NB! · Observations · Humour

Not the most obvious pose, perhaps, but a rather familiar one: you have been sitting in some waiting room for ages, and you begin to slide down the faux-leather armchair to ease your back, while the people around stare at you as though you had done…

NB! · Art · Observations · Humour

I noticed this work: in 2010, I think, I painted a picture in exactly the same style, but with a man in the bushes, and my mother always begged me to get it out of the house. It now stands somewhere in the garage, wrapped in a hundred layers of polythene

Art · Observations · Society Pages · Humour

I walk up to this stand and say: honestly, people have no shame, it is an exact copy of the Khomich brothers, only in a different technique 😡

The caption on the label reads: Yakov Khomich. Does this ever happen to you? ps Olga Sviblova, who was standing nearby, said at the end of the scene that one of these works ought to be bought

NB!

Classic

Museums · Observations · Education

Silver mug engraved "For the most marks in all subjects at the examination of 1840, 24th day of December, in Propoisk"

People certainly knew how to give presents and leave a good memory of themselves. 180 years have passed, and this high recognition of academic achievement is still impressive. *Propoisk was an ancient town in the territory of the Principality of Smolensk, now Slawharad in Belarus

Art · Observations · People · Pop Culture

François-Marie Banier, perhaps one of the foremost celebrity photographers of the twentieth century

François-Marie Banier is perhaps one of the foremost celebrity photographers of the twentieth century. I remember how, at the exhibition of his work in the Manege some 15 years ago, I was struck by the number of remarkable people whom Banier had managed to capture. But he is known

NB! · Archive · Monarchies · People · Pop Culture

Mood: Elizabeth II through the lens of François-Marie Banier, 1992

NB! · Observations

Athens 💛

Art · Monarchies · Society · Paris

Antoine Augustin Parmentier, Chief Apothecary of the Hôtel des Invalides, presents the first potato harvest to Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette on the Plaine des Sablons in 1786

Antoine Augustin Parmentier, Chief Apothecary of the Hôtel des Invalides, presents the first potato harvest to Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette on the Plaine des Sablons in 1786. Antoine Parmentier received from the king 54 acres of land on which to cultivate the potato and make it fashionable among the

NB! · Pop Culture · Humour

A Dutch Bilbo Baggins in a Green Cloak Bids You Good Evening

Horsemen in old-fashioned dress ride across a snowy field, a borzoi in the foreground, a sleigh and dogs on the right.

NB! · Art · Monarchies · People

Valentin Serov’s painting “Peter I Hunting with Hounds”, created in 1902

Peter I Hunting with Hounds, 1902. Valentin Serov

Geography · Art · Monarchies · Museums

Allegory of the Volga from Meissen’s “Big Russian Order” for Catherine the Great

The figure of a majestic, serene river god reclining on a bed of boulders and waterweed is the allegory of the Volga from the exquisite "Great Russian Commission" of the Meissen manufactory. The heroically built old man leans upon an overturned vessel, from which turbulent waters pour forth,

Alexandr Radayev