In The Studio - Dreamton
Probably the most enjoyable laser-cut puzzle i've done to date.
It was cut , in his "Medieval" style, by Ukrainian puzzle maker Ihor Reshetnikov aka Dreamton. The original painting was by Maria Bashkirtseva (1858-1884),a Russian émigré artist, in 1881 with herself as the central character in the middle foreground.
400 pieces
18" x 12"
Maria was quite an interesting character. From Wikipedia:
"She was born Maria Konstantinovna Bashkirtseva, into a Russian noble family on their estate near the city of Poltava in present-day Ukraine. She lived and worked in Paris, and died tragically of tuberculosis at the age of 25.
She grew up mostly abroad, traveling with her mother throughout most of Europe, with longer spells in Germany and on the Riviera, until the family settled in Paris. Educated privately and with early musical talent, she lost her chance at a career as a singer when illness destroyed her voice. She then determined to become an artist, and she studied painting in France at the Robert-Fleury studio and at the Académie Julian.
She produced a remarkable, if fairly conventional, body of work in her short lifetime, exhibiting at the Paris Salon as early as 1880 and every year thereafter until her death (except 1883). In 1884, she exhibited a portrait of Paris slum children entitled The Meeting and a pastel portrait of her cousin, for which she received an honorable mention. Her best-known works are The Meeting (now in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris) and In the Studio.
Dying of tuberculosis at the age of 25, she lived just long enough to emerge as an intellectual in Paris in the 1880s. She wrote several articles for Hubertine Auclert's feminist newspaper La Citoyenne in 1881 under the nom de plume "Pauline Orrel." One of her most-quoted sayings is "Let us love dogs, let us love only dogs! Men and cats are unworthy creatures."
From approximately the age of 13, Bashkirtseff kept a journal, and it is probably for this that she is most famous today. It has been called "a strikingly modern psychological self-portrait of a young, gifted mind", and her urgent prose, which occasionally breaks out into dialogue, remains extremely readable. She was multilingual and despite her self-involvement, was a keen observer with an acute ear for hypocrisy, so that her journal also offers a near-novelistic account of the late nineteenth century European bourgeoisie.
British Prime Minister William Gladstone referred to her journal as "a book without a parallel", and another early admirer was George Bernard Shaw. It remained popular, eventually spinning off both plays and movies based on her life story."
In The Studio - Dreamton
Probably the most enjoyable laser-cut puzzle i've done to date.
It was cut , in his "Medieval" style, by Ukrainian puzzle maker Ihor Reshetnikov aka Dreamton. The original painting was by Maria Bashkirtseva (1858-1884),a Russian émigré artist, in 1881 with herself as the central character in the middle foreground.
400 pieces
18" x 12"
Maria was quite an interesting character. From Wikipedia:
"She was born Maria Konstantinovna Bashkirtseva, into a Russian noble family on their estate near the city of Poltava in present-day Ukraine. She lived and worked in Paris, and died tragically of tuberculosis at the age of 25.
She grew up mostly abroad, traveling with her mother throughout most of Europe, with longer spells in Germany and on the Riviera, until the family settled in Paris. Educated privately and with early musical talent, she lost her chance at a career as a singer when illness destroyed her voice. She then determined to become an artist, and she studied painting in France at the Robert-Fleury studio and at the Académie Julian.
She produced a remarkable, if fairly conventional, body of work in her short lifetime, exhibiting at the Paris Salon as early as 1880 and every year thereafter until her death (except 1883). In 1884, she exhibited a portrait of Paris slum children entitled The Meeting and a pastel portrait of her cousin, for which she received an honorable mention. Her best-known works are The Meeting (now in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris) and In the Studio.
Dying of tuberculosis at the age of 25, she lived just long enough to emerge as an intellectual in Paris in the 1880s. She wrote several articles for Hubertine Auclert's feminist newspaper La Citoyenne in 1881 under the nom de plume "Pauline Orrel." One of her most-quoted sayings is "Let us love dogs, let us love only dogs! Men and cats are unworthy creatures."
From approximately the age of 13, Bashkirtseff kept a journal, and it is probably for this that she is most famous today. It has been called "a strikingly modern psychological self-portrait of a young, gifted mind", and her urgent prose, which occasionally breaks out into dialogue, remains extremely readable. She was multilingual and despite her self-involvement, was a keen observer with an acute ear for hypocrisy, so that her journal also offers a near-novelistic account of the late nineteenth century European bourgeoisie.
British Prime Minister William Gladstone referred to her journal as "a book without a parallel", and another early admirer was George Bernard Shaw. It remained popular, eventually spinning off both plays and movies based on her life story."