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

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

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

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,

Art · Observations · Humour

Girolamo Induno’s “Sad Presentiment” of 1862 and the Bust of Garibaldi

A girl pines for her beloved and scrolls through their photos together on an iPhone. Girolamo Induno, 1862. On the wall, as a tribute to romantic memories, hangs a reproduction of Francesco Hayez's "The Kiss". So that is how it goes: they wander about kissing, and

Archive · Art · Monarchies · Moscow · Mores · Society

Apollinary Vasnetsov and the menus of the coronation dinners in Moscow in May 1896

Menu of the dinner for the volost elders, 18 May 1896, at the Petrovsky Palace on the occasion of the coronation of Nicholas II, printed in colour lithography at the Levenson quick-printing house from sketches by Apollinary Vasnetsov, younger brother of t. Apollinary Vasnetsov, like his brother, took part

Porcelain figure of a rider in a tricorn hat and white gold-trimmed coat on a rearing white horse, with a Black servant in a turban and blue coat beside her.

NB! · Art · Monarchies

Meissen porcelain figure of Empress Elizabeth Petrovna on horseback with a servant, after a model by Kändler

Meissen porcelain figurine of the Russian Empress Elizabeth Petrovna on a rearing white horse, attended by a black servant, after a model by J. J. Kändler

Art · Education · People · Saint Petersburg · Ethnography

Fedot Sychkov's path from village icon painter to the Academy of Arts and back to the village

Paintings by Fedot Sychkov (1870-1958), Honoured Art Worker of the RSFSR and People's Artist of the Mordovian ASSR. Sychkov was born into a poor peasant family and finished the three-class zemstvo school in his village. He began to draw in an icon-painting workshop. As so

Art · Museums

Henri Matisse, Blue Nude (Memory of Biskra), 1907

František Kupka, The Yellow Scale, 1907.

Art · Books · Observations

There are faces like sumptuous portals, Where greatness seems to dwell in every trifle

There are faces like sumptuous portals, Where greatness seems to dwell in every trifle. There are faces, the likenesses of wretched hovels, Where liver is boiled and tripe lies steeping. Others, cold and dead faces, Are shut behind bars, like a dungeon. Others are like towers in which for long