux, Gustave Courbet)